Question about kicks, new producer

[JurreS]

Hello guys,

I recently picked up producing hardcore in FL Studio 12 because I love the music and so far I've been loving creating music.

Yesterday I tried making my first kick, I think it sounds decent for a first kick, but weird, it's certainly not good/done yet. I used the default Sytrus preset and applied some distortion and filters with FilterBank 3, after that I removed a little bit of the mid sounds with EQ2 and used LFX-1310 to remove the noise in FL when the kick wasn't playing. (Caused by FilterBank3's tube amp)

Now my question is, what else should be done to make a kick sound nice and what are some good plugins to use when it comes to shaping kicks? (Preferably free)

I guess this forum has countless of similar questions, but I have watched some tutorials on YouTube and most of them don't talk in the video so I don't understand what they are exactly doing, and others are 3-4 years old and could be outdated.

Here is my kick: http://www89.zippyshare.com/v/6g2s3z51/file.html

[nerz]

check out this tutorial, this is the best i've seen recently (although this is a hardstyle kick tutorial, the same pricinples can be applied to a hardcore kick, i guess):



this guy explains quite good how to make use distortion/eq properly.

[JurreS]

Thanks alot for the quick reply, will check out in a sec!

[JurreS]

check out this tutorial, this is the best i've seen recently (although this is a hardstyle kick tutorial, the same pricinples can be applied to a hardcore kick, i guess):



this guy explains quite good how to make use distortion/eq properly.

Really appreciate the video you gave me, but I don't really get what he is doing.. I watched a fair bit of the video but he doesn't really explain what buttons he's turning and why they contribute in making the sound.. He just moves the buttons in EQ around without really saying what to look out for. Do you maybe have a tutorial more for beginners?

[Digital Shifter]

I shouldn't recommend anything else then this tutorial for you at the moment.
Just watch it over a couple of times and start creating experimenting and building yourself.
You will spend the next months... wait let me say that properly.. years on your kick drum technique.
Every hardstyle producer has to face this or if you are very rich you can get a ghost producer
Maybe if you like you can pm me as I am dutch and I can explain some things myself to you :-)

[nerz]

well, yeah pretty much this ^

it's realy hard to make your own kick that sounds good. there's no shortcut for that (ie. you should use this eq preset after the 5th distortion or turn this knob all the way down before this distortion, etc) it's all about experimenting and discovering things for yourself (of course, there are a few principles that you should keep in mind - check out this tutorial if you're interested, this is basically the theory behind these kind of kickdrums

[Bibifoc]

Sometimes in Hardcore compositions, you can make cool kicks more easily than you think or be interested in other importants sounds/tricks. Not that original cool sounding kicks aren't hard to make, but it doesn't have to be a horrible chore when you could spend your time in other sounds and composition in general.

Hardcore is way more free than Hardstyle, it works with kicks too. The fun is still here with distortion, equalizers, layers of kicks, envelopes, pitch, weird stuff and parameters everywhere.

[NEKA]

Your kick has potential, it has some annoying high noise-like sound in it which can be fixed away. I usually just put a blank Guitar Rig to get rid of Filterbank's tube amp noise. Keep your kicks mono, or, 99% mono. You can start from this to play around with it by throwing an EQ before really distorting, and just messing around with it. Like. Over-the-top EQ-ing.

I suggest checking out Promo's hardcore videos, he did a long video series about kicks

And as Bibifoc said, hardcore is more open to sounds and doesn't follow any rules, only that the kick is hard. Just go and try out!