KVR Audio

Oviedesia · Post by **Oviedesia** » Fri Jun 15, 2012 12:16 am

Hi community.

I've been wondering some days ago what's a good method to tune your kickdrums to the key of your track. Now, i've been doing it all this time using this method:

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3wiLQ90mKOk

Which i actually find that robs the kick of deepnes and punch, do you know any other way?

JD Gaffe · Post by **JD Gaffe** » Fri Jun 15, 2012 12:24 am

You could make the kick yourself from scratch, easiest way to get a kick to hit the pitch you want.

Oviedesia · Post by **Oviedesia** » Fri Jun 15, 2012 12:49 am

Im practicing hard, but until i reach a good overall level i cant use kicks made by myself, so if it was a sample, how would you go for it?

JD Gaffe · Post by **JD Gaffe** » Fri Jun 15, 2012 1:19 am

Oviedesia wrote:Im practicing hard, but until i reach a good overall level i cant use kicks made by myself, so if it was a sample, how would you go for it?

Well all the guy did in that video was re-pitch the sample, which is all you can really do to.. change the pitch of a sample. If something is dramatically changed in the sound, its either because you changed the pitch by too extreme an amount, or you built your song around your kick and then changed the kick part way through the song making process. Doing this would skew how the kick's frequencies reacts to all the other sounds in the mix, since you specifically mixed using the kick's previous frequencies.

If that's the scenario, then next time tune your kick from the get-go, and make sure everything is properly in key that needs to be.

bbaggins · Post by **bbaggins** » Fri Jun 15, 2012 1:24 am

My experience has been that you can only re-pitch acoustic drum samples over a very narrow range before they start sounding yucky. It always works out better to audition a bunch of different samples and find the one that's closest to your target pitch.

Simon Morrison · Post by **Simon Morrison** » Fri Jun 15, 2012 5:48 am

There are several Brainworx plug-ins that include a "Bass-Shift" feature for tuning kick drums.

I have been getting good results with bx_dynEQ V2.

Kim Lajoie · Post by **Kim Lajoie** » Sun Jun 17, 2012 4:01 am

It's more about tone than note. Just because we can, doesn't mean we should...

http://blog.kimlajoie.com/tuning-the-ki ... -the-song/

-Kim.

stillshaded · Post by **stillshaded** » Sun Jun 17, 2012 4:19 am

In electronic music I think it can be important to tune the kickdrum... with your ears.

If you can't monitor bass properly it could be pointless to try. I loop a couple of beats where the kick and bass play at the same time and tune the kick (or audition other samples, or if I'm synthesizing it...) until they sit well together .

Oviedesia · Post by **Oviedesia** » Sun Jun 17, 2012 5:00 am

Thanks for all the replies guys! Btw, Kim, i'm a big fan of your blog, keep up the great work!

randy4me · Post by **randy4me** » Sun Jun 17, 2012 10:05 pm

Here is an older thread that covers the topic.

http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic ... +kick+drum

Tuning The Kickdrum