deep and solid kickdrum

[Shepherd_of_Anu]

you want to get really technical, taking attack portions from kicks with attack transients you like and pasting them onto the decay/tail of others.

That sounds pretty hardcore. Are you able to get really natural sounding kicks that way?

[Shepherd_of_Anu]

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.

very true, i feel you should just let the track flow and if you get boged down in maths of if you can miss a lot of the inner relationship between the elements in the groove.
Ok at the mixing stage have a look at it but if it sounds good leave it

To be sure there is some thing quite intoxicating about the human element in music but then again some of the greatest pieces of music and their best performances (thinking classical) are often quite rigorous in their execution of musical sequences. This makes me think about physics a little. In the real world physics in common everyday events is pretty messy but when you break things down to the most simplistic, most elemental parts you can find great beauty in the harmony of the mathematics involved. I think there is very much to marvel at in either cases. The complexity of reality portrayed against the basic underlying truths is what makes each one all the more enjoyable as an experience in itself. There is a richness to be communicated though imperfection but to experience purity is equally enriching if not more so in some cases. This is not to say that rigidity is perfection... much the opposite, it is the give and take, the yin and yang if you will, the interplay that makes a truly harmonious balance... and harmony is truth, like mathematics, for if an equation is imbalanced, it is false.

[loopdon]

Now, i was asking for it. I myself love to get nerdy about stuff.
And until now i thought modular users were control freaks at maybe an even higher level,
wanting to build everything from first principles. Steevio, i could say the same about others. I think i learnt what a 909 kickdrum is tuned to by one of your posts. And how you tend to create bass from simple waveforms tuned in relation to the kick. To me, that's physics in full effect. Why shouldn't i care about a sound's length, as well?
Who said i adjust my kicks to be exactly 1/2 beat long even if my ears are telling me otherwise? I just stated i haven seen certain patterns emerging. And even if i construct my kicks in such a somewhat nerdy manner, who says i do the same to any other sound,especially in the higher regions? You should be happy you have a more freestyle approach, your tracks will shine that much more next to mine, for example, innit?

I for one got attracted to techno because it is often rigid, mechanical and precise
amongst other features. And maybe also because there are at the same times elements that stand in stark contrast to this rigidity. If that wasn't so i would be listening to free-jazz noodlings or something. Not that there's anything wrong about free-jazz. It just ain't for me.

I think i am no different than anybody else in that when i like a track i like it.
I probably wouldn't even know how long a certain kickdrum is by just listening. But if i found out the kickdrum was such and such a length later on, this would very surely not change my view on the track. Why should it?

[AK]

you want to get really technical, taking attack portions from kicks with attack transients you like and pasting them onto the decay/tail of others.

That sounds pretty hardcore. Are you able to get really natural sounding kicks that way?

You have to know what to look for - which comes from experimenting with it but yeah, 'natural' kicks can easily be attained. The technique isn't 'hardcore' as you put it, it's actually very common, maybe more so in other genres ( esp. Breakbeat ) but will work with just about any type of music I guess. In the years since, a lot of plug-in manufactures and sample library designers employ this process in their own stuff. The Vengeance Producer Suite 'Metrum' is a good example and whilst I haven't heard it, the methods for its kickdrum design are based on sampled transients and synthesized waveforms.

I don't really do it any longer as I have stuff now which I can synthesize my own kicks on but when I was, I only had samples and I'd try and come up with new and original samples by editing my existing ones. I've always used Wavelab for editing and in there I'd just try out this stuff until I got the hang of it. Sometimes the results would be sh!t, other times brilliant. As a general rule of thumb, you'd have 2 kicks ( although not necessarily kicks either ) loaded, maybe one has a really nice decay but the initial attack portion is a bit naff and the other has a nice attack but is too short or just doesn't have a lot of depth or something. On the sample with the nice attack, you'd zoom right in until the sample starts to even out ( with the type of kicks I use, this usually looks like a decaying sinewave ) and that's your attack portion. Very rarely will it exceed 40 ms, in fact, it's nearly always in the region of about 10 - 40 ms on any kick of this nature. Once you've zoomed in, you want to locate the zero crossing on the waveform where the cycle is neither positive or negative ( cutting here ensures there wont be any clicks in the final sample )

Then you paste this to a new window/wave and then go to the sample with the decay you like. Then it's a similar process but you obviously delete the attack from this sample and where you actually do this is the key point in getting the final sound to work well. What I did was to look at the other sample with the attack and make a mental note of how long it is, lets assume it was 30ms. I'd then zoom in to 30ms on the decay sample and start from there. You need to look if the attack sample was about to enter a positive or negative cycle and make your cut accordingly so the waveform continues naturally. Then, once you have joined the 2, the only other process to look for is the volume. You don't want the decay to suddenly be twice as loud for instance so you use the normalizing tools to ensure the two waveforms match to form a natural decaying curve.

It sounds long winded when trying to describe it in a post but essentially, it's just a 3 part process with maybe some adjustments at the end. Once you get the hang of it, it literally takes a minute if that. And if you are into using samples a lot, it's a good way to expand your library with unique sounds, not just on kicks, you can try things on snares, percussion, anything really. Maybe try an Electric Guitar bass attack on a synth bass decay, a real conga attack on an 808 tom decay. If you have the patience for it, there's lots of things you could potentially do.

[loopdon]

AK, that sums my findings up, nicely. And it will surely help beginners and more advanced people, alike.

[steevio]

Now, i was asking for it. I myself love to get nerdy about stuff.
And until now i thought modular users were control freaks at maybe an even higher level,
wanting to build everything from first principles. Steevio, i could say the same about others. I think i learnt what a 909 kickdrum is tuned to by one of your posts. And how you tend to create bass from simple waveforms tuned in relation to the kick. To me, that's physics in full effect. Why shouldn't i care about a sound's length, as well?
Who said i adjust my kicks to be exactly 1/2 beat long even if my ears are telling me otherwise? I just stated i haven seen certain patterns emerging. And even if i construct my kicks in such a somewhat nerdy manner, who says i do the same to any other sound,especially in the higher regions? You should be happy you have a more freestyle approach, your tracks will shine that much more next to mine, for example, innit?

I for one got attracted to techno because it is often rigid, mechanical and precise
amongst other features. And maybe also because there are at the same times elements that stand in stark contrast to this rigidity. If that wasn't so i would be listening to free-jazz noodlings or something. Not that there's anything wrong about free-jazz. It just ain't for me.

I think i am no different than anybody else in that when i like a track i like it.
I probably wouldn't even know how long a certain kickdrum is by just listening. But if i found out the kickdrum was such and such a length later on, this would very surely not change my view on the track. Why should it?

i think maybe you got the wrong message from my post, i was kind of agreeing with you about the half beat length kick, i see patterns like that emerging too, and i'm very mathematical about my approach to music, but i kind of leave the maths at an early stage in writing and let my ears take over.
i construct my music purely mathematically to start with, i always have, because yes there is beauty there no doubt, but like Sheperd of anu mentioned there is also the yin and yang, the pulse of the universe, the natural cycles, the human biorhythms, and machines dont do those too well. no doubt they are all mathematical too if you gig deep enough, but i draw the line at the raw maths.
good techno is a synergy between human and machine.

[AK]

you want to get really technical, taking attack portions from kicks with attack transients you like and pasting them onto the decay/tail of others.

That sounds pretty hardcore. Are you able to get really natural sounding kicks that way?

Here's a quick example I just did since my last post. There's 3 kicks in this audio file, the last of which is the combination of the first 2. The first kick has an attack portion I liked but was way too short. The 2nd kick had a decay I quite liked but had a very clicky and hard attack, almost like a hihat had been blended in with it and the 3rd kick is the attack from kick 1 and the decay from kick 2. Ok, not vastly different but still natural sounding.

http://www.mediafire.com/?90owcms011448gy

[loopdon]

@steevio: I was actually going to PM you.
I reckon i worded my thoughts like i had my balls in a twist.
I think we pretty much have the same ideas regarding the topic.
It's all about the ying and yang, as you put it. Contrast. Synergy. etc.
I have learnt a great deal from you and i have still a lot to learn.
I am glad you reacted in a mild-mannered way. This speaks volumes about you.
Regarding the topic at hand i got thinking and would want to aggree
that ADSR-settings are of utmost importance. It could be a beat long but the decay could be concave or convex. Or pretty much just full throttle all the way from start to end (like with an AHDSR volume envelope with Hold set to one bar).
In this respect looking (yes looking) at waveforms in an audio-editor has helped me a lot.
But as time goes by, i am getting better at connecting what i hear to what i see. And the other way round. New connections being done in my brain, so to speak.
I prefer to ruffly sculpt my sounds in an audio-editor before trying to get the results with a compressor or start eqing when all there is to do is adjust the volume of single cycles and such by means of a volume boost on the audio itself. No need for transient crushing limiting and stuff like that. And knowing when to leave things alone.