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The Mother of all KICK DRUMS thread
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rodneon
Started Topics :
1
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10
Posted : Feb 13, 2007 23:53
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On 2007-01-21 21:22, xitrix wrote:
edit: it is tuned on C
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Are you sure it's tuned in C? Sure, if you perform a spectrum analysis (at 2048 samples) C shows up as the main frequency, but if you zero in on on cycle of the sustain portion of the kick and count the samples, divide 44100 by the result, you get around 54-55 hz, which is more like an A, not a C. In fact, a spectrum analysis at 8192 samples reveals A2.
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rodneon
Started Topics :
1
Posts :
10
Posted : Feb 14, 2007 00:17
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On 2007-02-05 11:22, S-Cube wrote:
How do you guys go about tuning kicks to a certain note?
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As I described above, this is how I do it:
1. Open the file in your favorite audio editor
2. Find the sustain portion of the kick
3. Select one complete cycle of the waveform
4. Zoom in at least 8:1 so you can fine tune the selection down to the exact samples closest to the zero line
5. Find how many samples long your selection is (for the example above, one cycle was 816 samples long)
6. To find the frequency, divide the sample rate by the length of one cycle:
44100 / 816 = 54.044 (just below A2)
If you want to select more than one cycle, multiply the resulting frequency by the number of cycles to obtain the average frequency.
The phase of the kick drum in relation to the bass is as important as the pitch, as has been mentioned here before. You can fix it manually by sliding one of the other a few samples back or forward, or you can use a plugin, such as Progress Audio's PhasePhix. |
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djzed
Started Topics :
3
Posts :
48
Posted : Feb 14, 2007 09:58
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On 2007-02-05 17:20, soulfood wrote:
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On 2007-02-05 11:22, S-Cube wrote:
How do you guys go about tuning kicks to a certain note?
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You could distort the hell out of it to the point where it sounds like a squeak and tune that by ear. It's not as frequency accurate as making a specific kick in sound forge but it work really well if a kick doesnt have a definite fundamental. For example many kicks trail down after their first initial impact rather than sit on one frequency. With these kicks its best to tune the overall sound rather than the fundemental... just to something that fits, so it doesnt have to be the root note specifically.
It's much cheaper than using sound forge too  (if you pay for it... which you should... so they say )
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Could someone please explain the science behind this?
How does putting massive distortion on your kick somehow bring out the "true" frequency of the kick if it just messing around with the sound?
Surely when you take the distortion off that frequency will dissapear. |
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PoM
IsraTrance Full Member
Started Topics :
162
Posts :
8087
Posted : Feb 14, 2007 11:32
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making the sine in soundforge at a specific frequency is useless cause you pitch it,you have to do it with a analyser but it s too much work. |
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soulfood
IsraTrance Junior Member
Started Topics :
10
Posts :
875
Posted : Feb 18, 2007 18:39
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On 2007-02-14 09:58, djzed wrote:
Quote:
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On 2007-02-05 17:20, soulfood wrote:
Quote:
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On 2007-02-05 11:22, S-Cube wrote:
How do you guys go about tuning kicks to a certain note?
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You could distort the hell out of it to the point where it sounds like a squeak and tune that by ear. It's not as frequency accurate as making a specific kick in sound forge but it work really well if a kick doesnt have a definite fundamental. For example many kicks trail down after their first initial impact rather than sit on one frequency. With these kicks its best to tune the overall sound rather than the fundemental... just to something that fits, so it doesnt have to be the root note specifically.
It's much cheaper than using sound forge too (if you pay for it... which you should... so they say )
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Could someone please explain the science behind this?
How does putting massive distortion on your kick somehow bring out the "true" frequency of the kick if it just messing around with the sound?
Surely when you take the distortion off that frequency will dissapear.
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I don't know for sure if it is the "true" frequency, but when you distort something to such a point it becomes very, very compressed. It's like putting the sound under a microscope in a way. And as for that frequency dissapearing, the distortion doesnt add a frequency or bend the pitch in any way it merely accents it so when you take off the distortion the only thing that is gone is the distortion.
I'm no scientist so I can't tell you accurately what's going on but I think that's pretty much the jist of it. |
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soulfood
IsraTrance Junior Member
Started Topics :
10
Posts :
875
Posted : Feb 18, 2007 18:43
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On 2007-02-14 11:32, PoM wrote:
making the sine in soundforge at a specific frequency is useless cause you pitch it,you have to do it with a analyser but it s too much work.
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You only really have to pitch the attack of the kick so there's no reason why the tale can't remain at a solid fundamental. I always write my bassline first using just a rough kick and then once I decide what note my kick needs to be playing I type the exact frequency into sound forge, pitch the attack, load it in a sampler, eq and there ya go. Does wonders for me anyhows. |
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basil rush
Started Topics :
1
Posts :
15
Posted : Feb 18, 2007 18:48
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basil rush
Started Topics :
1
Posts :
15
Posted : Feb 18, 2007 18:53
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On 2007-02-18 18:43, soulfood wrote:
Quote:
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On 2007-02-14 11:32, PoM wrote:
making the sine in soundforge at a specific frequency is useless cause you pitch it,you have to do it with a analyser but it s too much work.
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You only really have to pitch the attack of the kick so there's no reason why the tale can't remain at a solid fundamental. I always write my bassline first using just a rough kick and then once I decide what note my kick needs to be playing I type the exact frequency into sound forge, pitch the attack, load it in a sampler, eq and there ya go. Does wonders for me anyhows.
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I'm a little lost on the pitching the kicks business, probably depends on the pitch envelope on the kick drum you are using though.
If your kick tail sits on a certain number of cycles per second and doesn't use some form of pitch dive throughout then this makes sense. You can definitely hear this kind of pitch more easily if you distort it, that's not because of compression but rather because as you distort the sine wave type waveform of the kick drum you get a square wave, this introduces new odd harmonics into the sound. These harmonics are related to the root frequency of the kickdrum but are of a much higher pitch which allows you to identify the note of the kick drum more clearly.
Personally most of the kick drums I use in dance music have a constant pitch dive of some sort and so I don't bother, I just dig around till I find a good one.
I'm not sure whether there's any margin in tuning the attack portion of the kick or not though, again the ones I've tended to use have a fairly unrelated set of partials in the attack portion to make a nice woody or percussion tone. Whilst some sound better than others I've never tried focusing hard on finding one in the same 'key'.
thoughts? |
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RenderingRebel
IsraTrance Junior Member
Started Topics :
23
Posts :
293
Posted : Feb 21, 2007 09:39
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I use a kick that is just VERY round and put an r-bass to boost around 80/90/100 hz depends of the key
Not to much, just a little to give it some more body
Works perfect for me! |
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djzed
Started Topics :
3
Posts :
48
Posted : Feb 22, 2007 16:18
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On 2007-02-18 18:53, basil rush wrote:
I'm a little lost on the pitching the kicks business, probably depends on the pitch envelope on the kick drum you are using though.
If your kick tail sits on a certain number of cycles per second and doesn't use some form of pitch dive throughout then this makes sense. You can definitely hear this kind of pitch more easily if you distort it, that's not because of compression but rather because as you distort the sine wave type waveform of the kick drum you get a square wave, this introduces new odd harmonics into the sound. These harmonics are related to the root frequency of the kickdrum but are of a much higher pitch which allows you to identify the note of the kick drum more clearly.
Personally most of the kick drums I use in dance music have a constant pitch dive of some sort and so I don't bother, I just dig around till I find a good one.
I'm not sure whether there's any margin in tuning the attack portion of the kick or not though, again the ones I've tended to use have a fairly unrelated set of partials in the attack portion to make a nice woody or percussion tone. Whilst some sound better than others I've never tried focusing hard on finding one in the same 'key'.
thoughts?
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I have to agree. When I first heard about the idea of tuning the tail of your kicks I got really excited. I was writing this track in C, so I went into sound forge and created a kick with a tail of 65.4 hz thinking it would make the track more solid and harmonious.
Indeed you could hear the fundamental C note of the kick so in that sence the track sounded quite strong. However I found that my favourite kicks use a pitch dive in the tail.
What I realize now is that the ear doesn't really care that much about the actual pitch of the tail. If you are doing a pitch dive, you are going from such a high frequency to such a low frequency in such a short period of time that the brain does not have time to latch onto any particular frequency and it treats the kick as a "sound" rather than a note. So I just treat my kicks purely as percussion elements rather than tones.
This is not to say that the pitch is not important - but pitch your kicks based on how they FEEL in the mix, and don't worry so much about putting particular frequency's into the kick or even tuning them to the fundamental. Focus more on the feel. |
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rodneon
Started Topics :
1
Posts :
10
Posted : Feb 24, 2007 21:00
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A while back I posted a Csound program to generate kicks in the "Infected Tutorial" fashion, but it took a lot of fiddling to come up with a decent sound. I revamped the program, added real-time control and a live recording feature. If you don't know anything about Csound, Google it up. It's a great tool for sound design, if you have the patience. Anyway, here's the link to the program:
http://joemaffei.sitesled.com/psykick.csd
It's still buggy, but it works for me. If you know how to fix it, please send me an updated version. Enjoy! |
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Djones
IsraTrance Senior Member
Started Topics :
267
Posts :
1766
Posted : Feb 27, 2007 19:15
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Another pain is to find the kick with the exact right character to it.
A kick with a little highish oooonk sound to it can make the track sound faster than it is and will most likely not fit with all basslines.
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jivamukti
IsraTrance Junior Member
Started Topics :
21
Posts :
342
Posted : Feb 28, 2007 18:44
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On 2007-02-27 19:15, Djones wrote:
Another pain is to find the kick with the exact right character to it.
A kick with a little highish oooonk sound to it can make the track sound faster than it is and will most likely not fit with all basslines.
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Just use the same kick & rolling bassline everybody else is using. Nobody cares and in fact you don't have to worry about your tracks not getting accepted for being deviant.
 When rain dries, clouds form.
When clouds moisten, rain forms. |
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Milosh
IsraTrance Junior Member
Started Topics :
27
Posts :
204
Posted : Feb 28, 2007 23:32
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On 2007-02-05 12:37, Yunick wrote:
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On 2007-02-05 11:22, S-Cube wrote:
How do you guys go about tuning kicks to a certain note?
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Well bro, to find the exactly note of a kick u should now the kick note frequency.
Kicks made in soundforge have a not equal scale of tuning cuz they are made with pitch modulation, But u can fix it, change some cents till find a Temperate note(a note in scale).
To discover the frequency of kick(or whatever u need) go at (SoundForge) Tools/Statistics...
Zero Crossing will show u the frequency of the sample u are using.
Now, if u wanna know what note the sample(kick) is u must to know some matematicals equation.
But is not so hard. We know that note A4 corresponds to 440hz.
To change octaves is just mutiply or divide for 2, ( A3 = 220Hz and A5= 880Hz)
Now to discovery others note in Tradicional temperated scale is just to mutiply or divide the number 1,0593272171253822629969418960245(Hz)
A4 = 440Hz
A#4 = 440 x 1,0593272 = 466,103968(Hz)
B4 = 466,103968 x 1,0593272 = 493,75(Hz)
C5 493,75 x 1,0593272 = 523,04(Hz)
Why the number 1,05932?
Its just divide above note for the below note
A#4/A4 466,10/440= 1,05932 (Hz)
Sorry for the long text!
I hope it can help!
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is this only for kicks made in Sound Forge or for all kicks?
Never let computers to win a game! :)
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LivePsy
Started Topics :
0
Posts :
6
Posted : Feb 28, 2007 23:36
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On 2007-02-28 18:44, jivamukti wrote:
Just use the same kick & rolling bassline everybody else is using. Nobody cares and in fact you don't have to worry about your tracks not getting accepted for being deviant.
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This is a dilemma: are you using tired old cliche sounds, or are you leveraging a common musical vocabulary? Same thing, different point of view.
The point is that some old sounds work and you will no doubt realise that almost all other sounds you try don't work either individually or together. I still find that the mid '90s XStatic goldmine sampling CD has good sounds. New century, same old sounds
Cheers,
B
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