deep and solid kickdrum

[steevio]

alot depends on whether you have your bass higher or lower than the kick.

when i work in E, i usually have my bass lowest at 41Hz and the kick on the perfect 5th (B) - 62 Hz or the 4th (A) - 55 Hz
but if i work in F# i might have the kick lowest on the root F# - 46 Hz and have a higher bass 69 Hz etc.

or if i dont have a bassline at all and rely totally on the kick for lowend i might go down to 41 Hz. i always think kicks start to lose something below that frequency.

basically i always have a relationship of 4ths or 5ths between the kick and lowest bass note no matter which is higher or lower, if use the root note of the scale for the kick, i will include the kick in the bassline and not have any bass layered over the kick other than release tails from preceeding notes.

saying all this theres nothing to stop anyone using any low frequency for a drum, ( the kodo drummers use drums that go below 20 Hz, but you wouldnt hear that on recordings. i'd love to see those guys live )

[markos]

Everyone seems to have there own set way of doing things, but for me I usually like to start with the microtonic multi VST just to get some basic beats going. After that layering is your secret weapon. Whether it's adding another oscillator from the microtonic over top, or sampling a sound you like, get creative and work your magic. BUT if you don't have the microtonic then any subtractive synthesizer will do the job just fine using an oscillator sound. You can also use FM synthesis.

Word of advice though, try and keep your kicks decay somewhere around 500 hz. Minimal kicks don't usually have long tails, and this will allow you to leave more room in the mix for more subby flavour sounds from your bass and synths. However, subby kicks can still be used if your using more of a mid ranged bassline. If you need any help let me know!

you have your kicks around 500hz???

you more than likely to want them to hit around the root. So if A it would be 55Hz with a short decay and release

AHAHAHA....sorry kids, meant 500ms for the decay. NOT hz

my apologies.

[markos]

Word of advice though, try and keep your kicks decay somewhere around 500 hz. Minimal kicks don't usually have long tails, and this will allow you to leave more room in the mix for more subby flavour sounds from your bass and synths. However, subby kicks can still be used if your using more of a mid ranged bassline. If you need any help let me know!

I presume he's talking about milliseconds, 500hz for a decay of a kick or whatever he's on about is simply ridiculous. But even if he's on about milliseconds it's still odd because who works out their kicks decay based on milliseconds? Even if you did, you'd have to consider the tempo and other instruments in the groove but I'm not even going there because there's just no point.

Yes i meant "ms" under the assumption that he allready knew kick sounds should be around 50hz. My apologies for the confusion.

The reduced ms in terms of kicks is a technique i use to reduce the subby tail end of the oscilator sound. I mean there is no main rule here that you have to do it this way and you are free to experiment you want, but i like my kicks to be fairly punchy.

[AK]

I don't like lingering decays on a kick, just enough to give it some tone but not so it bleeds into something else. I guess that all depends on how busy the track is though and what sounds follow the kick. It's amazing sometimes just how much cleaner & punchier the track seems afterwards when you have all elements in place and you just shorten the kicks decay.

I think though, if you're making kicks and saving them as samples, it's better to use a decay length which is quite long, it just gives you leeway to experiment with after when you come to use them. I think it's just something that needs to be judged in context though to be honest.

[markos]

Everyone seems to have there own set way of doing things, but for me I usually like to start with the microtonic multi VST just to get some basic beats going. After that layering is your secret weapon. Whether it's adding another oscillator from the microtonic over top, or sampling a sound you like, get creative and work your magic. BUT if you don't have the microtonic then any subtractive synthesizer will do the job just fine using an oscillator sound. You can also use FM synthesis.

Word of advice though, try and keep your kicks decay somewhere around 500 hz. Minimal kicks don't usually have long tails, and this will allow you to leave more room in the mix for more subby flavour sounds from your bass and synths. However, subby kicks can still be used if your using more of a mid ranged bassline. If you need any help let me know!

you have your kicks around 500hz???

you more than likely to want them to hit around the root. So if A it would be 55Hz with a short decay and release

AHAHAHA....sorry kids, meant 500ms for the decay. NOT hz

my apologies.

lol

thou 500ms is a long ish decay for a mnml kick. Its basically a whole beat

Thats a good decay for more techno

500 is usually the longest setting i will use. I don't go much higher then that. sweet spot for me lately has been around 380ms but stil haven't really found my perfect setting. thats the glorious thing about minimal! minor tiny adjustments make all the difference! such a great art form

[loopdon]

500 ms could possibly ride just over the next kick-drums attack/transient.
I think the longest i would want to use is 1 beat long. But then i probably wouldn't add any bass over it at all.
I have seen this in recent Ben Sims tunes for example. It's just a kick with a very long tail, making the need for extra bass
obsolete. There's just so much you can fit in down there.

So with lots of stuff i checked recently it goes something like this:

60/128= 468,75ms for a kick that lasts the entire beat's length
and more typically 468,75/2=234,375ms for the standard half-a-beat kick length.
This is for the standard 128BPM tune which seems to be the new magic number

No i am sure we won't have to wait for long until somebody chimes in there schooling me
that everything should be done solely by ear but i have seen this pattern so often i thought i'd mention it.
I probably shouldn't have mentioned Umek, either.

[steevio]

No i am sure we won't have to wait for long until somebody chimes in there schooling me
that everything should be done solely by ear but i have seen this pattern so often i thought i'd mention it.

you are right , you didnt have to wait long

seriously though, like all things in music mathematics has a huge part to play, so the half beat long kick surely has some relevance. personally i would never work out how long a kick should be mathematically, of course i just do it by ear because the kick has to relate to everything else in the track, but that doesnt mean that i wouldnt find that half beat kick by ear anyway.
for me micro adjustment of envelopes, decay lengths etc. is the most important part of tune writing, and sometimes it only requires a millisecond or two for everything to sit just right, and for the funk to work.
when i listen to electronic music i can hear the difference between tracks that have had that human attention to detail, and the more rigid, formulaic and overly quantised stuff. its so obvious.

[Phase Ghost]

maths

Sorry, couldn't resist