I totally agree that it is really more about sample selection rather than spending hours and hours mixing a kick and trying to get it to fit in the mix.
One thing you can also do when you work with kick samples is to load a number of them into a drum machine and then simply move the midi notes up or down across the notes that represent the different samples to try out different kicks. I personally use a kick drum synth most of the time where you can completely shape the sound.
Yo! Thanks for the insight man! A great method that I haven’t seen anyone else use for kick selection is to load a whole pack of kicks in to an EXS24 sampler. Uncheck the pitch option in the sampler menu. Then I can just move a midi note down the piano roll to listen to how each kick sounds in the track.
This is probably the most important lesson for me right now. And nobody is really talking about this on RU-vid. I've been looking for a video on "how" to choose drum samples. "How" are we supposed to know which is working and which isn't? How do we develop the ears ... other than Soundgym but that doesn't deal with this subject. Thanks Big Z this and your Kick Masterclass lesson are a definite step in the right direction.
I'd still split the kick into low end hi end even if its the same sample, it gives you the possibility to put effects on the high end while keeping the low end clean. Anyway, just found your channel and i'm digging your videos, can't wait for the weekend when i will have some time to go through them. I've already watched the Fat drum and pro reverb ones and they are just great. Big thumbs up.
Just the tutorial i was looking for. At first i thought most of the samples that i have especially the kick ones, need nothing to be changed and are perfect but i was always struggling with the low end because of that. This tutorial taught me what was necessary very easily. Thanks Big Z for taking the time to make these awesome tutorials to help out new producers like me.
Very cool! I have a very similar process, I tend to put all the kicks I like into Ultrabeat and then I shape the tail of the kick drum there, and then EQing to get rid of frequencies i dont like, and sometimes compression or some additional saturation if needed^^
This was awesome man, really learned a lot from this one! Thanks for the great videos, I watch as many as I can. Also, I'm digging the tunes on your spotify!
Great tutorial!! Any possibility of doing a breakdown of the track while focusing on layering synths, kicks and the overall processing?? Thank you very much
Hi Big Z, I watched this video. No matter what I do I can’t get any kick to sound right. Can you please consider doing a part two to this video about kick where you troubleshoot. I watched this video, but I don’t understand how to troubleshoot a bad kick. I know you said picking the right kick from the beginning is critical. I went through battery 4 and they most of them sounded bad even after I eq them and shaped them with volume shaper. Also, I was wondering typically do you look for a tonal or atonal kick? In closing, thank you for posting your videos I have learned so much from you.
Grundsätzlich gut gemacht, aber doch eher sehr umständlich, wie Du die passende Kick suchst. In einer TOP Library braucht man für ALLE Musikrichtungen max. 10 Kicks, die man irgendwann bestens kennt. Dann braucht man nur mit dem EQ ein bißchen Feintuning zum Rest der anderen Instrumente, das war es! Beste Grüße, Horst Lemke, Musikproduzent, Germany
Yo man, what key command do you use at 1:51 to elongate the audio files to take up exactly one beat? I find using the looping feature difficult because 1) I never found a way to do that and 2) not all samples have the correct starting point. But mostly the length thing.
Big Z has some of the best tutorials I've seen on RU-vid. It's so clear that he knows so much more about this stuff than the other people making tutorials. Thank you sm
So you don't bother about the kick being in the same key as the song or are the kicks you're choosing from already key wise sorted? If the key would bother would you put the kick in the right key before or after its processing?
If you're looking for the kick drum used by Avicii, Zedd, Calvin Harris etc there was a download on a subreddit of it. Just search into google "Zedd kick drum reddit" and you'll find a post where someone in the comments posts a link to the kick.
#Challenge do You do any challenges? here is one! make a music using only one preset (You can't change anything of the osc's not even their volume but you can LFO , Envolope or filter them, or use effects)
