After 5 years I finally made a kick drum sound the way I wanted

[Amøbe]

that is it. I came here to learn how to kick with the drum. Today I made one that banged the way I wanted it to.

How did I do it? I tried to make it as short as possible, while still maintaining a sense of body.

I have now won techno!

[subvers^v]

[Lost to the Void]

that is it. I came here to learn how to kick with the drum. Today I made one that banged the way I wanted it to.

How did I do it? I tried to make it as short as possible, while still maintaining a sense of body.

I have now won techno!

Audio or it never happened

[Amøbe]

that is it. I came here to learn how to kick with the drum. Today I made one that banged the way I wanted it to.

How did I do it? I tried to make it as short as possible, while still maintaining a sense of body.

I have now won techno!

Audio or it never happened

Oh yeah it's a total meta kick right now

I'll upload a snippet later

[ozias_leduc]

YES WANT TO HEAR

it's funny you say that - out of the studio all my 'intro' kicks (the short / gated ones) please me greatly , and all my 'main kicks' are like... ew

[Val Endrada]

that is it. I came here to learn how to kick with the drum. Today I made one that banged the way I wanted it to.

How did I do it? I tried to make it as short as possible, while still maintaining a sense of body.

I have now won techno!

Congratulations!

I've sometimes tried looking closer at kick sounds in other people's tracks, trying to isolate, sample and analyse them. They work well in the tracks, but on their own they often sound surprisingly bad - sometimes not even like kick drums at all.

Kick samples from commercial sample packs, on the other hand, often sound great in isolation, but they rarely work well in my tracks.

Would it be OK to ask what kind of gear or software you're working with?

[illit_]

that is it. I came here to learn how to kick with the drum. Today I made one that banged the way I wanted it to.

How did I do it? I tried to make it as short as possible, while still maintaining a sense of body.

I have now won techno!

Yes man! Love seeing this, making kicks from scratch is fun!

[Amøbe]

Alright here's a sample of the track I'm working on I don't think the kick is anything special, but it seems to work the way I want it to (so it might as well have just as much to do with the rest of the elements)

It is made in kick 2, with a discrete layer of a distorted microtonic kick, and then it runs into the molot compressor, which I believe I put on the setting that saturates the sound a lot

The thing that made it work (this has been said before dubdub comes and explains to me, why it doesn't work) was to make it quite short, so that it is more a punch than a big brick that takes over all of the track. I made my kicks with too much decay earlier, I think

[Amøbe]

If anyone wants a proof that I'm currently ill, then you can see that I managed to upload it with all the elements, and not the naked kick - it will come later

[Lost to the Void]

Alright here's a sample of the track I'm working on I don't think the kick is anything special, but it seems to work the way I want it to (so it might as well have just as much to do with the rest of the elements)

It is made in kick 2, with a discrete layer of a distorted microtonic kick, and then it runs into the molot compressor, which I believe I put on the setting that saturates the sound a lot

The thing that made it work (this has been said before dubdub comes and explains to me, why it doesn't work) was to make it quite short, so that it is more a punch than a big brick that takes over all of the track. I made my kicks with too much decay earlier, I think

Ah that works mostly because of the mid high presence it has, cuts through the mix.
It`s always important to get the "click" or the beater hitting the drum head, correct to balance in your mix.
This is quite a trancey type of kick drum, it doesn`t really hit you in the lows, it`s more in the chest than the gut.
These kind of kicks are great when you have a big bassline to sit underneath it.

I`m not sure how you got this kick, but there is a really simply way just with a 909 emulation of choice and fairly hard compression.

[td3l]

[Amøbe]

Alright here's a sample of the track I'm working on I don't think the kick is anything special, but it seems to work the way I want it to (so it might as well have just as much to do with the rest of the elements)

It is made in kick 2, with a discrete layer of a distorted microtonic kick, and then it runs into the molot compressor, which I believe I put on the setting that saturates the sound a lot

The thing that made it work (this has been said before dubdub comes and explains to me, why it doesn't work) was to make it quite short, so that it is more a punch than a big brick that takes over all of the track. I made my kicks with too much decay earlier, I think

Ah that works mostly because of the mid high presence it has, cuts through the mix.
It`s always important to get the "click" or the beater hitting the drum head, correct to balance in your mix.
This is quite a trancey type of kick drum, it doesn`t really hit you in the lows, it`s more in the chest than the gut.
These kind of kicks are great when you have a big bassline to sit underneath it.

I`m not sure how you got this kick, but there is a really simply way just with a 909 emulation of choice and fairly hard compression.

Thanks a lot for listening!

Now I'm just thinking loudly, but can the reason for why I found it to be working be because of the tempo is quite high? (I think it's 141 or in that ballpark at least) I found that I often struggled with the kick taking up a lot of space or not be very impactful, when I move above 135 or so.

Also while I have your ears, are there anything that could immediately improve the track?

The kick is mainly made with the kick2 plugin, but it isn't far off from a 909 (slightly triangle wave)

[Lost to the Void]

Alright here's a sample of the track I'm working on I don't think the kick is anything special, but it seems to work the way I want it to (so it might as well have just as much to do with the rest of the elements)

It is made in kick 2, with a discrete layer of a distorted microtonic kick, and then it runs into the molot compressor, which I believe I put on the setting that saturates the sound a lot

The thing that made it work (this has been said before dubdub comes and explains to me, why it doesn't work) was to make it quite short, so that it is more a punch than a big brick that takes over all of the track. I made my kicks with too much decay earlier, I think

Ah that works mostly because of the mid high presence it has, cuts through the mix.
It`s always important to get the "click" or the beater hitting the drum head, correct to balance in your mix.
This is quite a trancey type of kick drum, it doesn`t really hit you in the lows, it`s more in the chest than the gut.
These kind of kicks are great when you have a big bassline to sit underneath it.

I`m not sure how you got this kick, but there is a really simply way just with a 909 emulation of choice and fairly hard compression.

Thanks a lot for listening!

Now I'm just thinking loudly, but can the reason for why I found it to be working be because of the tempo is quite high? (I think it's 141 or in that ballpark at least) I found that I often struggled with the kick taking up a lot of space or not be very impactful, when I move above 135 or so.

Also while I have your ears, are there anything that could immediately improve the track?

The kick is mainly made with the kick2 plugin, but it isn't far off from a 909 (slightly triangle wave)

It does get harder to resolve bigger kicks as you go up in bpm. In this tune a heavier kick would probably throw the feeling off.
You have room underneath that kick to bring up the lows. The kick sits just a little too loud in the mix, I think because the low end weight of the kick, and the high mids are a little out of balance, you`ve brought it up about as loud as it can go without being utterly dominant, to get the low end weight more present. I would resolve this by either EQing with a high shelf set to 250hz, and bring down all the mid and high end by a couple of db (or more) then bring up the level of the kick so the mids sit at maybe just below the level they are now, that way the low end grunt of the kick will have a bit more weight in the mix.
You could also probably achieve the same as above but by changing the way the compression works so it is clamping down less hard on the low end (internal sidechain eq basically).
You`ve got that nice dry attacky chest thwack right, it`s just a bit loud in comparison to the low end weight of the kick.
What is quite nice is to add some modulation to the top/click, in side kick 2, either the tuning or the attack, so as it hits the compressor there is a very subtle movement in the transients. It gives life to these dry sounding kicks.

[Val Endrada]

Also while I have your ears, are there anything that could immediately improve the track?

Instead of just looping the same 1 bar arpeggio, make different length variations and make different melodic variants of those. Loop the different variations for different amounts of time according to some mystical master plan (think of it as a jazz double bass playing in the high register). Make modal changes to the pads (modal = using only notes from within one scale). Record a saxophone solo on top.

Hope your illness isn't too serious. Please get well soon!

[Lost to the Void]

Record a saxophone solo on top.

This is your first official warning on Subsekt.
Do it again and your account will be temporarily suspended.

[Divjak]

I made my kicks with too much decay earlier, I think

It sounds nice dude, I like this kind of kicks as well . Too much decay on kick destroyed many many many tracks a did for a long time. I think that the faster BPM you have, less decay you can get away with. And sometimes adding decay is this WOW factor that is actually misleading, because then end result of faster decay and baseline and right amount of compression or distortion is much more interesting than just long decay that booms. FX can work much better if you feed them the right things, and lots of low end decay makes them sad.

[Val Endrada]

Record a saxophone solo on top.

This is your first official warning on Subsekt.
Do it again and your account will be temporarily suspended.

Wow, you must really dislike saxophone solos

But, you know, I wasn't really thinking of any of that experimental jazz stuff, - more something along the lines of the solo from "Careless Whisper".

I'm sure you love that as well. Everyone does!

PS: I found a video where someone looped it for 10 hours. Merry X-mass!

youtu.be/Kas6akz1jWU

[Ben Kohonays]

I wasn't really thinking of any of that experimental jazz stuff, - more something along the lines of the solo from "Careless Whisper".

I'm sure you love that as well. Everyone does!

[Lost to the Void]

I have a problem with saxophones.

My parents were killed by one in a dark alley one day.
It was playing knights in white satin.

Ever since that day I promised myself that no person would ever die by the evil of saxophone, and so I ride the night, protecting innocents from the evils of brass and Reed.

youtu.be/95_TNGp9lUk

[Críoch]

Got one here in the house. Loud bastard of a thing.