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« on: January 07, 2016, 12:19:24 am »
There's a very simple yet efficient method for always getting perfect kicks. It requires a little bit of preparation but it's easy and it's worth it.
1. Pick out some of your favourite kicks from whatever sample pack you're using. Or snatch the kicks of your favourite songs if possible.
2. Filter out all the high content of the kicks. Listen to the character of the kick and look at the waveform to get the pitch and length right, then use a synthesizer with a sine wave quickly dropping 3 or 4 octaves. Make one for each kick. Adjust the envelopes to get closer to your reference kicks.
What you need to do next is bounce each synth patch out into audio samples of different pitch (d, f, g, and a are usually best). Now you have awesome kick bodies for pretty much any track. Save them in a dedicated folder.
3. Get some top layers. Acoustic kicks, hihats, white noise bursts, various kinds of clicks, pops and knocks. High pass them and save in a dedicated folder.
You can also make really great clicks with simple FM synthesis.
4. Mixer presets. Make a specific mixer preset for your top kicks, with some saturation, short wide subtle reverb, and compression.
5. Time to use these things. Before your mixdown, replace your placeholder kick with the kick body that fits the best. Then start stacking a couple of top layers. EQ and compress to taste. Make your perfect kick in a few minutes.
Each time you finish a kick, save the complete kick to another dedicated folder. And also bounce a high passed version for your top layer folder.
After using this method on a few tracks, you'll have built up a collection of really good composite layers that can be used in almost any track. It becomes really fast and easy after a while.
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