making kicks

[AK]

Ive done that for a while myself. I just prefer those type of bass/kick rhythms. Of course it has the useful side effect of being easier to mix - well it does to me anyway. For me, bass and drums, esp. the kick are tightly related and it's where i find grooves that I like. I know this thread is about kicks but I think the strength and presence of the kick has a lot to do with the bass too, not just the tuning but the note placements.

When I was into writing breaks, it was all about sitting the kick above the bass, usually acoustic type kicks layered with 909's or sampled kicks from funk records, I'm usually the other way around now. Whether this is right or not I dunno, but it is a preference of mine. If I do have a bass sound coinciding with a kick I have generally tried to make the pattern accordingly so that those particular notes are the same 'note' as the kick but an octave higher creating a unison tone when they coincide.

I hate sidechaining because i think I'm not addressing mix issues but I know people who swear by it, I have tried tons of stuff come to think about it. I remember once when I had a bass pattern that landed on a kick here and there and I actually cut the bass notes out, made a new audio file and applied a HP filter to those notes alone. It worked because the kick was providing the weight on those specific notes and even though I'd took those bass notes low end out of them, the tone was still there and it solved the issue. Longwinded but I guess it takes allsorts.

My preference though now is just to use tighter/shorter kicks, not just because I find them easier to mix but also because I like space in the bass end.

[hydrogen]

I hate sidechaining because i think I'm not addressing mix issues but I know people who swear by it, I have tried tons of stuff come to think about it. I remember once when I had a bass pattern that landed on a kick here and there and I actually cut the bass notes out, made a new audio file and applied a HP filter to those notes alone. It worked because the kick was providing the weight on those specific notes and even though I'd took those bass notes low end out of them, the tone was still there and it solved the issue. Longwinded but I guess it takes allsorts.

My preference though now is just to use tighter/shorter kicks, not just because I find them easier to mix but also because I like space in the bass end.

thats a good example when to go deeper and really fix a problem without relying on a lazy fix like sidechaining... but by all means don't restrict yourself... sometimes i find that experimenting with side chain or other things can get me close to the idea... kinda like a prototype. Then i go back in and fix it.

Thats also been my approach to mixing... you can make some changes like EQ/Compression on the final track to get an idea about what you want to do. but then you can go back into the mix and do it for real.

[tone-def]

i don't really understand the hate of sidechaining. it's just another way of getting tidy bottom end, kind of like HP filtering anything that isn't bass and kick.

[steevio]

another thing with kicks is to have control over its parameters through a mix, to be able soften it, pump it up a bit, alter the pitch envelope, filter the bottom end out etc..

the mbase is ok, but the lack of a knob per parameter spoils it.

[AK]

i don't really understand the hate of sidechaining. it's just another way of getting tidy bottom end, kind of like HP filtering anything that isn't bass and kick.

Hate is probably a too strong a word to be honest. More that I personally dislike using it. Each to their own, I have nothing against it or people who do use it, I just don't like to. I don't have any real need to use it anyway, I usually have patterns where kick and bass don't coexist on the same event so it wouldn't benefit me. That said, what I tried before in my previous post could be seen as perhaps slightly along the sidechain side of things albeit a manual thing. I guess it was a ducking of low end in that case rather than volume.

I'm more interested in experimenting with waveforms and note duration within the patterns to balance things, and my basses don't tend to be a rolling techno type of thing, I'm much more closer to Deep House than anything and like to have played basses.

Hang on, this thread is about kicks....

[tone-def]

Hang on, this thread is about kicks....

well at least we're not talking about bass chords

[hydrogen]

another thing with kicks is to have control over its parameters through a mix, to be able soften it, pump it up a bit, alter the pitch envelope, filter the bottom end out etc..

the mbase is ok, but the lack of a knob per parameter spoils it.

We did this using the octatrack mapping the knobs to cc's. You can p-lock them too... But once the p-locks are in it makes it difficult to adjust the sound using the mbase controls because it's constantly changing which parameter is being selected/modified. But other than that it works pretty well.

[ICN]

well at least we're not talking about bass chords

hahaha

_____________

I use microtonic & get some decent kicks from it with just a little compression and eq.

+1 for the shorter decay kicks.

I love hearing a big booming kick.. but when you are trying to get things balanced between kicks & bass, they work as a team. Less is more - like everyone is saying. I try and pay as much attention to getting the envelopes right in the kick and the bass so theres not much clashing.

@AK.. Was looking at the EKS back when I was thinking of getting the microtonic, but just clicked with it, so stopped there. Do you use it now for all your kicks? Can you get a decent 909 sound from it?