Kick mic for hip hop style kick sound?

[Beneficial]

I have a clean set of 1972 ludwigs with new heads... properly tuned. I'm trying to make my own hip hop drum sounds... I've recorded a bunch of funk breakbeat style sounds with one or two distant mics wich turned out really cool but now I'd like to be able to get more of an in your face thud sound. Like the 90's boom bap hip hop sound. DJ premier style... kind of a deep rich thud. Something that knocks heavy, but smooth. Thinking it's time to start expirimenting with close micing the kit.

From reading this board I'm thinking an EV RE20, or maybe AKG D12 as opposed to something newer (and cheaper) like a Beta 52 or AKG D112. Of course. I'd either be using an old 16-8-2 studiomaster mixer for preamps or a 6176. Also, I don't have a port on the bass head.

[andychamp]

I wonder how many of those sounds were real drums.
I think there might have been some sampling & pitching-down or some doubling with 808 samples going on.
The dbx subharmonic synthesizer comes to mind, too

[Beneficial]

Well, I guess I would say properly tuned to my taste. Here are a couple of pictures of the kit:

http://drumforum.org/download/file.p...3036&mode=view
http://drumforum.org/download/file.p...3037&mode=view

I've got a felt strip under the batter and reso heads as far as muffling goes. Getting a nice solid rich kick sound with an sm57 a few feet away,, but it's not nearly as in your face as I'd like it to be. I have the drums in a relatively small room... I used to have 4 inch thick mineral wool bass traps everywhere in the room to kill off the room noise but after taking most of them out I like the live sound I'm getting... I'd just like my kick sound to sound more like some of the 90's hip hop records I love and I think it's time to close mic some stuff (as opposed to just having one or two room mics to get a ghetto break beat sound).

Any of the songs on Jeru's album Wrath of the Math would be good examples.... a specific example of a song with a kick sound I like can be heard on the song "Elevators" by Outkast off of the Atliens album.

[ahjteam]

Try low passed kick mic (eg. Audix D6 / AKG D112) at the hole for the boom and highpassed boundary mic (eg. Shure Beta 91 / Sennheiser e901) in the drum for the attack, then blend them 60/40 or 70/30.

I use that D112+e901 setup live myself, unless I use just the e901, and I have used it successfully for heavy metal, punk, rock, pop, hiphop and funk. The e901 has too much attack for jazz, so I used just the D112 for it.

You use the boundary mic like this:

[dontfearthringo]

I am not an expert (by any means) about much in recording, but one thing I do know is how to make drums sound certain ways...

and your first mistake with your fantastic set of drums is that they are clean and have new heads!

Most hip hop samples are from old records, especially from that Gang Starr stuff that you may be referencing.

If you listen to a lot of those old soul records, especially Memphis/Hi Records stuff, like Al Green, the drums sound kind of thuddy and flat. Those guys weren't changing heads for every session and they were playing for several hours a day. The bass drums were often single ply dotted heads with a pillow jammed in them and no front head, or a massive hole cut in it.

Also, you'll find if you listen closely to those old soul records that they are mic'ed pretty close and in smaller room. Unless they're Muscle Shoals recordings, they don't tend to have big rooms around them.

I suggest putting the kit in your vocal booth, if it'll fit (We did this on the most recent B-52s record), putting something heavy in the bass drum, putting a mic with good low freq response in it and then building the tone using compression, EQ, maybe a little tiny bit of reverb and mixing it straight down the middle and loud.

I base this answer on the assumption that you're trying to reproduce the kick drum sounds on the samples... not trying to make your Ludwig kick drum into a Roland 808, in which case you may find that Sound Replacer is your friend.

Your mileage may vary, of course, but that's what I'd do first.

[Joemamma]

Originally Posted by dontfearthringo

and your first mistake with your fantastic set of drums is that they are clean and have new heads!

Yeah, don't think clean, think dirty!

Experiment with distorting something somewhere in your signal chain. That'll give you some saturation which is nice for those type of drums.

Other ideas: consider ribbon mics, recording to tape, etc.

[warhead]

The one time I tried that cheap CAD KBM kick mic I figured it a good pick for a boomy hip-hop like kick sound. Not my thing for rock at all, but delivered a huge low end sound.

War

[forthemusic.com]

That's it, samples.

[B-Muzik]

Beta 52...thats what i like to use for kicks...but ill run that with another mic for the actual kick head and mix the 2 for a great sounding kick...

thats just what I like to do...its great to get the lows and the sound of the beater...

[J.E.G.]

Sub Kick? Not exactly Vintage, but Quest Love uses one i believe and he gets a pretty nice hip-hop low end.

[robot gigante]

d12

[ITJ]

Originally Posted by J.E.G.

Sub Kick? Not exactly Vintage, but Quest Love uses one i believe and he gets a pretty nice hip-hop low end.

Jon Smeltz, long time tracking engineer of The Roots has a secret weapon.

Moogerfooger!

[Beneficial]

which moogerfooger you talking about... low pass filter?

[Preme Diesel]

hey bud.... on my 1964 gretsch kit...i get a great hiphop/breakbeat sound out of a combination of a D112 and a sub kick. Blend them in a group channel and throw on the waves SSL channel and start messing with the kick preset. its a rather vauge description, but im pretty sure you'll be able to work that to your taste.

i also use a ribbon mic about 4 feet up and 4 feet out from the kick that i slam through on an 1176LN @ 20:1. that gives body and an overall good mono image of the kit

if your wondering, all 3 mic's are going through vintech channels

[wm_b]

414TL II

I recently had to make a different kik sample for a song. It needed to be real/unreal at the same time. I was thinking to try to mix a roomy with a close. I started with the roomy sound first.

There happened to already be a 414 on a stand so I was walking around with phones on listening to the drummer lightly hit the kik with the phones pretty cranked. I was looking for "that" spot. I was thinking I would start try something else in the spot once I found it.

Boom, boom, boom. I recorded a few different hits and started working with it. Frankly it's not very roomy but it's plenty great. I ran it through a bunch of plugs I would never think of actually using on a kik. Success!

So there, a 414 on kik, who'da thunk it!

[TonyBelmont]

Fet 47!

[jamsmith]

I would venture to say "No such thing". Hiphop is made up of different sounds. Most real hip-hop doesn't come from samples, it come directly of vinyl. Those beats come from everything from 50s R&B to John Bonham to funk.

Back in the early days of hip-hop, it was fun to try to figure out what record a DJ was using for a tune. People use to ask me, a white blues/rock guitarist, what I liked about "rap". I tell them I didn't even listen to the rappers, it was the PFunk or James Brown underneath I was groovin to.

I think the closest you might get is just a big ringing bass drum in a live room with some distance to the micing. Add some compression and actually make the compressor pump a little.

[chris carter]

Small dry room, no front head, pillow stuffed inside, LDC inside the drum, print it to tape hot, let the tape marinate for a week so you lose all the highs.

[ITJ]

Originally Posted by Beneficial

which moogerfooger you talking about... low pass filter?

MF-102 Ring Modulator.

[alnico]

Yeah D12 or 47fet & make sure you use a felt beater