What does your process to get punch in your kicks?

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Jenna

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« on: November 25, 2018, 11:04:49 PM »
Clearly, there's more to be done here. I've EQ'd and gain staged, but the kicks and bass are sounding weak on SoundCloud vs. what I'm hearing in my DAW. What's in the DAW isn't punchy enough, even. SC is just weak and sickly. Will compression fix it?

mikek

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« Reply #1 on: January 14, 2019, 09:40:40 PM »
You may want to check out a limiter. There are some decent instructional videos aboit how to use one out there on the YouTube

Boydie

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« Reply #2 on: January 15, 2019, 07:53:55 AM »
The most common issue that causes this is "masking" - i.e. The frequencies of one track hiding the frequencies of another track

I would suggest re-visiting the the EQ on your bass and kick to make sure that it is "complimentary" - ie where you make a cut in the EQ on the kick drum you make a boost on the bass

There are other techniques such a "side-chain compression" where you use a compressor to "duck" another track - eq the bass track could be automatically turned down momentarily when the kick drum hits (or other tracks such as synths could do the same)

It all depends on what you are trying to achieve and how the track sounds

If you post a link to the track in question we could help more

To check out my music please visit:

http://soundcloud.com/boydiemusic

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cowparsleyman

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« Reply #3 on: January 15, 2019, 08:36:41 AM »
Hmmm, I've recently had just that problem, and usually a punchy kick is resolved just as @Boydie said, either a sidechain or a decent compressor(s) and/EQ, but this particular song just didn't respond to all of the tricks, it was the kick drum itself, it was just flabby, it just didn't have the right sound/level I used an Yamaha Oak Custom Kit and for some reason I couldn't turn it around. It was the only time I've been unhappy with the kick drum.

@jenna - Another huge tip is the plugin BigKick, that'll help. you can pick your kick sound, modify the attack and release, and then drag it into your DAW, simply brilliant, maybe more suited for EDM but there are some huge acoustic kicks in there, it's only about $20 but is well revered in EDM circles.

Another thing I do very often is to have either copy of the original Kick with parallel compression on it, or another different sounding kick on another track, that I can use to tailor the overall kick sound, it's very effective sometimes, I also use that on snares...

I guess the moral for me is spend time in getting the basic sound as close as i can to how I want it to sound in the final mix.

Hope this helps

Rich

Bill Saunders

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« Reply #4 on: January 15, 2019, 07:00:51 PM »
@Jenna it is so easy to spend money on plugins, but...honestly the way I sorted this and finally got a decent drum sound was using a thing called Waves Scheps Parallel Particles. I got it for $29 in a sale and have been using it for years. Dead easy to use...a key of course is that you need your kick, snare etc on separate tracks so you can treat them independently.

cowparsleyman

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« Reply #5 on: January 16, 2019, 07:59:04 AM »
yeah, all too easy to blow cash on plugins, and a complete waste of time if the time isn't put aside to learn what they do in a controlled environment.