Clicky Bass Drum

[bgrotto]

Originally Posted by Renegade Prod

Just leave the convo McGee since you know nothing about the subject, im a small time 18 year old engineer who gets a lot of clients asking me to reproduce the kick sounds of these A grade metal bands ... do you honestly think that thousands of engineers around the world are going to turn down bands because 'that doesn't sound like a real kick drum to me' ... dont be so petty and ridiculous, its all about how it sits in the final mix.

Stay out of these convo's, you wont see me in a hiphop thread penetrating the point that modern hip hop voices are slammed with autotune, just because 'it doesnt sound like its original source', what a joke ... its the industry get used to it ... this is the most immature place for genre bashing.


DUDE D6 FO SHO.

Yikes. Schooled, and from an 18 year-old at that. Ouch.

Renegade Prod: you gotta career ahead of you. I hope our paths cross at some point; definitely hit me up if you make it States-side. You seem like a cool dude.

[Renegade Prod]

Ok McGee, whatever makes you happy.
Again this is not the place for genre bashing, even i expect more out of people of site.


Does anyone else have any advice for this chap? (click wise?)
Mic / Technique / EQ / Comp ?

I think the basics have been explained well enough, good luck on it bud.

[BLueROom]

D6 in the middle of the drum somewhere, slightly off axis, dip out the mid-low mid crap (usually 250-400hz area) and add in the 3-7k area.

Take off the front head if you want a very immediate decay, otherwise leave the reso head on, tuned barely above wrinkle (finger tight or barely more) and tune the batter head just to where it FEELS right. It's usually in that area where the kick will sound best. A nice spongey feel is what you are after. With the reso head on you will get some harmonics that tend to sit nicely in the mix, IF the drum is tuned properly ;)

Remember, just because your beater selections are usually only plastic, felt and sometimes wood, doesn't mean you shouldn't try something else ;)

good start:
YouTube - Bob Gatzen - Bass Drum Tuning

[BLueROom]

McGee, just because it's your opinion doesn't make it right or even proper. You obviously don't have the taste for this type of music, which is fine, I'm not clamoring for country artists, but please recognize there are no real rules. Also remember fads come and go. This fad of clicky bass drums just happens to have been a fad for 15+ years of metal music. Have all these bands been recorded by terrible engineers that just don't get it?

[Dax Productions]

For this style kick I've had great success by tunneling the kick with moving blankets, having an ns10 outside the drum in front of the hole, and a 421 right up as close as I can get to the beater. I'll scoop the lows out of the 421 and boost 4-5k to bring the click out even more. Instant click and boom!!

But I've also had great success just using samples...

[nickynicknick]

Originally Posted by bgrotto

Yikes. Schooled, and from an 18 year-old at that. Ouch.

Renegade Prod: you gotta career ahead of you. I hope our paths cross at some point; definitely hit me up if you make it States-side. You seem like a cool dude.

you gotta a career ahead of you???? that's a little silly don't you think? I like his post too...but come on bg

[Renegade Prod]

He didnt mention a career in what though ...

Is sitting on GS at the age of 45, ripping people apart a career?

.... if so, im there!

[nickynicknick]

Here's an old reggae trick....front head off......top two and bottom two lugs very tight...three on each side very loose (rippling very visible)...now tape a dollar coin (canada) to the batter head where the beater hits the head....you have to use thin pieces of gaff carefully placed around the edge of the coin...you'll figure it out...this will give you a ton of click and also some decent tub...I've never recorded metal but I'm sure this is at least worth a shot.....BTW to the assface...this is from the 70's...yeah that's right people have been looking for point on a kik drum (all styles) since the beginning of time...has nothin to do with "modern" recordings.

Nick

[nickynicknick]

oh yeah...and shove a 421 in the kik pointing at the beater....probably cut a bunch of 250- 300...you know

[nickynicknick]

Originally Posted by Dax Productions

But I've also had great success just using samples...

Boo.

[jval]

I don't like the D6... sounds unnatural.
I do the same type of stuff and usually don't have a hard time getting that kick sound. I use a D112 in the middle of the shell (or closer to the beater, depends how deep the drum is). Tune the skin pretty loose so you get a good slap. Plastic beaters are a plus. Just make sure you can really hear the attack in the room.
At mix time, take out a lot around 250-350 with a wide Q. Boost around 4k, then another big boost around 8-10k. If I can't get enough click/attack from the kick after the inital EQ, I've had great results using a plug like TapeHead on Bright mode to add some high end grit. Usually have to re-eq after the tape head to clean up any low-mids that it adds.
Always good to try and isolate the kick as much as possible during tracking. You'll find yourself adding a LOT of top end which can make the bleed pretty nasty.

and of course... if time / cash is limited, just use a sample. Or mix in a sample with the low end chopped off to bring in more attack.

[uncle duncan]

Anybody tried the UAD Transient Designer plug for this? It might be a way to get more click without highend bleed. You could also try the BBE enhancer, which, supposedly, you can get as a plugin now.

[thethrillfactor]

One thing to keep in mind when boosting hi's in the kick drum is the potential to make it sound too seperated from the kit. When this happens you will have to work even harder to make it sit which can work or not.

An old trick no one suggested is some tight gated white noise side chained by the kick right at the point.

[Ironklad Audio]

And this is why your kick drum sounds like a chopstick being tapped on a table while triggering a 65HZ sine wave. Why do you even call it a kick drum? It barely resembles the source.

The worst sounding kick drums in recording history reside in the genre you call 'modern rock/metal'.

But it sounds awesome right? Wrong, it sounds weak and lifeless.

A click and a pulse of sub with low mid frequency standing waves bouncing around a wooden shell (that's the bit you guys deperately eq out).

hate to tell you, but the good ol' woofy john bon thumping kick just flat-out doesn't work for really fast metal. you can try and try and try to make it work, but it just doesn't cut it. i'd agree that the kick on some modern stuff is a bit over-the-top...i'm not into the whole typewriter sound, but when you have guys busting out double bass assaults at 200+bpm with 4+ tracks of high gain guitars, distorted bass, multilayered scream vocals and a blasting snare, you're going to have to cut the low mids to keep shit from getting all muddy, and boost the high end to let the kick shine through.

like it or not, that's what the mix calls for...and despite what you may think, most guys i know who engineer metal would never go for that same kick sound if they were mixing a classic rock trio or a jazz ensemble or something.

as far getting that sound...D6 + mid scoop + hi-shelf at around 2k works for me, along with not smacking the transients too hard when you compress

[dangoudie]

Originally Posted by Chris

I always found the D6 to sound really good, click and low end, the d112 to be boxy and mostly blah, too much mids, and the beta 52 to be all click and very little low end almost anywhere you put it (from right up on the beater to the hole on the head).

I disagree about the D112. Maybe your source had too much mids? I find it great for getting that chest punch and a click. Obviously generous spectral carving needs to happen first but that is the same with every mic I've ever used.
I've never used a 52 but your opinion of it opposes every other I've read.

[bgrotto]

Originally Posted by nickynicknick

Here's an old reggae trick....front head off......top two and bottom two lugs very tight...three on each side very loose (rippling very visible)...now tape a dollar coin (canada) to the batter head where the beater hits the head....you have to use thin pieces of gaff carefully placed around the edge of the coin...you'll figure it out...this will give you a ton of click and also some decent tub...I've never recorded metal but I'm sure this is at least worth a shot.....BTW to the assface...this is from the 70's...yeah that's right people have been looking for point on a kik drum (all styles) since the beginning of time...has nothin to do with "modern" recordings.


Nick

How were the old Rastas getting Canadian dollar coins in Jamaica?!? I suspect foul play...

Originally Posted by nickynicknick

you gotta a career ahead of you???? that's a little silly don't you think? I like his post too...but come on bg

No, seriously. I've met more wannabe engineer-types (mostly in the form of the various interns I've had in the past couple years) on high horses, with very closed minds and very open mouths. A lot of those dudes don't last because nobody wants to work with someone who's got a chip on his shoulder. I thought Ren Prod's post reflected a really good attitude, which, as far as I'm concerned, bodes well for his career.

That's all I was saying.

[nickynicknick]

Originally Posted by bgrotto

How were the old Rastas getting Canadian dollar coins in Jamaica?!? I suspect foul play...



No, seriously. I've met more wannabe engineer-types (mostly in the form of the various interns I've had in the past couple years) on high horses, with very closed minds and very open mouths. A lot of those dudes don't last because nobody wants to work with someone who's got a chip on his shoulder. I thought Ren Prod's post reflected a really good attitude, which, as far as I'm concerned, bodes well for his career.

That's all I was saying.

fair enough....Old Rastas probably just used a big old 50 cent piece or sumthing...funny though

[Everyman]

Danmar actually makes a bass drum beater patch with a heavy plastic plate inside it to give you more attack, like the coin technique but without the head damage, but I feel that it's unnecessary. You can get plenty of attack without one.

I use either an Evans EQ 3,4 or a Remo Powerstroke 3 batter head. I use a Beta 91, Beta 58 (right at the strike zone) or 421 on the inside of the kick, then I use a Beta 52 on the front of the kick. If the band REALLY wants a lot of attack, I'll go with a wooden or resin beater, but I usually don't need to.

Set up to print the mics to separate tracks. Try reversing the phase of one microphone right off the hop, and then alternate between the phase settings while the drummer plays the kick. Just use the phase setting that sounds best. I will usually put a heavy blanket over the front of the drum to prevent leakage into the front mic. Usually I high-pass the internal mic at about 90 Hz and low-pass the reso mic at about 110, which gives it just a little phase bloat in and around the 90-100 Hz mark, depending on your polarity setting. It's kind of like bi-amping your kick, and allows you separate control of your attack and thump without resorting to EQ on a single track. It allows the use of differential gating and compression as well, which can be handy. I usually gate them both pretty tight (as much as 80 ms for the external one, which keeps the bottom hella tight), but only to -15 or 20 dB. I usually use a Maxx Bass plug-in on the external track, set to whatever is optimal for the kick. This helps the low-end sit WAY better on smaller speakers. NS-10s are invaluable for this check. At the end, after whatever EQ and compression I choose to use, I often use some L1 to hammer it into the mix. Everyone here might slam you for it, but the L1 is a wickedly transparent way to make something sit well, when used with discretion. Besides, if it doesn't sound good BEFORE the L1 it won't sound good AFTER it.

[chadly]

Originally Posted by McGee

Like this guy. How does this help anyone?

I know I'm feeding the troll, but that put a smile on my face.

It helps, because the Beta 52, in my experience, is incredibly flexible. Not hyped at all. You can use it all genres of music where you need a great kick mic. You have to work at it though: It's not pre-q'd like the D6. The original poster has a B52. It's not getting in his way.

To me, the D6 is a one-trick pony. It just does that trick really, really well!

I qouted cowrange because that exact setup, from head, pillow, patch and beater, worked like a charm. Posts like that get lost in the "noise." I felt it was constructive to reinforce it. A consensus, if you will.

And one final, parting shot to the troll, as I have no horse in this particular race: If my client wants X sound, or Y sound, it's my f'ing job to get it for 'em. They want "click" for a hard rock track I give them "click." I'm not here to pussy foot around about what I think it should be in a perfect world. I'm here to make their record sound like they imagined it.

Warmest regards to the original poster! Hopefully this doesn't go too far off track.

[Dax Productions]

Originally Posted by Dax Productions

But I've also had great success just using samples...

Originally Posted by nickynicknick

Boo.

Really? C'mon. You do realize that tons of huge records achieve this sound with triggers/sound replacer/editing and samples, right?!

[Everyman]

Originally Posted by Chris

I always found the D6 to sound really good, click and low end, the d112 to be boxy and mostly blah, too much mids, and the beta 52 to be all click and very little low end almost anywhere you put it (from right up on the beater to the hole on the head).

I couldn't disagree more about the Beta 52, bro. There is an EXTREME high-end roll-off going on, and the low-end response is second to none. Awhile back, I was debating whether to get a SubKick for front-head Kick applications, and I discovered that my Beta 52 actually had better low-end response. It goes way farther into Subharms than any other mic I've tried. It does have that +7 at 4k thing going on, just for the "modern" kick sound, but it's easily attenuable if you don't like it.

Whereas, by comparison, the d6 has a crazy frequency response that is almost all high-end, over +5 at every frequency between 3k and 12k. It has a tiny +2 bump around 80 Hz, but other than that, it's a flat low end. It's a good mic, but only if you want that intense attack. Unfortunately, I could only find a PDF for the d6.

D6: http://www.audixusa.com/docs/specs_pdf/d6.pdf


Beta 52:

[Bang]

Remo Powerstroke4, Audix D6. Done.

[Methlab]

Drums is all about the engineering (duh).

But being on some really great metal drum sessions, what I see that is key is EQing and committing to a sound during tracking. API is a choice pre for this application.

Boosting 60hz, cutting around 200 and boosting 1k in combination with the right drum and mic can do magical things.

[BioMichanical]

I wouldn't put the mic close to the head, at the most put a D6 about 1/3 in. The further away you pull the mic, the more attack your going to get. I agree, you pretty much have to use samples to get away with the amount of snap you want from it, because you have to boost the living daylights out of high end EQ to get it to really cut through the mix. Whoever said they don't like how the kick sounds un-natural to them in metal is because they probably never mixed metal before. Metal has some of the best kick drumming in any genre of music, and therefore it must punch through the mix. That is a BIG part of what makes metal so intense. And as someone else who already stated with the amount of mids, highs, multiple layers of guitars and screaming/growling vocalists, cymbals, it's nearly impossible to get the kicks to be heard unless you cut the mids (where the guitars already take up most of the audio real-estate) boost the lows and go extreme on the highs, otherwise that kick will just get buried. Also, if you compress the kick, with a slow attack, this will also help.

I say use samples, but they can be sampled from the kit you are using. The reason is, with the extreme amount of treble boosting will obviously cause bleed from the snare/cymbals etc. Don't think its bad either, think of Pantera who uses triggers live, along with micing the kit. It's just the way it is, and it sounds good that way and you can blend them however you want. What I do is I make the drummer hit his kicks 4 seperate times and then EQ that and then use that as a sample to avoid getting the high end bleed. Which allows you to use that extra audio real-estate on something else. I also have the drummer hit the toms, and snare 4 seperate times and make samples with those. This ensures that the kit is still theirs, but I can do whatever drastic EQ settings I need to so that each tom, each kick beat, each snare is in your face and punchy the way it should be in metal.

Music is an art that is made of sound, how we create that sound, is what makes it what it is. Mixing metal, which is intense and has lots of distortion, requires someone to do some extreme mixing.

[headwerkn]

I find myself getting ace modern kick punk sounds with a D6 sitting just inside the resonant skin hole with the mic pointing at the beater - plenty of attack and lovely warm subs. A bit of EQ and comp work in the mix, and it sounds awesome. I've stopped bothering with another mic up close to the beater, just doesn't add anything.

[chadly]

Originally Posted by McGee

I'm making this point in vein, but the lack of imagination in this genre would appear to be 50% engineer/producer driven. Copycats.

I think we'll have to agree to disagree.

If a client wants something very particular, I argue it's our job to give it to them. Many times they look to us for direction, and in that case you make artistic calls that are appropriate to the genre and their/your vision.

If they ask for it by name and insist, it's not my place to deny them. I'll tell them if I disagree, or if maybe they're getting into "cliche' land" and it's in bad taste.

In this particular post, the original poster wanted to know how to get a clicky bass drum sound. If s/he was my client, I'd happily oblige. If the question was, should I use a clicky bass drum sound? that'd be a bit of a different thread.

This little debate we've been having on here belongs in a whole different thread. Something along the lines of Art vs. Commerce or Creative Industry vs. Service Industry.

Just my $.02. Happy 4th of July to those who celebrate it!

[RUSTE]

Sorry to hijack this thread but id thought id post here rather than start a new one. Ive just got a Audix D6 & ive yet to try it out but i want to use with my homemade subkick. Im looking for some sujestions on mic placement. Because of the subkick on the outside should i get the D6 right in there a few inches from the batter head of axis? Im looking for that slightly clicky but nice lovely low end to go with it. Im running a sonor 2007 birch with aquarian superkick 2 & regulater. Thanks in advance slutz

Russ

[edvdr76]

Originally Posted by RUSTE

Sorry to hijack this thread but id thought id post here rather than start a new one. Ive just got a Audix D6 & ive yet to try it out but i want to use with my homemade subkick. Im looking for some sujestions on mic placement. Because of the subkick on the outside should i get the D6 right in there a few inches from the batter head of axis? Im looking for that slightly clicky but nice lovely low end to go with it. Im running a sonor 2007 birch with aquarian superkick 2 & regulater. Thanks in advance slutz

Russ

The D6 sounds naturally clicky without eq. I place the mic right inside the hole in the front. I find that it gives me more options when mixing. If i want a little more snap, I'll add a little bit of highs. I'll usually use it together with a Subkick and blend them to taste. The drums have to be tuned right otherwise it will be very difficult to achieve a great drum sound.