Re-recording kick advice needed

tigerflystudio

tigerflystudio

New member
Hi folks,

Basically I'm not happy with the sound / tone of the kick drum on one of my new tracks. The perfomance is actually pretty good and it took a long time to 'nail it' so I really don't want to have to re-record (if I can avoid it).

The kick is the only drum in the whole track - striking on the beat, in 4/4, with a few well-placed softer strikes on the half & quater beats (just to add variation & emphasis at key points).

Anyways, what I'm looking for is a really thick and booming organic sound, but the recording seems to have captured mainly just the 'skin' (batter-head) attack with not very much 'boom'.

So, what options do I have? I was wondering if I could play the kick (solo'd) through my studio monitors (or some other speaker?) and record that and the room / environment sound with with an open mic (condenser)?

Your thoughts / suggestions would be much appreciated.
 
There are several things you can do, one being the sugestion you made.
Another option is to simply duplicate or make several copies of the kick track and process them different to build the sound you want.
You may take one of duped tracks and roll off the top end and some of the really low frequencies and use a parametric EQ to find the sweetspot sound you need and bring it up in the mix...maybe compress it a little.

Basically you are mimicking a multiband compressor of sorts without killing the original track or over processing things you don't want to.
You may do something similar with a track just for som low end boom.

Some folks may suggest adding samples, but I find hat too time consuming after the fact unless you have a noise gate with a trigger input.
 
by cloning the track, would there be phase issues? Should I nudge the clones along by a few ms.? If so, any guide as to how many? Not really into samples.

I was all set to record the output from the monitors with an open mic to try and capture some room sound, but this cloning idea is interesting. Is this the best way of getting the 'phat' kick sound I'm looking for, even if it's not really there in the first place? I had assumed the 'oomph' was abscent from the original so am I being a mentalist in thinking that I probably won't find the right freq's to draw out / boost by tailoring a clone? I have a feeling I'm being a retard here. Sorry in advance.
 
tigerflystudio said:
by cloning the track, would there be phase issues? Should I nudge the clones along by a few ms.? If so, any guide as to how many? Not really into samples.
Click to expand...

Phase issues are only dependant on the latency of the plug-ins or hardware
processors you're using. In which case, you might have to nudge the duplicated
tracks back by a few samples just to keep them phase-aligned post-processing.

What about drumagog/sound replacer?
 
I know you said you didn't like samples, but that might be the way to go.

Did you use a room mic in the recording? If you did there can be tons of bass drum in there. Just copy the room mic, give it a low pass, and then set it to a gate with a side chain to the close bass mic.

If you didn't use a room mic, check all of your other mics to see if the low end of the bass drum showed up in any of them. If you find one, do the same copy/lowpass/gate with sidechain to bd mic that I described above.



If none of that works try this:
Just playing the current recording through a speaker and micing the room won't get you much, since the low boom you seek wasn't recorded in the first place.

Instead try playing the soloed bass drum recording through a single big-ass speaker really loud placed on the ground. Get a bass drum with a drum skin on both heads. Tune it up real nice. Place it on the ground directly in front of the speaker.

The air from the speaker will "play" the bass drum sitting in front of it. You won't get skin thwap, but you already have that. You will get tone and low end, which is what you're after.

Put a mic there and record that.
 
philbagg said:
Phase issues are only dependant on the latency of the plug-ins or hardware
processors you're using. In which case, you might have to nudge the duplicated
tracks back by a few samples just to keep them phase-aligned post-processing.
Click to expand...
EQ is phase issues...used in a very controlled manner (extremely simplified, don't kill me). You could run into big problems using a duplicate/eq method if you're not careful.
 
Hey,
I love the 'using the air from a big ass speaker to 'play' the real kick' idea.

That, I think, is the one I'm going to go for. The drum tracks on my new project album were all 'real' drums, so it'd ne bice to keep things 'pure' and use an open mic on the real kick again.

I used a Shure Beta 52A on the kick originally, but, alas, I messed up (big!) on the EQ'ing at the recording stage (a crime to EQ at the source, I know, and I don't normally do it, but I was just trying out my new Mackie 1002 VLZ as an interface) (never again!). The batter-head sound is excellent, but the lows are abscent'ish, so I robbed myself of the sound I was hoping for.

Using the speaker as a tigger sounds ideal as I have an SRM450 here which I could use to play the skin. Post results?
 
You can do a great number of things to try to nudge the sound closer to where you want it. Unfortunately, those aren't the same thing as having a good kick sound to begin with.

Next time, audition the sound before you nail the performance. If you can get the "mix in front of the mic", you'll save time and anguish later on. Are you using the right mic? How are you placing the microphone? Are you laying into the kick too much, or do you need to hit harder? Audition all of the possibilities and take notes.

Measure ten times, cut once.
 
Another thing you can try with the existing track...is add some reverb, and then EQ out all of the HF from the reverb...then blend it in with the dry/original track.

That might give you some of the "boom" you want.
 
tigerflystudio said:
Hey,
I love the 'using the air from a big ass speaker to 'play' the real kick' idea.

That, I think, is the one I'm going to go for.
Click to expand...

Details to be aware of: The sound coming out of the speaker is obviously in the same room as the mic recording the bass in front of the speaker. There will be a balancing act keeping the speaker volume loud enough to rumble to drum but not so loud that it overpowers it in the new recording.

Mic placement will be important in getting a good drum/speaker ratio. Maybe something wacky like inside the drum pointed away from the speaker (maybe right up against the skin farthest from the speaker). Try some stuff.

Even better, you could use a smaller speaker, put the speaker inside of the drum and leave the mic outside. I don't mean something small enough to fit through the mic hole in the front skin. You would have to take a skin off, put the speaker in the drum, then replace the skin. But you could probably rumble the drum with much less volume that way.


As you record, check the phase of the new track Vs the old track. You still need the old track for the beater twap, so you really don't want it out of phase. Pointing the mic away from the speaker will almost certainly mess with phase. Flip phase if you have to. A low pass eq on the new track could also help preserve the phase of the high clicky part.
 
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