Kickdrum Bass Tips

To re-create the 808 kick:
Try a 40hz sine wave with enevelopes to detune the tail (so it goes flat at the end)and control the length.

Another way to manipulate kicks:

Run the sample through a high-pass filter, set at about a third with the resonance turned up to around 8. This will produce a sine wave that matches the tone of the kick you are processing. You set this to trigger with the kick, and there you go: instant boom.

Oh yeah, and be sure to cut the bottom frequencies that you can't hear (25 hz and lower) if you dont have good monitors. This will just eat up head room on your recording.

going below 20hz especially 0 hz will blow someones speakers, dont do it

Anybody developed any methods or preferences when it concerns the ratio between kick-drum & basslines?

I think my preference is to have my basslines & kicks drop very low and very loud! However, I prefer that my kicks drop the lowest and loudest! This often takes up too much headroom!

Still; if I ever get my beats to meet this standard and sound good, it is usually by accident through the samples randomly selected. Does anybody have any tricks or methods to help me always achieve this standard? I'm thinking maybe filter out some of the bassline subs but I'm too greedy to lower the prominence of whatever bassline I am fortunate enough to have become prominent at all! Am I being too greedy or can I have it all?!

I know about filtering below 25Hz but I want all the lows left and I want them loud without loss to entire mix!

the low end should never be sacrificed but when were talking the relationship between the kick and the bassline normally its a give and take one.
i like to take it to my engineer to work with because he knows what hes doing and can make it sound better than i ever could.

mastering is gonna make your low end sound bigger so dont try and compare it to a mainstream album cause youll just get dissapointed.

try and take away the lower frequencies of the kick, like around 40-60 and boost more in 80-100 to give your bassline a little more room and do the opposite on the bassline.

try looking up frequency ranges, theres certain ranges that you can boost to make a bass cut through the mix a little tighter without touching the low end and the same with the kick.

also you could use some slight compression on the kick drum just to soften the peaks on the kick without losing the low end and giving you some room to avoid clipping.

Iceberg-Slim wrote:going below 20hz especially 0 hz will blow someones speakers, dont do it :(

If you have good speakers just watch the bass cones. If they are shaking yet you can't hear aything then you know your bass is too low.
So cut it.

"I'd take a prominent kick from that loop and EQ it using Cool Edit via a nice Cake EQ and aim to peak frequencies at 55 Hz by 20+ dB then sequence it to mach the other kick hits"

Man, you need to work for N.A.S.A! Creating beats is just like cooking, but if you want to add your own personality to it, I wouldn't make it so hard on yourself. Simply EQ to your own taste.. all that 55 Hz talk is really confusing, and makes things harder on people that don't understand. If you want more boom out your kicks, why not simply layer your vinyl sample with the 808 and EQ each sound individually untill you get the desired sound? We all have our own way of doing things, so as long as your getting the result your looking for it's all good, but this music ish really isn't as hard as most of you make it seem. It's not rocket science, it's just music... if it sounds good then it's all good.

. ..roxstar. ..
http://www.soundclick.com/creamofbeats

Another way that studio cats get the 808 sound with the 40Hz tone is to use a Gate.
The Gate would be on the 40Hz track, and trigger it with an external key (say the original kik track).
Sampling an 808 and layering would be the easiest way, I've learned there is more than one way to engineer.
It's all about experimenting with different techniques, until you get what you like.
And it's not brain science, or rocket surgery

Pe@Ce

before ive used a direct out from my bass drum to compress the bassline whenever the bass drum hits..can work really well in getting the two to work together....

greg

greg, im interested in what youre talking about.

i experiment with just slight compression on kicks to eliminate the high peaks of the waveform so that way i dont clip when its multi tracked.

hit me on the pm

suprised no one mentioned this technique, well they sorta did. some said to filter a kick in the mpc down to as much as 0. one extra step to get mega boom, bump the resonance! anywhere from 10-15. watch it though, this can get damaging. i do this with bass lines too.

but if you got external gear like a computer with plugins, the aforementioned methods work wonders. especially boosting with a tight bell curve around the 50-90Hz range. one extra step i do when doin that though is to cut out some mud with a broad bell curve around 500. that way you get the thump without the crap. maybe boost with a shelf eq around 1-2kHz to retain some snap if needed.

and yes, waves plugins are the shiit.