Fattening up the Kick

  • Thread starter Thread starter skiz
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skiz

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Hey..

Finally fixed my prob of the kick not cutting thru.. Now that ive got it to come out of the mix.. it just sounds a bit thin.

How do you guys go about giving the kick more depth and space in the mix? It should have been tuned lower for the recording (i think) but now i want to give it more of a boom. Any suggestions?

Skiz
 
skiz said:
Hey..

Finally fixed my prob of the kick not cutting thru.. Now that ive got it to come out of the mix.. it just sounds a bit thin.

How do you guys go about giving the kick more depth and space in the mix? It should have been tuned lower for the recording (i think) but now i want to give it more of a boom. Any suggestions?

Skiz
Click to expand...


Record it that way to begin with. I know people say that all the time but it's true. My recordings have improved %200 since I've dropped the ole "Fix it in the mix" mentality and started getting shit right to begin with. That means the right instrument properly maintained/tuned and the right mic placed properly to obtain the sound you are looking for.

So my suggestion? Retrack it.
 
HangDawg said:
Record it that way to begin with. I know people say that all the time but it's true. My recordings have improved %200 since I've dropped the ole "Fix it in the mix" mentality and started getting shit right to begin with. That means the right instrument properly maintained/tuned and the right mic placed properly to obtain the sound you are looking for.

So my suggestion? Retrack it.
Click to expand...

Word.........
 
Use a fat kick sample and place it where all the kick hits are. Myself and Jay (Frigoletto) have done this a few times on recordings. Takes some time, but it can sound awsome

-C$
 
Here's a cool trick....

On a seperate track create a tone generator that makes a very low tone, maybe around 80 Hz or so. Now put a noise gate on that track so that it just cuts out the tone. Now rout your kick track to the key input of your noise gate.

What you are trying to do is have your kick track trigger the noise gate to open and let the low tone through every time your kick is struck.

If you play with some settings, and get it just right it can be very effective.

or....

You can just record it better :D.
 
skiz said:
Hey..

Finally fixed my prob of the kick not cutting thru.. Now that ive got it to come out of the mix.. it just sounds a bit thin.

How do you guys go about giving the kick more depth and space in the mix? It should have been tuned lower for the recording (i think) but now i want to give it more of a boom. Any suggestions?

Skiz
Click to expand...
You have any experience with compression? I find that with a good software compressor you can take a fairly standard sounding kick, and make it sound really tight and punchy, loose and woofy, have short sustain, long sustain, etc. This seems to work differently on different compressors, and the one I use the most has some unusual controls, so I can't give you exact settings for all compressors. But I can say, experiment with the attack, release, and knee on most compressors and you can find a lot of different kick sounds.
 
A limiter will do some interesting things as well. Experiment with having the compressor before or after the EQ.
 
First, I would agree on retracking it... :(

But if that's not an option, try the "sample editing" advice. I've tried it on a few of mine where everything sounded good except the kick (and once on the snare) and I just spliced in the samples over every kick (snare) .

As Cyanide man said, it's time consuming but worth it if you can't retrack.

Jus' my 2 pesos........... :D
 
wx3 said:
Here's a cool trick....

On a seperate track create a tone generator that makes a very low tone, maybe around 80 Hz or so. Now put a noise gate on that track so that it just cuts out the tone. Now rout your kick track to the key input of your noise gate.

What you are trying to do is have your kick track trigger the noise gate to open and let the low tone through every time your kick is struck.

If you play with some settings, and get it just right it can be very effective.

or....

You can just record it better :D.
Click to expand...






I agree,
this i a method used alot to make a mono mix stereo. You can buss out the tone which would only be triggered by the 60hz signal
This also depends on the style of music you are recording in a rock band this might not work, but with pop it usually passes through unnoticed.
 
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