The Bassdrum

[XAXAU]

I thought I´d sum up what I´ve learned about the almighty bassdrum

I´m dividing up this lesson into 5 different sections or stages.

1. The snap > This is the part that will cut thru the mix and slap you in the face.

2. The boom > This is the part that makes your guts tingle

3. The punch > This is the part that hits you in the chest

4. The top > This is the part for those busy mixes that need something extra to cut through

5. Some chit chat

Ok, here we go...

1. Get a clean, pure bassdrum, from a synth, a drummachine or sample. By this I mean no layering or saturation processing (breaks up the kick, especially in headphones).

Cut piece by piece from the end of the sample until you have no subs left in the sound. Activate "snap to zero crossing" and start chopping at EVERY zero crossing.

Mark all the pieces and normalize at -0,1dBFS. Now all the low amplitude cycles will be almost full scale. Small sounds within the drum itself will now be loud. This is something you cannot possibly achieve with any other process or processor. It´s like microdynamics surgery. The really small waves at the start of the kick that were almost inaudible are going to sound really weird and spikey at high Hz. You can delete those one by one until you have a sound that is more balanced, or simply lower the volume on those sections if they sound good but are too loud or EQ away the crap.

Now you have a proper snap that you can bounce down in a folder for your own library. Since this part of hte bassdrum doesn´t have any subs you could massage it a bit with compression, saturation or distortion. Serial o parallel to taste. You don´t HAVE to do this, the snap is silly loud already, but sometimes it´s nice to add a bit of tone. I prefer parallel processing. I´ts easier to make thatkind of judgement whithin the context of a mix, so you might prefer to process later on when you´re producing a track.


2. This is the second part of the kick that usually is a 1/8th long, faded out. Even if you have a proper studio with acoustics, D/A and monitors, headphones are great for revealing things that are off in the subs. Take a kickdrum from a synth and listen, it will sound clean and not "broken".
Grab a sample that you like and do the opposite and cut away the snap part, plus you cut up every cycle and normalize. Glue the pieces together, but they should be on separate channels if you know what I mean. Zoom in and line them up. Pitch it to nearest note.

3. Duplicate the boom track twice and shorten the length of them so that they are around 1/32nd long. They could be longer or shorter, use your ears. Pitch the so that they form a chord (preferrably the I chord of your composition). Muck around with their levels to get it right. Some processing on them might float your boat. Just make sure you leave the boom alone. The less the processing the better it will sit in the mix and sound big.

4. Throw on a hihat or snare or a crisp whatever sample for the top. Go nuts with processing or have it clean. To not interfere with the snap too much you might want to fade in to the sample, slower attack in your sample player.

5. All this results in a snappy and punchy bassdrum that sits well in every mix. Did I mention it will be loud as ****? Louder thatn any bassdrum you´ve ever heard in a EDM track after mastering. And it will be cleaner sounding. This is great news for everyone struggling for loudness. Now you can be as loud as anyone out there, only your track won´t be smashed to bits. Have your kick at -0.1dBFS with a limiter on the mixbuss and build your track around that. With a little help from sidechain compression you´ll soon achieve a great sound.

Remember to enjoy

An example:

[golden beers]

great stuff

but pretty sure Soundforge wavehammer will do this for you->

This is something you cannot possibly achieve with any other process or processor

[ohmicide]

can you post an example??

[steffensen]

Im a little lost on #3, Duplicating the boom version in 1/32's.
So its 3 of the same boom, only the first version 1/8 long, but the other 2 copies 1/32 in different pitches?
Wouldnt that sound strange, with the 2 copies ontop like that?

Great trick tho, ill have to try it.

[XAXAU]

Originally Posted by steffensen

Im a little lost on #3, Duplicating the boom version in 1/32's.
So its 3 of the same boom, only the first version 1/8 long, but the other 2 copies 1/32 in different pitches?
Wouldnt that sound strange, with the 2 copies ontop like that?

Great trick tho, ill have to try it.

That´s the thing, it doesn´t sound funny at all, it just gets more punchy.

[XAXAU]

Originally Posted by alehoe

can you post an example??

No, but feel free to try it out

[ohmicide]

Originally Posted by XAXAU

No, but feel free to try it out

ha thanks anyways

[XAXAU]

The snap can be layered with other snaps. And the punch can be other samples too, just make sure they´re tuned to the root. I just felt that this was the fastest way to go about it the first time you try it.

[XAXAU]

Originally Posted by golden beers

great stuff

but pretty sure Soundforge wavehammer will do this for you->

Really? Every 180 degrees of a cycle normalized individually?

Anyway, glad you liked it

[golden beers]

Originally Posted by XAXAU

Really? Every 180 degrees of a cycle normalized individually?

Anyway, glad you liked it

well i'll spit a kick drum through it so you can see what you think.

[golden beers]

ok here's before hammer...
SYS100 round 1.wav


and here's after..
SYS100 hammer1.wav


note this is not cut to zero
also wave hammer is set to maximum, there's some quite interesting middle ground to be found with the hammer

[steffensen]

Originally Posted by XAXAU

That´s the thing, it doesn´t sound funny at all, it just gets more punchy.

Awesome. Just been spending 3 hours playing with this trick. Really opens up a new world of possibillities. Thanks fpr sharing this!

[XAXAU]

Oooops! This was not the right kick. I posted the right one in the original post.

[steffensen]

This thing is pretty good to do in Live, with the Note Length midi plugin. Just play around with note length's until it fits.

I noticed that one gains on using a long boom kick, as the noramlize brings up the noise/cracks in the end (especially on my 909 kicks). With a longer kick you can make the kick shorter and still doing its job.

Ive been doing kicks in a different way before. More a matter of oscillating the lower freq, to the wanted length, and then shaping it with a gate/compressor. But this thing feels more stable and firm somehow, more in control.

[XAXAU]

I use Cubase so editing is sooooo easy. Ableton users are missing out on this very basic but powerful feature.

Variaudio for pitching in Cubase is simple and effective as well.

Du borde testa

[steffensen]

Hehe.. jag har testat.

I do my normalizing in sound forge, and then i use the snap to zero crossing in the Live Sampler/Simpler, so np there really.

But sure, i do miss out on the pitching/timestretching capabilities.

[XAXAU]

Posted the right kick in the original post. Should stop naming every kick "kick"

[Gzabriel]

This sounds wondrous and magical. Is there a good way to do this in Ableton that I'm missing? Or is some external audio app editing required...

[steffensen]

Live cant do it, but its easy in let say Sound Forge, which u can link to from the inside.

[lcvl]

Different kick sounds for different applications.
I wouldn't use this technique for all my kick needs.
Synthesis, sampling, layering, editing, processing...
There's no secret formula.
Know your tools/options and use them accordingly.

[steffensen]

Originally Posted by lcvl

Different kick sounds for different applications.
I wouldn't use this technique for all my kick needs.
Synthesis, sampling, layering, editing, processing...
There's no secret formula.
Know your tools/options and use them accordingly.

Sure, but one more trick up yer sleeve isnt a bad thing.

[XAXAU]

What´s so nice about this trick is that you get more illusion for less voltage which means that you don´t have to slam your track to get to the industry standard loudness in EDM these days. Your track will be as loud as the rest but with less compression, limiting, saturation and clipping.

[XAXAU]

Oh make sure you check in headphones. You can really hear the subs break up in there.

[XAXAU]

Another one...

[I.P]

Originally Posted by XAXAU

Remember to enjoy

An example:

KICK!

thanks 4 the tips

[Ludwig]

wow, saw this thread ages ago, but never tried it.

I wasn't even paying that much attention to doing it but by god it works, really snappy kicks with loads of low end, but they sound tight.

I'm doing this in Logic and could only normalise my regions, anyone know how to normalise to -0.1?

[Ludwig]

Here's my first attempt!

(the first four bars are the original, second four bars are with the technique)

[Simonator]

Originally Posted by Ludwig

_

Easy dude, was just listening to your new track Shea Butter earlier today. Good stuff thumbsup

Originally Posted by Ludwig

wow, saw this thread ages ago, but never tried it.

+1

Thanks for bumping this thread.

I used this technique for the first time about a week ago & tried to find this thread, but failed. Didn't realise it was actually a dedicated thread; thought XAXAU had shared this within one of the other many threads re kicks.

Originally Posted by Ludwig

I'm doing this in Logic and could only normalise my regions, anyone know how to normalise to -0.1?

I did this by opening 10 or so more audio tracks, setting a 1 bar snap/quantise, dragging each slice to its own track, adjusting track volumes until they all peak the same.



You can hear the results I achieved in the first track on my soundcloud page in my signature (Not For You - Vocal Techno Mix), or a barer version in this example I uploaded to a different thread

http://www.gearslutz.com/board/5562806-post21.html

(annoyingly this site will not allow me to re-upload the attachment to this thread, even if I rename the file!)

[Ludwig]

Originally Posted by Simonator

Easy dude, was just listening to your new track Shea Butter earlier today. Good stuff thumbsup




+1

Thanks for bumping this thread.

I used this technique for the first time about a week ago & tried to find this thread, but failed. Didn't realise it was actually a dedicated thread; thought XAXAU had shared this within one of the other many threads re kicks.



I did this by opening 10 or so more audio tracks, setting a 1 bar snap/quantise, dragging each slice to its own track, adjusting track volumes until they all peak the same.



You can hear the results I achieved in the first track on my soundcloud page (in my signature), or a barer version in this example I uploaded to a different thread

http://www.gearslutz.com/board/5562806-post21.html

(annoyingly this site will not allow me to re-upload the attachment to this thread, even if I rename the file!)

Cheers man, I was quite happy with that one

Checked out that track, you can hear the technique in the kick, I love it. Very cool vocal as well. thumbsup who's it going out on?

[Simonator]

Originally Posted by Ludwig

Cheers man, I was quite happy with that one

Checked out that track, you can hear the technique in the kick, I love it. Very cool vocal as well. thumbsup who's it going out on?

Thanks.

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