Kick Topic (Give feedback before posting yours)

[NessPJ]

Another kick I've been working on:



Making solid progress methinks.

Nice kick, good job! I wouldn't exactly have much feedback to give on it and it seems to me it's decent enough to build a nice track around it.
Just to perhaps give you an extra tip; did you experiment with using an EQ'ed version from the start of your tail to add to you attack/tock sound? This can sometimes add just a little bit of extra character / sharpness to the kick.

I do have two questions though:
-Is it the exact same kicksample you used for pitching?
-The root note sounds nice and 'growly' is there an EQ region throughout your kickchain which you focussed on more than others to obtain this sound?

[Phazon]

Nice kick, good job! I wouldn't exactly have much feedback to give on it and it seems to me it's decent enough to build a nice track around it.
Just to perhaps give you an extra tip; did you experiment with using an EQ'ed version from the start of your tail to add to you attack/tock sound? This can sometimes add just a little bit of extra character / sharpness to the kick.

I do have two questions though:
-Is it the exact same kicksample you used for pitching?
-The root note sounds nice and 'growly' is there an EQ region throughout your kickchain which you focussed on more than others to obtain this sound?

I've tried all manner of satanic rituals and voodoo to try and make my toks work lol.

I pitch my kicks from the same sample, from whatever root note I made the kick on.

The "growl" is all in the bass, I think. Say I make a kick in G, I try to make the harmonics at 98hz, 147hz, and 196hz loud and stable so they're not wobbling about in volume constantly. Depending on how it sounds, I normally have 147hz louder than the other two harmonics, but pushing 196hz a bit more can give you a more prominent growl. Reference a pro kick from Noisecontrollers or Wildstylez in a spectrum analyser and volume match.

Another thing I do is high-pass with none-linear-phase EQs at low frequencies. Normally I would highpass with 24db/oct at an octave below the fundamental, so for a G kick I would highpass at 24.5hz.
Changing the slope also gives a different sound from whatever distortion you're using.

The combination of the two eventually results in a growly low-end. I think this is due to phase rotations caused by the highpassing. So if you have a low-end that's stable in volume, try highpassing at different frequencies below the fundamental with different slopes. Phase invert and compare, etc. Eventually you'll hear something you like.

[Soundphase]

Phazon - good crunch; very like the ncbm kick, have a funny question: did you use your homemade "patcher clip distortion" in the making of the tail and I'm guessing that's more than one layer?

[Phazon]

Phazon - good crunch; very like the ncbm kick, have a funny question: did you use your homemade "patcher clip distortion" in the making of the tail and I'm guessing that's more than one layer?

Thanks. I actually used Devastor2 for that kick to try out the plugin. The plugin you use doesn't really matter, though, as long as you have a configurable pre-filter (I use a highpass most of the time) before distortion. I gave devastor2 a go because you can have different routing options, like having a highpass before distortion and a low-pass afterwords, just like logic clip distortion's signal flow.

The kick is one layer, chopped up and processed from a sample from a single giant plugin chain.

[Soundphase]

Phazon - good crunch; very like the ncbm kick, have a funny question: did you use your homemade "patcher clip distortion" in the making of the tail and I'm guessing that's more than one layer?

Thanks. I actually used Devastor2 for that kick to try out the plugin. The plugin you use doesn't really matter, though, as long as you have a configurable pre-filter (I use a highpass most of the time) before distortion. I gave devastor2 a go because you can have different routing options, like having a highpass before distortion and a low-pass afterwords, just like logic clip distortion's signal flow.

The kick is one layer, chopped up and processed from a sample from a single giant plugin chain.

hm yea but can't you just use the Eq before the distortion plugin to make a highpass pre-distortion? but yea I guess it can be more efficient to have a high shelf/high pass filter built into the distortion

Find it interesting what you said about making a high pass curve one octave below the root note of the main sound to make it fit as a new layer.. always thought there would still be some phase cancellation by layering the same sound, but if it works it works!

[Phazon]

hm yea but can't you just use the Eq before the distortion plugin to make a highpass pre-distortion? but yea I guess it can be more efficient to have a high shelf/high pass filter built into the distortion

Find it interesting what you said about making a high pass curve one octave below the root note of the main sound to make it fit as a new layer.. always thought there would still be some phase cancellation by layering the same sound, but if it works it works!

You can use a high-pass in an EQ before the distortion unit, I do it in most of my EQs in the chain. This affects the signal before the distortion unit.
A high-pass in the distortion unit itself lets you adjust the tone of the distortion, and have a wet/dry mix where the dry isn't affected by the high-pass. This enables you to cut out some lows before distorting, bringing back the lows with the wet/dry knob from the original signal.
You can do the same thing by shelfing out the lows in the EQ before the distortion unit, then shelfing it back in with an EQ afterwords, but that will sound a bit different. It depends on how you want it to sound, there's no concrete rule.

Phase issues only really occur if you're layering different distorted kicks together. I don't do that, I just have a single sample and chop it up afterwards, so it's never a problem for me.
If you work with layers, you can always move your layers forwards or backwards in time to mitigate any phase issues.

So yeah, I use both high-pass in an EQ before distortion and high-pass as a tone knob in the distortion unit itself.

[Jeefrey]

@Psychosis: The tok/punch is good, but I'm unsure about the tail. It's unique, but the tone stays for too long, imo. If you make the character fade out towards the end, the kick might sound like a techy kick, if that's what you're going for.

Been giving The RaveN feedback over skype, pls no bannerino mr. admin.


Another kick I've been working on:



Making solid progress methinks.

damn man, that's a good job! you should do some tutorial for this one

[sntoby]

@phazon okay once I heard yours I felt ashamed of mine. Great kick!

I have three kicks here of mine I'd like to have some feedback on, I feel as if there is something missing, but I cant pin-point what it is

[Netris]

Phazon : Your kick is awesome, I don't really see what you could improve since I'm not what you can call a kick expert.

djspeed87 : Your kick sound really good too. As for Phazon I don't really see what you could improve.

Sntoby : Your first kick lacks a bit of presence I think. I don't know how to put that differently. Your second kick sounds pretty good though. But I find in the third your reverse bass a bit weak.

Anyway, my turn now

It's my 1st kick turning out that good. This is just the result after all the distortion and EQ, I've yet to layer it. The attack seems a bit weak to me. But what do you think about it ?

[djspeed87]

@ netris - nice dist more punch

try new kick