Bass Drum Salvation?

[Hiduk]

I did my first project with Cakewalk PA9. I did a crap job of micing the Bass Drum. It sounds very "boomy" not enough "whap". I have gated it and compressed, tried to EQ, but I am still not satisfied. Any tips on saving a "boomy" bass drum?

 

[Rev E]

Hiduk,

You may want to try triggering a sampled bass drum sound if you have the capability. I don't know if Cake has this function (I use Emagic Logic, which does). What you do is get the program to make midi events out of the bass drum track. Then assign that midi channel to a sound module or sampler with the sound you wanted. Presto, you have a new bass drum with the groove that you had from the original recording.

If this works out for you, you may want to try using both. You may want to try putting the old kick in a dense reverb environment and have it (just a little dab will do ya) lightly in the background of the new kick. This may work to still keep everything live sounding.

Rev E

 

[Shailat]

cut mid's at 250-500Hz to clean thick cloudy mud.

Boost high's at 3 and 5kHz to add attack and defenition to your kick.

You can also reinforce the low thump with lows around 80 - 150 Hz.