Kick Drum - Hole or no hole? What about a KickPort? 

Well.... it was partly for comedy value :) It’s been replaced several times since with pre-cut skins

I appreciate that!

Keeps them out of the snare mic

Since Ive been loving you

I hit the drum with the foot stick. Whatever I do, I do it consistently

Pretty sure that makes no difference except for accessibility of mic positioning. How could clock positioning help on a circular instrument? You’re no nearer or farther from a harmonic resonance point

Hop Pole Studios - I don’t think anywhere around the clock would make a difference (although it is almost always done on the lower side, say 4:00 to 8:00) However, a lot of drum vets say that the old school large center hole DOES make a difference in that it allows a “straight through” passage of air from the center of the batter head (at beater point) right out of the center of reso head. There’s no question that the center of the reso is where the most movement takes place, a few cotton balls in your floor tom will illustrate that well. It’d be interesting to see a centered port compared to off center porting. Otherwise, I have to say I agree with Astronaut to a point - not that you can’t tune a ported reso (of course you can) but that you lose a lot of mids that fill out the tone. (Not to mention decreased shell resonance, which can make a bass drum less omnidirectional in a live setting). I, like others, preferred the virgin drum sound. It was fuller, fatter, more musical, and more natural. I have to say that to me, cutting a hole in a bass doesn’t make any more sense than doing the same to a tom. We tried that, it was called the 70’s and the drums sounded like crap. Then drum samples came along and now there’s a vicious cycle of people trying to emulate dead, boxy drum sounds on real acoustic drums... Why?!? There’s a reason Peart and many other iconic drummers DONT port - superior bass drum sound. Maybe not easier to mic or mix, granted, but should we make music that’s easier for the techs or music that sounds better for the listeners? Depends who you ask!

Always make a hole for the studio, that’s my opinion. Otherwise you’re making it very difficult to get microphones in the right places for a balanced sound

Hop Pole Studios Thanks!

No, it changes the overall tone. This video is to show that rather than the assumption

@@adamsteelproducer I did not realize the mic on the outside was a condenser mic, I was assuming dynamic for some reason. I never used a condenser on a kick before, always dynamic. My dynamic mic sounds better right on the hole in my opinion. Was the audix mic inside hanging in space from the mic cable or resting on the pillow?

Why not get pre-cut heads with a reinforcing ring before installing the kick port? Solves that issue very quickly

Haven't tried that cause as you probably know the kick port comes with a reinforcing ring and everytime it would eventually rip. Might give it a try if I try one more time.

yeah, i bought a pre-cut evans eq-3 probably a year ago and its still completely intact

From a microphone’s perspective, if it’s tuned properly there should be literally no difference in hole position. None. Because the drum is tuned the same way regardless of hole position around the clock face. The only determining sonic differences could be from hole size, and position nearer or further from the centre, which decides which harmonics are dampened.

No need to be sorry, it’s all subjective! I’m not sponsored by anyone, just curious at differences…

Not quite- if you’re mic is close to the batter head inside the shell, then most of that particular signal will be comprised of that sound, but the overall acoustics of the kit in the overheads, in the room etc. are still affected by there being a resonant membrane on the front- removing it entirely results in a very dry, sharp, punchy sound but it tends to lack a bit in “body” and “air” to put it somewhat abstractly- I personally prefer a resonant head to remain on the kick, with the microphone placed just inside the port- I get a nice bit of breath from the resonant head, but the attack of the batter head- a fairly rare technique also is to use a mic with a figure 8 pickup pattern to capture the beater striking the batter head as well as the sympathetic resonance of the front head- then you can adjust the levels accordingly to taste. As I understood it, Vinnie Paul had his kick drums mic’ed like this on one or more of Pantera’s records. And I have to admit, despite never having heard of that, it made a lot of sense to me and I would like to give it a try myself.

@@TheEnderBand thanks for the detailed response!

Uhhhh no. Do you understand acoustics and frequency at all? What makes a drum a drum is the speed at which air and vibration moves between two heads that are tensioned to an equal distance across the circumference of their cylindrical bodies. If you remove an entire skin it no longer vibrates or resonates.

I disagree entirely, the purpose of the hole is mostly to eliminate a portion of first order harmonics, those that resonate (and continue to ring) in the 140-400hz region and can make a kick drum sound boxy and hard to fit in a mix. If you can’t tune a drum with a hole in the resonant head, that doesn’t mean other people can’t do it- perhaps you need to re-evaluate technique? Are you trying to get too much resonance from the batter head? Are your skins inappropriate thickness or ply for the tuning you’re trying to achieve? There are a lot of variables you can go through in search of appropriate tone.

Hop Pole Studios thanks for the paternal talk. I’m gonna pass on the re-evaluation of my technique and knowledge of drumhead plies, it served me well until now, and even better now that I came to the conclusion I gave you above. If you think about it; the region you specified is problematic on all drums. Maybe we should patch holes on all the toms resonant heads. I know I won’t.

@@simaojoseph wow somebody got very butthurt at the suggestion that they perhaps didn’t have all the answers when it came to drum tuning and acoustic properties... he was being fairly diplomatic I thought, while not mincing words and simply suggesting that perhaps you hadn’t considered alternatives or perhaps hadn’t thoroughly troubleshot the potential factors at play. You really need to work on how you respond to someone offering suggestions/constructive feedback. I don’t understand what you meant by “can’t tune a head with a hole in it”; in what respect to you mean? Because it affects the uniform tension of the membrane itself? Just because there is now an aperture in the film doesn’t somehow mean that the head ceases to respond to tension, nor does it mean that it doesn’t still respond to acoustic vibrations; it also allows for micing techniques that involve placing the microphone inside the shell itself without resorting to the methods someone like Simon Phillips uses to mic his kicks without sound ports. And the properties of kick drums are very different from toms, hence why he still mics his toms externally- the desired tonality of a bass drum is usually very different than the way someone would typically want toms to sound. Or I suppose the majority of recording engineers and musicians over the last 50 years somehow missed something that you didn’t- perhaps you should enlighten everyone about how they’ve got it all wrong and that your way is the correct way, as your comprehensive and encyclopedic understanding of drum tuning has “served (you) well”, whatever that means

@@simaojoseph oh, by the way- since I’m sure your exhaustive and comprehensive experience with all things drum tuning oriented has undoubtedly lead you down this path, let’s let people see for themselves the results of the concept of Tom resonant head ports- you may have mentioned it in a sarcastic/mocking way, however it is a thing and perhaps for some, a desirable result ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-zxZWkovyWqk.html

@@TheEnderBand sorry I did not reply to your previous comment but since you implied many things I have not said, wasn't sure I should. but since you insist... First, the guy said he disagree ENTIRELY, fair enough; and then he suggested to re-evaluate my way. That's somehow condescending. I agree he offered suggestions but he clearly overlooked the point of my original comment. But hey who gives a f... right? My exhaustive and comprehensive experience as You call it; led me exactly to questioning these approaches: instead of copying; like lots of engineers and musicians did and continue to do "over the last 50 years". Well not all of them, Steve Albini, normally mics the bass drum both sides, ported or non ported; go figure. But I digress. Maybe I miss-understood the ton of videos that claim the need of finding one pitch over the entire surface of the head. In other words, even tension all around the head except for the kick reso to which no one seems to explain. Also I believe drum manufacturers would also suggest to do so: aim for a even pitch around one particular drum to get the most out of your shells. Hell I believe that's how most of the instruments work, even synthesizers. And if that wasn't enough someone invented a machine called tuner so the many instruments of any ensemble could play to the same key and sound, well, in tune. And we all know we even can tune individual drums to pitches. Rad right? But; when it comes to the kick reso, we have to go with... average; just like they suggest at around minute 12 on the video you linked. All in all, I understand not all Bass drums need to sound in pitch, depending on the genre you play, and that making a hole is fine. But again that makes for drum full of overtones that one can only control by the mean of muffling. The drumset is one of the oldest instruments of the modern electric ensembles, but because of economics, innovation is very slow or retrograde. The even separation in drum sizes is good example of that. Just check out Kumu drums and look what they're doing to bass drums. I have one kit in which I performed their solution to "our problem" and it works just perfect.

That’s your biggest criticism of the video? It doesn’t affect the sound or the result in any way. And just so you know, I threw together the green screen setup so I could be at home looking after my 9 month pregnant partner and still film something.

Hop Pole Studios, not a criticism bro. Its really useful. We in our church trying to equalize the bass drum for so long and this video is really helpful for it. Sorry if what I said did hurt you. Thanks for the video.

It doesn’t hurt, it just struck me as odd that a comment would come in unrelated to the content.

The point of the hole is to eliminate a portion of the first order harmonics, the placement is exactly where intended, and the purpose of the hole is usually for access but not always- and this video is to show sonic differences in a controlled environment. Putting a mic in the hole itself is only repeatable in one circumstance so is irrelevant. This test has merit. Also the “horribly made” point has no bearing on the test, it’s just an aesthetic thing. I replaced the entire head the next day, so this was just to see how different the sound was.