Kick Drum transient helper technique

[C0re]

Hi everyone, fellow superstar world no1 EDM DJ producer artist uutra music festival king here…

After analysing some kick drums mainly used in four on the floor type music, I’m having to come to the conclusion again that the evil is in the detail and that also applies for kick drum engineering in this particular genre.

I’ve been listening to top producer’s music, such as the Swedish House Mafia… I came a cross some remix STEMS and been listening to the kick drum samples from the song called ‘One' and ‘Greyhound’.

I can definitely hear a specific sonic phenomenon. It is the click on the top part of the kick, which sounds like a tiny bit of a reverse shaker, close hat, maybe a reverb with pre-delay? It’s barely noticeable but it’s there and that really helps forming the a character of the kick and it’s really pleasant to the ear.

I won’t be able to show this kick drum in question at the moment, but if you listen to Call On Me by Eric Prydz, you can hear something similar at the very beginning of the song, on the kick drum. It’s not mp3 conversation artefact as I have the song in good quality and I can confirm it’s part of the sound.

My question to you, have you got any advice or particular example how to achieve similar things? Is it done by purpose or just a compressor artefact? Is it delay, reverb, or really just another percussion sample being reversed right before the kick kicks in? If it’s a compressor, which one is usually used?

Also good old Deadmau5 has a live stream where you can clearly see that he uses an audio track called ‘Transient Helper’ which looks like a reversed hat or shaker to help brining the transient of the original kick. Daft Punk’s infamous Around The World also got a similar effect on the kick, however it’s due to the sampling technique they used in the emu sampler I believe.

Anyways, I do understand that these can be different techniques and presumably every producer uses their own method, I’ve also been experimenting of course, but I’m very curious if you have any knowledge regarding this. Any advise would be much appreciated.

[Ari-S]

It's a bit vague to tell what you're talking about. The kick drum in 'Call On Me' and the one in 'One/Greyhound' are both completely different. The SHM kick is much more "clean" and snappy (almost like a TR-808 kick), compared to Erik Prydz's kick, which has a much noisier transient and a completely different overall texture and quality. I guess you mean that artificial pumping and noisy character that makes it feel like the kick gets "sucked" in?

I think why you mention the Swedish House Mafia, is because some of their remix stems (like the ones from Greyhound) are converted to very low fidelity MP3 on purpose, which creates a lot of artifacts. You can hear it very obvious on that kick drum from the Greyhound stems. It already cuts off like a brick-wall at 15 kHz and it has a lot of aliasing and artificial noise to it (this isn't present in the original song). So in that case, the characteristics you were talking about ARE in fact the cause of MP3 artifacts.

Either way, Daft Punk (in their early days) did a lot of side-chain compression to the kick drum using a very cheap analog compressor (the Alesis 3630, I believe), which may have contributed to character of the kick as well. A while ago, I figured out that using an analog style compressor (like the Glue in Ableton Live) for heavy, pumping side-chain compression with a short/medium attack (0.3 - 1 ms) and a short release (around 100 ms) resulted in this very characteristic side-chain compression, similar to what's used on many Daft Punk records. When pumping it pretty hard, it creates this sorta noisy artifact right before the initial attack of the kick drum, which creates this amazing pumping character, almost like the kick gets sucked into the mix. It works extremely well when using it on drum-loops, but I'm pretty sure that guys like Daft Punk applied side-chain compression to pretty much everything, so just go wild with it if that's the sound you're after.

In the case of Daft Punk and Erik Prydz, I indeed agree that it also has a lot to do with the samples being used. Both acts probably used a lot of sampled kick drums in their early days, sampled from drum machines or vinyl records onto a 12 bit sampler. Usually if you sample the kick drum a little bit before the actual attack of the kick, you'll sample some extra noisy flavors with it. Then, if you compress that kick really tight, this noise will be enhanced and will glue with with the transient of the kick drum, which changes the character of that kick completely.
Combine this with that characteristic side-chain pumping, and you should have something very similar going on.

Now, I'm not sure if you're in possession of a vinyl collection and a 12 bit sampler, but there are other ways to recreate this. I've once read an interview with Tom Staar, and he said he always adds a tiny burst of white noise right before the attack of the kick drum, which adds more character the the transient of the kick, very similar to your reference about the technique that deadmau5 was using. This works wonderfully for this purpose.

[C0re]

Thank you Ari-S for your respond. I do agree that the sidechain especially with SSL style compression (i.e. the glue) (because of the knee type and other characteristics of that device give sort of a different pumping effect than other compressors) can definitely be the cause of this effect.

You might be right about the quality of the SHM stems.

Regarding the Daft Punk Around The World kick to the best of my knowledge it's a kick from the Emu SP1200 and is pitched up or down, and the 'sucking' effect in that case is caused by the Emu's repitching algorithm which is amazing. So much else is going on in that track in the mix that refines the kick's character.

[Ari-S]

Thank you Ari-S for your respond. I do agree that the sidechain especially with SSL style compression (i.e. the glue) (because of the knee type and other characteristics of that device give sort of a different pumping effect than other compressors) can definitely be the cause of this effect.

You might be right about the quality of the SHM stems.

Regarding the Daft Punk Around The World kick to the best of my knowledge it's a kick from the Emu SP1200 and is pitched up or down, and the 'sucking' effect in that case is caused by the Emu's repitching algorithm which is amazing. So much else is going on in that track in the mix that refines the kick's character.

Ah yeah, the SP-1200 is an amazing sampler. It adds a a lot of grit to drums. Would love to own one, one day.

By the way, thinking about it, a little while ago I created a kick drum very similar to the Around the World kick. I believe I layered a processed TR-909 kick underneath a sampled kick (from vinyl) and a kick from an old drum sampler (I believe it was the SP-12), and compressed it really tight. Just like I explained earlier, the noise before the attack of that sampled kick added a lot of that "pumping" flavor to it, and compressing the whole thing added a lot of punch to it.
I can send it to you if you're interested.

[C0re]

Yes please, that would be much appreciated!