I’d love to ask for a few more sounds that I want in the same thread, if that isn’t against the rules.
I am starting from scratch. How can I get my kicks as hard as Nero’s for example:
and how do I get this synth sound?
For those that remember me and are curious. My computer has been broken for a very long time. Despite a backup… My renoise files have been lost bar a few that for some reason are from way back when. So now I return, I will be starting from scratch, which is killing me. But It needs doing. Lets make some renoise!
I’m not mad on Nero, I just want these certain kinds of sound.
The trick usually is to allow the low punch frequencies of the kick to sound and surpress the low frequencies of other instruments in the same range (usually the bass).
In the first example, the lower frequencies of the bass seems cleverly filtered away when the kick sounds so these frequencies would never colide (you don’t need much side chaining tricks then either)
In the second example i notice the bass is spread wider across the stereo spectrum (which is a less smart trick to do imho) so the bass frequencies won’t saturate the center spot frequencies where the kick is located.
I can’t give you an answer o the synth thing. It sounds a bit juno-instrument like but i’m not sure.
To make a kickdrum sound hard you have to adjust the initial high & high mids frequency part, because this is what the “kick” gives. Usually you add for the kick part short samples like a hihat, a stick hit or something like that.
Try to add a white noise layer to your kick and give it an envelope with a very fast attack and a very fast decay/release. “Fast” means really fast. We’re talking about milliseconds. Adjust the level of the noise part for your kickdrum. For the lows adjust the lenght of the signal and cut it to the lenght of a 8th note, for short kick hits maybe a 16th only. This makes it sound more accurate and prevents the kick from disturbing an off-beat bass. Add compression and a limiter to maximize the whole kickdrum signal.
If you already have a sample thats quite near to what you want, you could also try a multiband compressor to achieve the sound you’re looking for.
To make the kick stand out and sound like hitting through everything else you have to avoid layered freqs. For the lows AND the upper (kick-) freqs.
If bass and bassdrum are layered within the arrangement there’s several choices:
Change the arrangement (and try to avoid kick and bass layers).
Change bass or kick sound.
Adjust your sound by EQ. EQ out disturbing freqs on the bass track, not the bassdrum (because the freqs on the bass track move, while the kick’s freqs are static).
Use sidechain compression und supress/compress the bass triggered by the kickdrum.
Use a highpass filter on the basstrack and trigger it with the bassdrum to lowcut. Don’t cut more than needed!
Mute the low freqs of the kick and layer the rest of the kick with the bass sound. (This of course changes your kick sound, doesn’t work for all music styles and neither with all basses.)