How do commercial artists find/make their KICK drums??! They kick completely different than in sample libraries!!!

[Forgotten]

If your kick stands out life is much easier. Simple fact.

Wasn't that what Chuck Norris said?

It might have been, but whoever he was saying it too probably wasn’t conscious for long enough to hear it.

[BertKoor]

Let's do some simple maths about what was tried.

• Gigabytes and gigabytes of kick samples. OK, let's round that down to just 100 MB. Kicks are mono. At 44.1 kHz / 16 bit that's about 1000 seconds of sampling material (left 10% slag space for overhead) which is about 15 minutes to listen to from start to finish. We might even cut it down by a factor 10 or 100 later (resulting in 100 or 10 different kicks) and we'll see whether it really matters.
• Several EQ's. Maybe three? An EQ I would see minimal fit for mixing purposes has bass & treble shelve filters and two sweepable parametric bands with adjustable Q (3 knobs per band). That totals to 8 knobs. Say each knob has only ten positions to check (quite course) then there are 10 ^ 8 = 100.000.000 combinations to check. For each EQ.
• One run of 1 minute worth of samples (maybe 50 samples) through 100 million knob positions, that's 100 million minutes, which is 1.65 million hours. If you do it for a living (that's 40 hours a week, 50 weeks a year) there are only 2000 usable hours in a year. So running 50 samples through all knob positions of one EQ takes you 833 years. ≈

If there is one secret position, it surely is easy to miss this way.

[Spring Goose]

Are you sure you've got the right samples?

These aren't hip-hop. I don't make hip-hop. I make techno which also needs certain things, and these can suffice (i think)

https://www.samplemagic.com/details/336 ... -drum-hits

[Spring Goose]

What i meant is techno doesnt have a super secret and i doubt hip-hop has too.

[DJ Warmonger]

One run of 1 minute worth of samples (maybe 50 samples) through 100 million knob positions, that's 100 million minutes, which is 1.65 million hours. If you do it for a living (that's 40 hours a week, 50 weeks a year) there are only 2000 usable hours in a year. So running 50 samples through all knob positions of one EQ takes you 833 years.

This is exactly why exhaustive search, or even gradient descent search (aka. tweaking knobs) is not practical in music production You must already start close to neighbourhood of your optimum to even hope to find it.

Another way to look at things is a million monkey theorem. If a million of monkeys randomly played things for a million years, one of them would eventually create a Bach. But, don't be a monkey. You need to be smarter.

[vurt]

i think you need infinite monkeys or time for bach.
a million will get you elton.

[BertKoor]

But, take a song, like, for example Dr. Dre ft. Snoop Dogg - Still D.R.E: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CL6n0FJZpk - Notice how the KICK kicks in COMPLETELY different registers than ALL your .wav samples!!!

I dunno. Gotta say I'm not that impressed with this kick. Leaves me stone cold, gives no boner like it should. Both when listening on cans and on the laptop. Using Beats cans and HP Beats edition. Cannot blame the speakers, can you?

[an-electric-heart]

Are you sure you've got the right samples?

These aren't hip-hop. I don't make hip-hop. I make techno which also needs certain things, and these can suffice (i think)

https://www.samplemagic.com/details/336 ... -drum-hits

Cheers.
I bought those, they sound great.

[excuse me please]

Step3 add parallel compression. On both the regular parts and haas parts. Drop another 2 tracks. At least you must have 6 kicks running (3+3 haas). This kind of tricky because it can make the kick sound very loud but introduce sucking noises.

Now you must have an ultra solid thud. Very tight. The trick is to add oompf. Still looking for a good oompf. Usually I think it's too much, not a fan of it. I try to get a more natural feeling.

[an-electric-heart]

Step3 add parallel compression. On both the regular parts and haas parts. Drop another 2 tracks. At least you must have 6 kicks running (3+3 haas). This kind of tricky because it can make the kick sound very loud but introduce sucking noises.

Now you must have an ultra solid thud. Very tight. The trick is to add oompf. Still looking for a good oompf. Usually I think it's too much, not a fan of it. I try to get a more natural feeling.

Eh? You layer 6 kicks? I don't think that's a very good idea, maybe 2; One with strong sub frequencies, and one to cover the "click", but that just sounds like a phase nightmare, not to mention haas is a stereo effect... maybe you're joking... I can't tell.

[Unaspected]

Step3 add parallel compression. On both the regular parts and haas parts. Drop another 2 tracks. At least you must have 6 kicks running (3+3 haas). This kind of tricky because it can make the kick sound very loud but introduce sucking noises.

Now you must have an ultra solid thud. Very tight. The trick is to add oompf. Still looking for a good oompf. Usually I think it's too much, not a fan of it. I try to get a more natural feeling.

Eh? You layer 6 kicks? I don't think that's a very good idea, maybe 2; One with strong sub frequencies, and one to cover the "click", but that just sounds like a phase nightmare, not to mention haas is a stereo effect... maybe you're joking... I can't tell.

Obvious joke, man.

What i meant is techno doesnt have a super secret and i doubt hip-hop has too.

No more than processing tricks that most people work out when they know how to use their gear. Main thing that hip-hop producers like is grit. Getting the signal out of the box and processed through pretty much anything that will impart some character. Usually this is done using tape but it might just be to get some magic hiss out of an old small form mixer. Depends on what feels right. Innovating and creating your own secret sauce is best and surely, most fun.

In the context of the thread, there's the "Pultec trick" which isn't really a trick and it just happens to have been done using a Pultec but you can do it with any parametric EQ. It simply amounts to dropping the lows and then reintroducing them with a bell around the sub frequencies that you wish to pronounce more. So you're tightening up the sound and emphasising punch.

It works nicely on toms as well. I quite like resonant filters for this as they can then work to control low end decay. You can gate your toms quite abruptly; Then high pass around the fundamental frequency; Now use the resonance of the filter to bring the fundamental back - and push as far as taste requires. So we have kind of resynthesised the fundamental using the filter.

Again though, context is of vital importance when mixing audio.

[Jet Set]

Are you sure you've got the right samples?

These aren't hip-hop. I don't make hip-hop. I make techno which also needs certain things, and these can suffice (i think)

https://www.samplemagic.com/details/336 ... -drum-hits

Cheers.
I bought those, they sound great.

Hey - lovin that too!

And on sale for 10 bucks!

Now to make some kits out of the 1000s of samples!

If you like this then I can THOROUGHLY recommend DRUMVOLUTION - it’s amazing.
27,000 FAT drum samples on three tape saturation levels included - pricier but the options are amazing.

Ha....

[vurt]

have you tried "popping a cap" in your basses ass?

[Forgotten]

have you tried "popping a cap" in your basses ass?

Don't forget to hold the gun sideways while you do it.

[Robmobius]

Are you sure you've got the right samples?

These aren't hip-hop. I don't make hip-hop. I make techno which also needs certain things, and these can suffice (i think)

https://www.samplemagic.com/details/336 ... -drum-hits

Eddie knows his shit in fairness... Interestingly enough, besides the fact that he's got years of experience, and knows how to layer drums, etc. Just look at the outboard gear he's using too!