Help with kick drum

Mr. Cachi

Member
My band recordé a live rehearsal (with guitars overdubbed) but i'm having a tough time making the kick drum to stand out. Increasing the volume makes it take over the mix, and no matter how much I eq it, I end up with unsatisfying results. Any thoughts?
 
First question is how are you recording the drums? You have a single mic on the kick?

There are folks here that can help but they’ll need more info.

I think you can attach an MP3 without needing to reach a post threshold but if it’s not available put the files in a DrooBox or similar location and share the link.
 
How did you record "Everything". Can the guitars be panned away from the center , is the bass covering up the kick , can you overdub the kick ? Need more info ..
 
The kick drum was recorded with one mic inside. It's not being masked by the bass (I actually set up a sidechain compressor to it). Added around 3db to the 69 Hz región, and lowered it or high passed the other instruments. guitars are panned 75% L R, and HP to 133 Hz
 
What is the mic placement in the kick drum and what mic are you using? You can change that and work with what you have or just use a sample to replace and be done.

I gave up getting perfect kick sound with mic alone, long ago...
 
Is that audio track supposed to be showing the kick *not* standing out?

I do very little recording where I've got a whole band with a full drumset, but when I do, I always resort to a triggered sample to add some oomf. A lot of what you *hear* in the kick is much higher than 69Hz, too (why some kick mics are pretty scooped I think).

What/how are you monitoring during your mixing? It's possible your monitoring setup is leading to incorrect mix decisions, too.
 
Is that audio track supposed to be showing the kick *not* standing out?

I do very little recording where I've got a whole band with a full drumset, but when I do, I always resort to a triggered sample to add some oomf. A lot of what you *hear* in the kick is much higher than 69Hz, too (why some kick mics are pretty scooped I think).

What/how are you monitoring during your mixing? It's possible your monitoring setup is leading to incorrect mix decisions, too.

Could be, when listening with my monitors and other means, the kick drum is almost not there. On headphones it is present. About the EQ, I also added a couple of db in the 3500 region, to get a better click
 
I'm with Keith on this, especially if you are trying to recover/use what you have. I did some recording this past summer, and the kick mic got bumped up against the head. That left a very prominent "click" on about half the beats and made the track totally unusable. I used Reaper to convert each kick to a midi note, and fed that into MTPowerDrummer. It saved the day, and probably sounded better than the original kick, as the bass drum had a somewhat hollow sound to start with.

Certainly, its good to have a nicely tuned drum and a good mic on it, but sometimes you have to work with what you're given.
 
Compression. Sounds like you need it. (on more than the drums).
For rock and metal kicks, I'd gate until the kicks are isolated. Compression with a hard knee, about 15-30ms attack, 25-40ms release, a 4:1 ratio, and adjust the threshold until you bring out a nice transient peak. Then, about a 3db low boost around 75hz, a 3db cut around 250hz with a wide Q, and boost around 5khz with a narrow q to get the kind of definition you want. Small boost for rock, more boost for metal, insane boost for death \m/, etc.

Whatever you do to the kick, do the opposite for the bass. If you add 3db at 75hz to the kick, cut the same from the bass. Though the fundamentals of a lot of your bass guitar will be below 200-ish hz, the counter-intuitive thing is that most of the meat is actually in the low mids. Just take care not to overload the low mid area because that's also where mud lives. Good luck.
 
Don`t use a full replacement. Add a sample or two and blend it with the live kick to your liking.
 
Don`t use a full replacement. Add a sample or two and blend it with the live kick to your liking.

I would definitely agree with that. Even though I rely mostly on kick samples, I always use the natural mic sound in there.
 
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