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Tuning your kick to your bassline.
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psylevation
IsraTrance Full Member
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841
Posted : Jul 6, 2006 09:43
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Hey everbody, quick question. I've heard that tuning your kick drum to your bassline helps it to fit better in the song.
Now the method I was told to go about doing this was to add a bunch of distortion to the kick drum so when you tune it you can hear what note it's playing on and make that in tune with the bassline.
I was wondering if anybody could expand on this or if anybody has a good method of doing this.
Right now I have my kick drum in RMIV and I turn the distortion all the way up, but I'm not sure by ear if it's in tune.
Should I be playing them right on top of each other or just have a held out bass note thats playing behind it.
Ideas, Tips?
thanx ahead of time |
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Kitnam
Mantik
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110
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1151
Posted : Jul 6, 2006 10:26
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the distortion-method is a nice idea because it adds harmonics to the drum which can make the tuning more recognizeable. tuning drums into the right tune is important for a real good track.
about a kickdrum i have doubts, because a kick is a very fast pitch-down, so it hasnt a real straight tone to identify. maybe it has something like a mathematical average but i am not sure how a kick-tone is identified by the human ear. maybe the last very deep decay is the important pitch.
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ichabod
Started Topics :
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28
Posted : Jul 6, 2006 12:43
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Maybe the point in the decay of the kick tail where the first bass note starts is the important point - after all, bad tuning is only going to be obvious where the bass note is playing at the same time. |
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dtd
IsraTrance Junior Member
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490
Posted : Jul 6, 2006 13:34
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Quote:
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On 2006-07-06 10:26, Kitnam wrote:
[..] i am not sure how a kick-tone is identified by the human ear. maybe the last very deep decay is the important pitch. [..]
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this is interesting! quite a fundamental question for auditory analysis. |
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Kaz
IsraTrance Full Member
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Posted : Jul 6, 2006 13:56
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Well, quite frankly, the easiest way to do this is just to select the right kick. Just make a simple bassline (the base note at the offbeat), keep the kick playing for the length you want it to be playing in the rest of the track and keep on replacing the kick until it sounds smooth. If the bassdrum is in tune, you'll automatically notice it just fits better with the bassline than those without. If you want to work with two different lengths of bassdrum (oneshot when the bassline isn't playing for instance), then you need to do this twice - first make a list of the ones that sound good with the short length and just check all of those with longer length too. Then, you can look up the note frequency table.
Now, just in case it isn't a 100% match, you can look things up in the note frequency table (if you do not have one - http://www.phy.mtu.edu/~suits/notefreqs.html ), and raise the sub frequency of the track's base note by a bit with high resonance on it.
You can also scan manually for a frequency, using a high-resonance frequency gain - you just change it slowly, starting at 35Hz and until until 70Hz - the moment you hit that sub note, the volume will increase sharply. With the note frequency table, you can see if the sub on the kick is the right note for the track.
After finishing these steps you can remove the bassline, and the kick will be in tune with the track, and then you can extend the bass in the kick with delays, reverbs, distortions, whatever - it'll be in tune. Add the bassline you want to play in the track this time, and resize the kick accordingly, and voila.
http://forum.isratrance.com/viewtopic.php/topic/38135/forum/2 is a thread about replacing the sub note in the kick with a sinewave at the right frequency, another solution to this, with it's pros and cons. http://www.myspace.com/Hooloovoo222 |
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Boobytrip
IsraTrance Junior Member
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988
Posted : Jul 6, 2006 14:04
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It's pretty easy to tune your kick to your bassline. Just loop a bar with kick and bass playing and turn the tune knob on the kick-sample in your sampler until it sounds right. You'll hear it when they match because the sounds sort of blend.
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Kaz
IsraTrance Full Member
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Posted : Jul 6, 2006 16:36
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Retuning kicks isn't really recomended, it's better to select a different kick or just make as minor modifications as possible - the whole feel of the kick changes when you change it's pitch, and you might lose some fatness in the low frequencies that way.
http://www.myspace.com/Hooloovoo222 |
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illusions
Erebus
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40
Posts :
626
Posted : Jul 6, 2006 18:46
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boobytrip: have you ever managed to get a decent kick after pitching it up/down with a sampler like battery ? i've tried that with a million kicks, never got a good result.
i do boost the fundamental freq of the track on the kick. never tried the distortion method.
most kick tails are in the sub freq's - distinguishing any kind of pitch at those freq's is near impossible in my opinion.
anybody here that can post some samples of "tuned" kicks ? |
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Colin OOOD
Moderator
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5380
Posted : Jul 6, 2006 19:19
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PoM
IsraTrance Full Member
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Posted : Jul 6, 2006 20:00
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nice tips,i usally tune the bassline to the kick cause it s hard to find a good one. |
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Boobytrip
IsraTrance Junior Member
Started Topics :
39
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988
Posted : Jul 6, 2006 21:42
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@illusions: yep, but like kaz said, you have to use a kick that's within a few notes from your bassline main pitch. Normally i let the bassline play, and skip through my secret kicks directory until i find one that fits and then i tweak the pitch if it's needed. I never found it difficult, takes me about a few seconds to tune it. It's just like tuning a guitar.
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br0d
IsraTrance Junior Member
Started Topics :
12
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355
Posted : Jul 9, 2006 10:32
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Well one of the benefits of having so many kicks is that you can sort through them until you get one that was synthesized in the right key. Or you can make it from scratch. But the bassline has to be the the dominant element pitch wise because the key that a specific bassline is in, with all the note variations that take place in most basslines, is the most important, and in fact more important than the specific greatness of some kick. For instance, say your tune is in E, but while in E, the lowest note of the bassline is a B0/31Hz. Well even if you have the perfect E tuned kick, that 31Hz bass tone won't fly in anything other than dub or slow music, so you might transpose the bassline up to the key of G, which invalidates your E kick, but also pushes that ultra-low B0 up to a D1/37Hz, which makes your bassline punch much harder. So you find a new kick, and life goes on. 
Think of it this way--a metal band like Korn doesn't pick which drop tuned key to play in based around which bass drum tuning the drummer likes...they bass it on how cool the guitars sound for the song (which is why many guitarists keep several differently tuned guitars on stage) and then the drummer will work around it (or even use a generically pitched kick with tons of beater and lots of damping...) |
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