how to get the kick drum to stick out in the mix

  • Thread starter Thread starter Nick The Man
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the reso head makes a pretty big difference on the kick drum, especially when it comes to the actual feel of the kick itself. but the lower you tune the reso, the more low end beef you are going to get. even if you crank the batter head up kinda high, if the reso is tuned low, it will still have a fairly deep overall tone.
 
right now i have a powerstroke 3 on the batter side.. thinking about the EMAD though

gotta buy windows xp first but this is second on the list
 
ok, yea...the felt beater will kill your attack every time

i'd only use one of those if i were playing jazz, or maybe classic rock - something where a soft bumping noise is needed

bang a plastic and felt beater against a table, and pay attention to the difference in the sound...then realize that it does the same thing to the drum
 
For all I know the question's been answered, but my take on it after listening to your clip was...:

Perhaps your kick drum problem would be solved by trying different mic placements. Try something more off-axis to get more than just the slap of air from the beater right into the mic's diaphram. It also sounds dull tuning wise. It's pretty thumpy. That mic kind of thrives on that direct beater contact though. I don't know your mic situation, but use the D-6 when things need to get scooped and clicky.

And the last cookie cutter response, your untreated tracking room has more to do with the sound you capture than any great preamp.
 
NL5 said:
The few things I can say that help the most is 1) time align all the tracks 2)make sure they are all in phase at the initial wave from a hit
Click to expand...

This is exactly as I see it too. If you don't start mixing drums first by time aligning tracks and checking signal polarities it will make it much much more difficult to predict what the mixed signal will sound like. The time misalingment between tracks will cause deep and narrow dips in frequency response when you mix close miced signals with the overhead signals because of the comb filter effect taking place there. If the time difference of closed miced kick signal and the kick signal picked up by the overheads is 6ms it'll mean there will be a deep dip at every 160 hz in the combined signal's ferquency response which pretty much screws up the kick sound in the mix unless you do something to hide the effects of the comp filtering. I belive this is the main reason and the only reason I can come up with why good sounding individual signals don't neccessarily sound that good when mixed together.

One thing which can be helpful or OTOH make thing more complicated is that the amount of comp filter effect depends not only on the time difference but also on the relative strengh of the signals mixed together. When the relative signal strengt difference increases the amount of the comp filter effect decreses. If the signal strengths differ more than 10 dB the comb filter effect will cause a maximum of 1dB change in frequency response which is inpractice inaudible. This is why you don't have to worry so much about the snare signal bleeding into kick mic or why it helps when you boost or cut - and why you have to boost or cut - certain frequency bands of the close miced kick signal to increase the relative signal strengs of those individual signals unless they are time aligned first.
 
I just listened to both audio tracks... Forget about EQing... Tell the drummer he/she´s no hitting hard enough... On the clip of the Recordmen method it shows clearly two things... The drummer is barely touching the heads, and the drum is tuned too high...
I´m a drummer, and i´m always working on my feet. Try to record just the chorus of the song and make the drummer to play harder... I bet you´ll have a much nicer tone of the drum, and i´ll fit the mix much better...

Try it, and let me know!
CheerS!
 
this sounds like it needs compresion, and warmth. see if you can find the PSP vintage warmer plug in, and maybe a sonic maximizer for the low end. and make sure you don't have the bass eating up all your low end.
 
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