Why do some of my kickdrums pop out and seem louder than others, audioexempel given!

[Tuesday Knight]

They can't be the same volume and actually louder. Most likely bad compressor settings.

[freddman]

Maybe I put it the wrong way..Yes they are the same volume, its mostly that they dont punch through in the same way all of them if you get me? They clip shows it

[Tuesday Knight]

Ah ok, I will take a listen in a bit and see/hear.

[Kaoz]

Compressor attack and release.

[freddman]

Originally Posted by Kaoz

Compressor attack and release.

on what the sidechain you mean?

[ohmicide]

too many of the same frequencies as the bass line

to get your kick to cut straight through the rest of the mix you have to EQ things right and, since we're talking about electronic music, you must also sidechain properly

I feel like being helpful so post a stem of your kick and a stem of your bass and I'll mix them together and tell you what I did

[freddman]

Originally Posted by ohmicide

too many of the same frequencies as the bass line

to get your kick to cut straight through the rest of the mix you have to EQ things right and, since we're talking about electronic music, you must also sidechain properly

I feel like being helpful so post a stem of your kick and a stem of your bass and I'll mix them together and tell you what I did

Thanks man, I just pm'd you the stems!

[ohmicide]

okay so first of all, there were a lot of the same frequencies going on like I said

for the kick, I got rid of some of the mids, booted the highs, and compressed a little for flavour

for the bass, I had to do some mid/side EQing because there was too much going on the low end of the side for my liking, I high passed the mid section, high passed the sides a bit more, boosted the highs on the side for some more stereo effects, boosted some of the lows, cut some low mids that were interfering with the kick's thump, compressed it to level things out, sidechained to give the kick some more room and gave it a tad of plate reverb for some space

I noted you had some distortion of something else going on in your original mix so I bounced out too version, one with the clean bass and one with a bit extra distortion, EQ had to be a bit different on the low mids cos of the distortion but that's irrelevant

screen shots of the clean mix and mp3's are attached

I also included a screen shot of the bass and kick's spectrum, bass on top and kick on bottom

mix 1 is the clean bass mix

mix 2 is the one with a bit of distortion from NI's Driver

mix reso is the same as mix 2 but with some resonance automation because I was bored and it sounded cool

[ohmicide]

and then I got bored

[stinkyfingers]

^maybe if you used your ears instead of a low-fi analyzer you would be able to use an EQ correctly...
your examples sound like total ass...

[freddman]

thanks for your post ohmicide and your mix ! , im not sure its the result im looking for, not that its wrong but I want the kick to be kind of "hidden" underneath the bassline and not really be that out there


But I dont understand why it doesnt fit with my original post..Because the 2nd and the 3d kick is good ..But the 1 and the 4th is popping out differently..But the bassline is playing the same note at that time..Or the only difference is that on the 1 and the 4 the bassnotes are being pressed at the same time as the kick


Here are the stems if somebody wants to give it a go more

Zippyshare.com - Freddman Stems.zip

[Richard Empire]

I had a quick go - I'm not a fan of obviously pumping SC compression, so I always back things off a little bit.

Here's my effort - no eq'ing, just a SC compressor with a really fast attack and release.

[freddman]

Richard that sounded good! What compressor and settings did you use + trigger? would like to try that out myself!

[freddman]

Yeah I pretty much figured it out now with the sidechain..It need a really hard sidechain to fit in there! still interested in how you did it richard

by the way ohmicide, that resonance automation sounded really good..What plugin and how did you do that?

[ohmicide]

Originally Posted by freddman

thanks for your post ohmicide and your mix ! , im not sure its the result im looking for, not that its wrong but I want the kick to be kind of "hidden" underneath the bassline and not really be that out there

no problem man, and if you want a more "hidden" kick then just don't boost the highs like I did

I just did that because I like snappy up front kicks, the rest I did was all to get a good balance in the low end

[teknatronik]

Originally Posted by ohmicide

no problem man, and if you want a more "hidden" kick then just don't boost the highs like I did

I just did that because I like snappy up front kicks, the rest I did was all to get a good balance in the low end

those were great examples, props!

[Richard Empire]

I'm really sorry - I should have posted my settings. I didn't save the file so I can't tell you what they were.

It was a simple ableton sidechain, FF1 type, with attack and release set really fast, almost as fast as they would go.

Medium ratio on the curve, with a gentle knee and then wind your threshold down with the bass track solo'ed. When you hear it start to obviously pump, bring the threshold a couple of db back up.

I often then have a little play with the levels of the bass line (with the kick back in), just to fine tune the effect. Often it's easy to overcook the bass levels, which just makes your compressor work unnecessarily hard.

I never look at the numbers; just have confidence in your ears!


Edited to add - I came back to the computer to find I didn't actually shut the file down - here are the settings I used.