Kick Compression Guide

Electronic Music Production // Dark Arts
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Lost to the Void
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Re: Kick Compression Guide

Post by Lost to the Void »

rktic wrote:I'm currently preparing the final guide to compression. Hopefully with videos and shit. Stay tuned. Can anyone recommend me a good screen capture software for windows? A free one?

I need to know this too so I can make some tutorials.
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rktic
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Re: Kick Compression Guide

Post by rktic »

I found something, and it's actually Microsoft Expression Encoder 4. I don't know in which way the free version is limited, but so far it's very capable.

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Re: Kick Compression Guide

Post by A_K »

Another option might be Open Broadcaster Software, https://obsproject.com/

It's free.

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Re: Kick Compression Guide

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Lost to the Void wrote:Right, I see a lot of comments about kick compression, a lot of rumours, and confusion, and questions about wether you should or shouldn`t, so I`m gonna try to clear things up al little here.

Firstly, there is no should or shouldn`t, you compress kicks to get a desired effect, if you don`t want that desired effect, then you don`t compress them.

2nd point, I see some people saying, Oh I don`t compress my kicks, I use saturation. Well, saturation is compression, you are still reducing the dynamic, the difference here is that you have less control over how saturation works, in terms of attack, release etc. Again, it all depends on the effect you desire.

So, why would you compress a kick.

Well, you might have a kick drum that has the sound you want, but lacks a little weight, and doesn`t quite push through the mix.
In this case, you might use compression to make the kick "bigger".

I`m going to briefly explain compression, forgive this if you already understand, I`m not trying to patronise.

Compression, in simple terms, changes the relationship between the quiet and loud parts within the sound it is applied too. It can reduce or increase the decibel range between the quietest and loudest part of a sound.

So, first you need to know how a kick is working.

Well generally, the sound of a kick starts with the fast transients. This is generally the sound of the beater hitting the "drum skin", and not the sound of the drum itself. It`s the clicky, thwacking sound right at the front of the kick.

After this you get the beeeeooooooo dropping sine of the "drum skin" vibrating, from rapid to slow, with reducing pitch.

Generally the transient will be quite a loud signal, there then might be a micro delay between this and the beginning of the big bassy boooooom of the drum itself. This boom itself will peak and then decay.

Now what you can do with compression, is to take the boooom part of the kick and flatten the curve, so that instead of it rapidly ramping up to a peak and then droping back down and then decaying, the peak will be flattened, and then raised in volume by the compression gain. So effectively you have increased the duration of the peak. Instead of the pak boooom being brief, you are extending it by microseconds, adding more beef to it.

So try it out.

Take your kick, reduce the attack to it`s minimum setting, have the release about mid way.
Leave the ratio for the time being, but it wants to be around mid way to start.

Reduce the threshold until you start getting some gain reduction, go for about 4db of gain reduction, use auto-makeup if the compressor has it, if not, bring the makeup gain up by the same amount as the reduction.

Now turn the comp on and off.

You`ll notice that the snap at the beginning and the main booom are more matched, the kick is getting meatier.

So now start reducing the attack, you`ll notice the kick starts to sound bigger. Stop when it sounds how you like.
What you are doing here with the attack, is letting the "nose", the fast transients of the initial thwack through, uncompressed (transients are full of harmonics, our ears like them, and preserving them keeps a mix alive), but then you are compressing the main meat of the kick.

Now the release, you want to tune this so that the compression is pretty much finished before the next kick hits.
So you need to use the gain reduction meter now.

Watch the meter and move the release up or down until the gain reduction is near 0db just before the next kick comes in.

Doing this, again, preserves the transients as the compression has stopped before the next kick hits and can allow the thwack through, a long release can lead to the kicks dulling down.

Now this is a basic rule of thumb, just tune around until you are happy. Ratio can help restrict how hard the compression hits.

Some compressors also saturate, if you want added harmonic content, but the process of compression is evening out the emphasis between harmonics, so you are in effect, enhancing hamonics anyway.

Now you might not always want to do this

With dub tech, those soft, 808 like kicks, sometimes it is nice to have a tiny click at the front, and then a really soft but big booom, so compression might add too much thump. You can of course just use less compression, or a touch of saturation, but remember, saturation is still compression, just without the attack and release etc.

You don`t always want massive thumping kicks, so you don`t always want hard compression on your kicks, but generally a little compression will always benefit, you don`t have to have everything running at 11

IF I need to do a video to demonstrate this, let me know
Void i still reference this a lot. Such a good post.

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Re: Kick Compression Guide

Post by Opnå »

Maybe this one should be pinned along with the master buss guide etc?

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Lost to the Void
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Re: Kick Compression Guide

Post by Lost to the Void »

No I believe it is in the archives subforum
http://subsekt.com/viewforum.php?f=48
That are full of goodness
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Re: Kick Compression Guide

Post by Opnå »

Lost to the Void wrote:No I believe it is in the archives subforum
http://subsekt.com/viewforum.php?f=48
That are full of goodness
ah ok. I thought those were read only where this one seems active. But either way as long as the info is somewhere I guess it doesn't matter :)


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