Changing kick velocity during the track?

[kitkonis]

I know most electronic music producers have this idea to keep the kick steady and at the same volume trough the whole track. What do you think of that? I sometimes loose the impact of my kick in the middle of the track because it is so full of everything and no side chain helps, there is still a little loss of impact no mather what I do, so I though why not increase the volume of the kick and then lower it again later? this does not happen a lot of times because mostly i make passive tracks but sometimes i make ta track which really is a lot louder in the middle than in the beginning and there is a lot going on. Any ideas? Maybe a stupid question.. I still prefer to kick the kick at the same volume but i do want to hear your opinions/tricks..

[Googly Smythe]

You could try this tip from Sound On Sound. Although it's designed for vocals I tried it on my drum bus and it raises the level of the whole kit by a couple of decibels during the louder sections.

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/jun10/a ... e_0610.htm

[ghettosynth]

I know most electronic music producers have this idea to keep the kick steady and at the same volume trough the whole track.

Who told you that?

[lfm]

Just remember that multilayered instruments will change timbre with velocity.
So riding the volume is better approach.

[ImNotDedYet]

I've heard plenty of songs where the kick velocity changes, but moreso in the form of within say, 8 bars of music, or emphasizing a certain beat in a bar. Making widescale velocity changes for a section of the song because the kick is getting lost doesn't seem like a good idea to me. You'd be better off bringing the level of everything else down to get back your kick punchiness IMO.

Remember, most people compress their kicks. Increasing volume could impact the compression levels depending on how you have your compression setup. Will you be able to automate the compression to match the transients, etc with the lowered kick velocity?

Side chaining will now also potentially be affected depending on how it's been set up, and hopefully it's setup so sidechain compression is affected because otherwise you're not really sidechaining properly. So now you have to once again automate the compression on your sidechain, but again...are you still getting a match on transients, peak cuts, etc.

Finally, upping the kick for significant periods of time will likely take your overall decibal output higher for that part of the song. Once you get to the final 2-bus, or the master, you'll likely have compression and/or limiting setup. Again, automation of those elements would be needed to get a similar result from when the kick was a lower velocity. However, again, you'll likely not be able to match the transients/peak control nearly as well here since it's essentially doing this for the whole track.

It's easy to forget to adjust levels of one of these when you make a tweak to the kick velocity as you mix, go back and adjust, etc.

So yeah, I think while increasing the kick velocity for a section seems like a good idea. I'd steer clear of it and adjust levels of everything else by bringing them down so the kick remains punchy. Everything in club-style music, if that's what you're making is based on the kick. Get your kick right, then work on the other items because you will tweak once you get to mixing it all down and you'll likely take away some goodness of your song by not adjusting something properly based on a kick tweak.

[mztk]

(for what it's worth..) i had an old analogue drum synth that
never stayed stable, was hard to get it to stay at a particular setting,
but it could give a rising, driving effect at random that was quite
interesting, more like a really long subtle LFO, over? 16, 32 bars? etc.

it was because of a cross modulation it had, so it would rise gradually then
go back down again, more of a tightening of the kick, tok tok tok tok.
not velocity, but it gave the impression of coming in harde, harder, harder,
then falling off again.
so yeah, why not, it sounded good. we've been hearing that steady old
4/4 for the last 25 years...boom boom boom boom. anyway having it exactly
the same all the time doesn't sound good in the end, you suss it out, and
then it's all you can hear.
and if you look at some modern drum machines, they save the sound settings
with the pattern, so your sounds can change dynamically with pattern changes.
this is the problem with the computer, it just imposes -or tends to - a static,
generic approach because it is cognitive and you're obeying its rules all the time.

[zethus909]

i cut the ve=locity for a kick roll, like 16th notes, especially right before a a kick drop......it creates a better impact on the drop....plus it's just tiring to the ears to have all that bass hitting so hard too much too fast. i would say advanced songwriting......if you know how to employ it then do it....but dont ddo it just for the sake of it.