Creating your BassDrums

[kROKar]

Hi there. This is my first post and i will just start with new topic.
First of all, I would say thanks for all the previous topics that helped me a lot, but I miss help on bass drums, since they are very important in hard techno production.
I'm working on live act in Buzz Tracker, with loops made in VSTs and my external midi controller. All sounds great untill bassdrum comes. I just cant get a decent bassdrums, I have one or two, but I know I allways hated those cheep live acts that had only 1 type of Drum :)

So if enyone has any ideas, any special program information or even sites with good semples (wich are: none), I will be very happy if you post them here.

ty

[Barely Human]

A lot of the hard techno bass drum sound comes from heavy compression, check out the posts on compresion mate.

[MARKEG]

yes i have a wicked tip for kicks in techno. Threshold -15, bring the make up gain up to compensate.

REALLY fiddle with the ratio and understand what it's doing to the sound of the kick.

of course get the attack and release to suit too.

It's that ratio that really gives power. Well that what I find anyway. But I think people have different ways of doing things to suit their own sound.

Another good thing is putting a 1/2 decent kick into Soundforge and experiment with various plugins. Save loads and loads of variations and when you do your track, you'll have loads of different tones to work with.

[DJZeMig_L]

Layer drums, compress... also 2 had some nice crunchy punch overdrive or distortion...

Z

[Basil Rush]

Start with a quality sound. Add bass content with MaxBass rather than boosting the lows quality solution to many kick problems. Take out some mids (400Hzish) after compression to try and balance it in the track but not so much you get a hit followed by a boom.

If it's cluttering up the bottom, cut the end off it and fade it early.

Make sure the phase is right. Kicks sound different if the peak of the first wave form goes up rather than now, important if you want a hard attacking precision sound.

Be careful when mixing two kicks that you don't get a phasing error losing you loads of bottom, much like when you **** up a mix and don't cut the bottom off a record you are bringing in...

[DJZeMig_L]

Which settings (ruffly) would u use with maxxbass?

Man u r 1 walking encyclopedia! :P

Z

[MARKEG]

> Man u r 1 walking encyclopedia!

says you!

hahahah

:lol:

[miromiric.]

basil this is very helpful!

[DJZeMig_L]

I humbling bow 2 the knowledge of masters :oops:

Z

[Basil Rush]

*grins* there only are about three settings with MaxBass, check the presets for some examples, but Die Bassum if you've not got enough welly at the bottom is a good starting point for adding a lower octave, adjust the original and synth'd sound to taste and try not to clip.

[DJZeMig_L]

I know bud ... but it always sound 2 much like synthesized bass 2 me..
:( I tend 2 go 4 the more light settings... But then again I use it more 4 final ("pre")mastering.. Once I used it on a track and although it sound fuc*** LOUD as L it lacks the Bass "wind" ( :!: :?: ).. I had kinda given up a bit on this plug... my biggest difficulty is having the right x-over freq. and of course the right balance between original, synthesized bass...

But mentioned something that got me thinking... I always though MaxxB. added Higher harm. here the become more listenned and less felt... I never knew they could add lower octaves of the fundamental!!? R u Sure of this??

I generally roll off some of the low freq. from bass sounds (shave about 8-15 db bellow 80-100hz), this way I get "more space" 4 the kick 2 shine thru... But I will Try your advice soon!! Thankz..

Also I use pan and eq. "cut" 2 each sound so that I kind of reduce it 2 the relevant freq.s!!

Z

[Basil Rush]

Dunno, sure fixed one for me, maybe there was a bit of bass in there to start with or something that it emphasised, anyway rescues me loads when eq won't do it.