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cutting everything under say 40-50hz, yay or nay? I find this helps some kicks cut through the mix a little better, or makes them a bit punchier (especially really subby kicks) But sometimes it sounds like total shit. I'm not really asking for advice here, just curious if anyone does this from time to time. Also if anyone wants to give me some nerdy technicalities on why it might sound good sometimes and sometimes it doesn't? I find that it works more on kicks that are really subby or knock really hard, but sounds shit on those softer and flatter kicks. Which doesn't make sense to me because I would think doing this on a softer kick would be better to get rid of those super lows that eat up space. I'm just rambling now.

TBH I generally roll off the highs and lows of any element (within reason) to free up headroom. I have a parametric EQ2 preset that I use for just that.

But it depends on the vibe I'm wanting for a tune as to what specifically gets cut and where.

Yeah I keep an EQ preset to for cutting everything under 50hz, and my template in my DAW has one on all the returns, but those are cutting everything under 100hz

Low cutting will also likely change the dynamics of your kick. Most kicks slide down, if you are low cutting, that slide down will be shorter as the slide hits the filter and essentially cuts the sound of the kick short.

If you are going to highpass your kick, I'd do it at the sound design stage, and not at the mixing stage - use a linear phase eq, resao=mple the kick and cut off the preringing caused by the eq.


IMO.

I try not to have to high pass kicks. Usually I'll use a sample for a kick, and I use a kick that is right, slides down right, ends at the risht spot, has enough high freq bidness to be heard on laptop speakers and what not.

And totally as a footnote in regards to sound design that goes to grooove, you can use a hipass with a resonant peak so that as teh kick slides down, rather than just going sthbooooooooom and fading out in the oooom, it might go sthboooooOOMm, as teh kicks slides into the resonant peak it gets louder, it causes the kick to kind of bounce a little, can swing this into a hat or other percs, or if you're really crazy your snare. Just a little little idea.

I just use kicks that are appropriate for my mix. I make my first mixing decision in the song by determining the vibe I'm going for, and hence where I want things to sit in the mix. Most of the low end on my kick drums are tuned and modulated sinewave. So if I were to want a kick that can be hi-passed at 50 hz, I'll have the fundamental and 'boom' lie there and stack the other kick samples on top of that.

I tend to high-pass my kicks around 40Hz depending on the track I'm working on; more organic tracks will need less processing on my part. And with regards to noways post, I suppose if you need to extend the tail then you could always use an expander or envelope shaper to subtly alter the tail of the kick?

I just tune them, thus avoiding any real need for hi-passing. Your fundamental should be in the right spot from the off. If I really like the top part of a kick and want to eliminate the low end, I will do that with decay/release envelope amp settings in a simpler/sampler, rather than trying to cut the low end. Sometimes I'll use the filter in the simpler but I find them a bit too colourful and difficult to fine tune.

Same goes for low passing. If I'm layering say two kicks, one with a nice low end and one with a nice top end I'll push the attack up a few ms on the boomy kick to get rid of the start of the sample.

You can do this with volume envelopes right in the clip too, which gives you even more detailed control as you can zoom right in on the waveform.

Honestly, there's no need to low pass everything, that's a technique from days of yore where everything was recorded with a mic and unwanted noise would be present in your recordings. Don't make your CPU work for nothing!

However, saying that I always hi-pass hihats. Especially samples from (old) drum machines as they always seem to have a lot of unnecessary low end in them?? Always baffles me that.

Just remove what needs to be removed.

karmacazee wrote: Especially samples from (old) drum machines as they always seem to have a lot of unnecessary low end in them?? Always baffles me that.

I've often put that down to electrical hum from the circuits in the machine themselves, but not sure.

I normally highpass the kick between 50/70Hz.

nowaysj wrote:And totally as a footnote in regards to sound design that goes to grooove, you can use a hipass with a resonant peak so that as teh kick slides down, rather than just going sthbooooooooom and fading out in the oooom, it might go sthboooooOOMm, as teh kicks slides into the resonant peak it gets louder, it causes the kick to kind of bounce a little, can swing this into a hat or other percs, or if you're really crazy your snare. Just a little little idea.

That's definitely pretty interesting, I'll be trying this out later today. I've recently been trying to devote a few hours a week solely to sound design, and I think I'm gonna have a go at synthesizing some drums. Just to have a bit more control, but everytime I do this I find myself following the same routine: Set envelopes with a sine wave, saturate, EQ and then compress. And even though I've had some good results with that process I feel like there's got to be a lot more that can be done, so I'm gonna go digging for some reading material.

Well the bottom of your kicks are kind of technical - power/hitting your fundamental usually in the root of your key. But the top part, for me, is where the action is at. Getting the right hi freq to make the kick cut, and the right texture/kind of noise is where I get interested.

If you are going to just design up a bunk of drum hits, a suggestion, make them bigger than you might need. Like slightly longer, slightly more harmonic content. Can always cut that stuff away when the sample is nestled in the track, harder to add it back if it never had it.

True that, I'll probably end up splitting the frequencies of a lot of them and adding some more saturation/exciters on the top end. I need to read up on synthesizing snare too because that's just a total mystery to me.

For me, it is always just pitch enveloped sines down around the root, with noise of various sorts on top, and then shaping the overall envelope of the sound. If I'm designing a kit, I'll use parts of the same noise on top of all the drums so they all have the same sort of flavor.

That's a good idea man, never really though to do that. I've never really had a go at layering sounds over drums except for drums themselves, ya know, kicks over kick and what not. Maybe I'll hit up my effects section of samples and look for some nasty stuff.

zosomagik wrote:That's a good idea man, never really though to do that. I've never really had a go at layering sounds over drums except for drums themselves, ya know, kicks over kick and what not. Maybe I'll hit up my effects section of samples and look for some nasty stuff.

Can I just say that there's a really big difference between layering and freq splitting. One is additive and one is subtractive, and should be treated accordingly. When layering, you're adding sounds, when freq splitting you're taking stuff away to make one sound.

Things I like to layer with drums:

Kick:
Marimba as the low end

Snare:
Claps pitched down an octave or two and time stretched + gentle bit crush. Adds that lovely guttural low-mid end.

Yeah I know, I was saying earlier that with my approach I like to split the frequencies and do different things to the top end. Then noways suggested layering some sounds over the top and I said I might have a go at that.

Layering Plus everyone forgot The BEAST....TRANSIENT SHAPING.

Depends on the sound I'm going for, but usually I always cut 40 and below from my kicks. Whether I cut above 40 depends on what I'm making

ChadDub wrote:Depends on the sound I'm going for, but usually I always cut 40 and below from my kicks. Whether I cut above 40 depends on what I'm making

I quite literally cut everything at 100hz except for the kick and sub, but sometimes I feel my tunes lack a little content because I don't just filter stuff out. I cut it completely. Maybe I should start leaving a little more overlap....

If I understand that ^, use a gentler slope on your filter or use a shelf. But it really comes down to monitoring, and to decision making. When my ears stepped up, I could see that my monitoring is really lacking. And with decision making, once you are hearing what is going on, you just need to know how much to pull out from experience. I try to do this early as it really effects how much mass the sound will have. Too many times I've had to pull more low end and low mid later to make them fit, and then the sound is not really driving the song in the way that it was.

And to that I might suggest trying out EQuality by DMG. I really like it.