I need help getting a good kick drum sound

xcrunner28

xcrunner28

New member
The drum head I currently have doesn't have a hole in it so right now my kick drum only has one head on it. I stuffed the drum with a couple blankets and tried retuning it a bit but it still doesn't sound right, so does anyone know any ways to make this sound good for recording with only one head?
 
Some of this depends on what type of kick sound you are going for.

First, take the blankets out. You might need something small to just touch the head to dampen it a little.

Tune the head so that it is just barely tight. Just get most of the wrinkles out.

Hit the thing like you mean it.

If you are trying to get a heavy metal kick sound and you are using a felt beater, you are completely screwed.

If you cut a hole in the reso head, you can tune the drum so the batter head gives you the attack and the reso head gives you the tone.

Without the reso head, you are going to get a very dry kick that will take a lot of EQ to make sound like you think it should sound. This is not a bad thing. Kicks generally get more EQ than a lot of other instruments.
 
In the late 60's, when I started playing drums, it was viewed as very uncool and square to have a front head on the kick. Everybody I knew put a fairly heavy pillow in there and unlike people today say to do, we had the pillow really against the back head. It's important to have a fairly heavy pillow and I always preferred one with a corduroy cover.

Everybody today will say that it's terrible. I don't think it is, it's just one sound and hundreds of great songs were recorded that way. Sometimes even with a concrete block inside the kick on the pillow if you can believe that. You can add a taste of reverb if the room doesn't.

Nowadays I use two heads, no hole and a light towel on the bottom held in place with duct tape.
 
I assume that you know this, but in case you don't............... How big is your kick drum and exactly where does the beater hit the drum skin? If it is hitting it dead center, it almost always sounds like crap. It should hit shy of center to get the roundest tone. If it is a smaller kick (18"-20") and you have a long shafted beater, that could be the problem.
 
Rimshot said:
I assume that you know this, but in case you don't............... How big is your kick drum and exactly where does the beater hit the drum skin? If it is hitting it dead center, it almost always sounds like crap.
Click to expand...

i have never heard anything remotely close to this, but i'm not a drummer. can someone else confirm this?
 
When you hit a bass drum dead center, you get an absolutely dead sound. As with any drum if you strike absolutely dead center of the diameter, it's considered the "dead spot" on the drum. That's one of the reasons that a lot of the newer drummers liked the sound that they got from the double kick pedal because each batter was just off center and allowed a bit of the tone of the drum to get through. I tried double pedal and just couldn't get used to the feel of the lag on the slave pedal so I play only single pedals now but occasionally I'll play a double kick drum. I normally keep the contact point of my beater just low of center so that I get more tone from the drum.
With any drum, just try it, start playing your sticks from off center towards absolute dead center. When you get to dead center you'll hear that the sound goes a bit deader than when you play just off center.
 
I use larger kicks and there's no way that beater is hitting the center. It won't reach.

The #1 problem with bass drums is people tensioning them too tight. Some jazz guys have a very small, hi pitched kick. It sounds like someone knocking on the door. I don't get it. :confused:

There's a connection between the words "bass" and "base". The "bass" drum is supposed to be the "base" for the whole band to sit on.

There was a cool article in Downbeat magazine decades ago where they went around to top jazz bandleaders and asked them what they looked for in a drummer. Count Basie said he looked for a drummer with a heavy beat. He didn't mean loud, but with a heavy beat.

I've always noticed that the better drummers have a very deliberate kick drum sound. It seems to go right into the ground.
 
20" is very moderate!! Period. I'm not sure why, but I feel combative tonight. The kick is made to be the heart-beat of the song. Nobody has a heart beat that sounds any higher than 100hz. Keep it low! If anything, tune a little high so you can kick hard. A light tap on a kick that "beats," makes much more of an impact than a kick that "clicks." I could be going out on a limb but, I have never listened to someone's heart beat that sounds like a pop or a click. Certain audible machines may manipulate the sound of the human heart to make it more recognizable; however, listening to somebody's chest is unmistakeable. The human heart beat sounds like a world changing thud.



And when placed in the wrong hands. . . . can be as fatal as your neighbor doing an open heart surgery (unless of course you neighbor is a cardiothoracic surgeon).
 
ZionBound said:
20" is very moderate!! Period. I'm not sure why, but I feel combative tonight. The kick is made to be the heart-beat of the song. Nobody has a heart beat that sounds any higher than 100hz. Keep it low! If anything, tune a little high so you can kick hard. A light tap on a kick that "beats," makes much more of an impact than a kick that "clicks." I could be going out on a limb but, I have never listened to someone's heart beat that sounds like a pop or a click. Certain audible machines may manipulate the sound of the human heart to make it more recognizable; however, listening to somebody's chest is unmistakeable. The human heart beat sounds like a world changing thud.



And when placed in the wrong hands. . . . can be as fatal as your neighbor doing an open heart surgery (unless of course you neighbor is a cardiothoracic surgeon).
Click to expand...
This would all depend on the style of music we are talking about. A low thud is completely appropriate for a lot of different music, but it's completey worthless in others. Same thing with the heartbeat analogy.
 
ZionBound said:
very moderate!!
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There's no such thing. Either something's moderate or it's not. It can't be any more moderate than just moderate. That's why it's moderate. It's like "extremely medium". Impossible.


:p
 
RAMI said:
There's no such thing. Either something's moderate or it's not. It can't be any more moderate than just moderate. That's why it's moderate. It's like "extremely medium". Impossible.


:p
Click to expand...

I love the dynamic inertia in my mixes.
 
RAMI said:
There's no such thing. Either something's moderate or it's not. It can't be any more moderate than just moderate. That's why it's moderate. It's like "extremely medium". Impossible. :p
Click to expand...

That's just so moderately extreme of you! :p
 
I am not going to be the best person to give advice here as I am pretty amatuer, but I have always been looking for that great kick drum sound for 15 years. A lot of getting it, I have found, depends on your kit, equipment and technique.

If you are like me and looking for that metal kick drum sound, I have found these few things give me a sound I like:

- Use a dynamic mic, the Audix D6 for me
- Position inside the bass drum though a vent/porthole from the front (hole about 4 - 5" in diameter), about middle height of drum and 2/3's the way into the drum itself, pointed at a 35 - 45 degree angle from the beater head, pointed at the beater. I realize you do not have a head with a hole in it, but if you do have that front head, you can buy a ring sticker to put on it and carve a porthole from. I believe these are available at any music store, and possibly amazon.com. But, due to the nature of bass-reflex audio dynamics, you might need that front head with the hole to produce the proper environment to create the conditions of the sound you might be looking for.
- Gating
- Compression (heavy)
- EQ, drop 200hz - 800hz hard, bring from 1khz - 2khz up, accentuate around 4khz a bit. It gives me a deep sound with some punch and click.

Here is a sample of my kick drum using these teqhniques and settings:



* note, this version is not heavily compressed
 
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