Think of each kick drum hit as two separate parts. Your attack and release times are integral to shaping its dynamics with this tool. Understanding how to use compression when mixing any instrument is difficult and a kick drum is no exception. The video below is a nice quick crash course in what was just talked about when it comes to mixing kick drum with EQ. It can really help define it in a dense mix. Where you boost in this area depends on what style of kick you’re going for. Try searching in and around 3khz-8khz for the actual attack of the beater hitting the skin. Moving up, the 100Hz-250Hz range where you’ll often find the fundamental frequency of the kick and body of its tone.įinally the upperange has important content as well. This area is the sub-harmonics of your kick that are often felt rather than heard. The first area to boost is in the 50Hz – 80Hz range. Too little will result in less weight or depth, but too much will result in a flabby mix #Studiotemplates #musicproductiontips #abletonlive #cubase #flstudio #musicproducer #musicproduction #musicstudio #mixing /VAawsd07Ac The 50-60 Hz range gives thump in a kick drum and boom in a bassline. You can shape the kick by adding EQ in areas that are having a positive effect on it’s sound. Once you’ve gone through and removed content that’s hurting the mix, it’s time to enhance the sound of your kick drum. In some situations it won’t work but it’s a useful trick when it does. This will usually be no higher than 55hz at the very most. Placing a high pass filter just before your kick drums first sub-harmonic can do a lot to tighten up the sound of it when mixing. Using a High-Pass filter to tighten up the kick. Although, this may seem surprising for a bass heavy instrument, there can still be unnecessary content in the extreme lows. Cutting it out with an EQ that has a fairly tight bandwidth can help bring out the more pleasing areas.Īnother area that’s up for debate between engineers is cutting out low end content with a high pass filter. This is an area where unnecessary frequency build up can cause a boxy, almost cardboard sound. The 400Hz-500Hz is a common area to cut content.Ī common area to cause problems is the 400Hz – 500Hz range. Things aren’t any different with kick but there generally shouldn’t be too much that needs to be removed. The usual approach when using EQ on any instrument is to start by removing unnecessary content before you add anything. So, we’ve dedicated this entire post to helping up and coming engineers master professional tricks for getting the kick to sit in a mix. Unfortunately, there are a lot of misconceptions around properly mixing the kick drum and it’s not given nearly enough attention in the mix stage. It often serves as the heartbeat that keeps all other elements glued together forward and creates a foundation for the production. The kick drum is an integral piece to master when mixing a song.
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