Hello, and welcome to another episode of Inside the Recording Studio. I am Jody Whitesides, and with me as always is Mr. Chris Hellstrom. I'm doing good Jody. That was impressive radio announcer voice. How are you today, Chris? Hey welcome to Inside the Recording Studio podcast. Yes. Yeah, no I'm good. How are you doing? Oh, well rise above man, rise above be a professional. I'm trying to stay awake for this lovely episode.
It was a late night last night and an early morning this morning, so I'm a little slow on the uptake. I'm going to just say that right now. I will. That's right. Yes. Low end of a kick. Yeah. Yeah. How do EQ kicks? Yeah. You know, speaking about rising above, how about that low end? Exactly. Yeah, I barely landed it. I barely know. But the idea is that we're going to talk about five tips. Yeah, I don't think you get a lot of argument by saying that a kick is substantial part of the energy
to just about any musical style. Right, it is obviously especially if it's a popular form of musical style. Yeah. something very important. And I think it's something that most people try to get right, you know, or at least appropriate. I don't want to imagine it. So it is an important part. And as we were putting together the notes here, we're just trying to think about the importance of a kick and we can kind of take it for granted.
But imagine hearing an EDM track or a hip hop track, or even a rock track that didn't have a kick. And yeah, exactly. I just don't. That's how, ooh, yeah, now you're beyond me or something instead, right? So, Even he had kick drum sounds even though they were probably all synthesized. Well synthesized or not, getting the kick right is, to do sometimes. you know, it's certainly can be, it's only can be.
So I guess we'll start at the lowest end, the fundamental here, and depending on the size of the kick or the source that we have, where do you see that range? Where do you sort of start your listening if you need to do some either corrective or additional EQ to a kick? Where do you go first? Yeah, it is kind of surprising, I'm thinking somewhere between the range of about 45 to 65 or 70. I know you go a little bit further down than that, but to me, it's right around 45 to 70 ish in that range.
Hmm. or at least it was to me when I first started realizing that's how low the kick can actually go. And I'm not necessarily talking about a sub, Yeah. but the actual fundamental there and the weight, because it's easy to think that, you know, it's a bit higher, That's where it also gets rather difficult because a lot of studio monitors technically but it really isn't. So in my experience around that range where you said, that's where... Yeah, yeah, right.
have a harder time going down that low effectively without a sub. There's a lot of headphones that claim, "Hey, we go down at 20 Hertz. Good on you. How well are you really going to hear that 20 Hertz moving in your ear hole on a set of headphones. No, they go to 70. That's, I think the cutoff on the gen like 1029 Yeah, yeah, there is that but you know, that's an important part though. I mean, my channel likes they don't go down very far. So I have. Yeah. So there's. Right.
Right. Yeah, right. Yeah, that's right. I don't have a sub. So I rely on my accounts A's is 70 because I got a pair too. I believe it's 70 and the KRKs that I have, it goes down a little bit further. I think the KRKs go down to, I want to say 55 or 60. It's not that low, which is why I'm happy that I have a sub because the sub makes it much easier for me to feel that fundamental. Feel it. Feel the fundamental.
headphones just to kind of get that and I've kind of learned that what the sound is but you have to hear it because that's not getting represented in your speakers you're like boosting and boosting and boosting oh there it is finally I can hear it and then you're going to destroy somebody's system when you play it somewhere else right yeah if they don't go down so low. It's like having that sub is like, oh, oh, there it is. That's where that fundamental is.
right you learn to kind of listen and find those frequencies just That's what I'm missing. Mm-hmm. One thing that you can do is pull up like an EQ if it shows the input curve and just spot that, But you know what? right? And you can see there's general boost at that range, right? Now, no, but I'm saying as a learning tool to kind of where to listen for and you can very much see I don't like to mix using my eyeballs. Sure. Yeah. Mm hmm.
that that's where it's happening and you do that enough and then you start hearing it, right? But Oh, yeah. but it can certainly be a good teaching tool for learning to hear that. And you can see where things really are and where they aren't. But of course, like you said, you mix with your ears and not with your eyes. We also have to learn where certain things are Oh, yeah. when we're hearing them. So now I'm thinking primarily here Okay. from sort of like an acoustic kick drum, right? Or 909s.
But if you are dealing with, let's say that you're more in the hip hop camp, Oh, it's the classic. you might be using 808s perhaps in, yeah, Yeah. but the 808 is sort of like the classic, yeah. Yeah. So if you're just thinking of using it as a static kick [Silence] and not necessarily one that's gonna follow, say like a harmony of a bass line or something, you're actually using that as the whole foundation of your track.
Maybe even consider like a different pitch of that 808, just moving up and down, just to make it sitting right if you have a hard time getting it to fit in your mix. So there's something to think of that. That's a little bit outside of my expertise, but that's something to think about unless you're having a movement along with harmony. As someone who has actually done that, it is a good idea to take that kick and pitch Yeah, it kind of grounds everything right there.
it to the key, the home base, the root note of your key that your song is in. it will enhance how your song comes across if you do so. Kick, right? I think it was, it wasn't an 808, but Prince's track, is it "When Doves Cry?" Actually doesn't have a bass track in it. It's all like tuned percussion, I think, yeah. Well, as someone who's done crazy stuff in the past As you do, right? (laughs) and bound to do it again in the future, I have a particular song where the kick is not a kick at all.
It's a sample of a Harley starting as you do. Right. You got that, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, Yeah. Did you just cut one of the, one of the revs there type of thing? as the gives it Harley is starting up. That is my kick drum sound. We're just one of the blobs as you so eloquently said it. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, there you go. If you want to sound different, right? Yeah. Exactly. That is exactly what I did. (laughs)
That's cool. But something, you know, experimenting with found sound there again, Yeah. that's a little bit outside of the topic here. We're talking to, but, um, But it gets you that really that was going for that concept of the low fundamentals like Yeah. Cause that's easy to do because when you start boosting that and you're listening to it's the Harley kicking over has a really low fundamental to it and it can work for a kick sound.
But the idea here also is that with the low end range, the more you start to bump it up, the more you're going to start chewing up your headroom for your entire mix. So you have to be careful there. Oh my God, that sounds so cool. I'm not getting enough thump in my gut, man. Yeah, again, referencing walking away there every once in a while, Let's turn it up. but you know, keeping in mind that I can't remember, Okay.
I think it was this guy calls himself mixed by Mozart, who said how, you know, Otherwise, you'll need to go back to Deutsche Bank. he called it the bank account of your mix, right? You only have so much value to go around and you don't necessarily want to eat it all up with your kick, something to keep in mind there. 'cause it does take up. Yeah, I got nothing funny to say to that. Okay, moving on. So I'm just gonna continue with the podcast. What's the next area? Moving on.
Now I'm thinking a little bit higher obviously. This is part two. The second tip. What is it? And I'm thinking the low end. Okay. I'm thinking between 90 and probably up to 150. In this range, I think it very much behooves you Okay. to be gentle because there is a fair bit of range even though, or weight, I should say, it's a fair bit of weight in this range without it being the actual fundamental of the kick. Right.
So anything that you do here, boost I think can work, but you might be better off boosting the fundamental in this case, as opposed to boosting that because now you're starting to get more into bass territory as well, right? So be a little careful there. And I would say the same thing is like, if you start getting too aggressive with cuts in this range, you're probably taking out more weight than you intend to. So in other words, what you want is more like the angel soft of toilet paper here.
And that's, exactly, yeah. Gentle, gentle cleaning. And that's how I tend, right, yeah. Let's say that the fundamental of your kick is around 50. Yes. Now around 100, that's gonna be your first harmonic of that same fundamental, right? So you shave off a lot of the tone You're wers... and the weight of the kick by doing that low. So I tend to kind of stay away from that area. I know, I know, but if I do something, it's very, very gentle in that area. Hahaha. So what about you though?
How do you treat, you know, let's say that you're dealing with a pop track and you have an acoustic kit on it. No, I tend to do stuff there because it still will fit into most speakers at that point, If you're dealing in that area, are you doing anything at all, or do you tend to leave it alone as well? Mhmm. especially for a pop track. [ Pause ]
If you want something that's got a lot more gut kick to it that's going to thump you in the groin and the intestines, then yeah, you got to go down to the fundamental and deal with it there. But usually it's easier when you have a sub. if you don't have a sub, go get a sub. (silence) Anyway, for getting a low end kind of feel out of the kick, Well, there is that, right? it's a lot easier in the low end area that you're describing of 90 to 150 because most speakers can represent that.
Obviously laptop speakers have a harder time representing it but it's not like it's invisible there. It's just don't overdo it. I agree that it shouldn't be drastic moves unless the kick is really poorly recorded or you need something. So I'm not sure I wouldn't be incredibly gentle. Yeah. So you're thinking more... So you're thinking here, I just wouldn't be like angel soft gentle. Yes. this is an area of sort of speaker translation that you're concerned with here.
Yeah. All right, okay, fair enough. Speaker translation is pretty good there. Yeah, 'cause it's still low enough to have some weight, It's not the gut punch. but it's not the, like you said, it's not the range that's gonna, yeah, it's not gonna kick in the chest right there, Yep. a little bit too high for that. But it's gonna allow you to feel it though in a sense Yeah, absolutely. from a esoteric standpoint. What was that esoteric volume?
(laughs) Was that your phrase from a couple of episodes ago? I can't remember what that phrase was. It was something that you really liked, so you should remember. Well, maybe I'll have to go back and re-listen then. Yes. But yeah. Boxies-ness, boxes and boxes of sound. All right. So what's next? I agree. Yeah, to me it housed that very. And I think it's a very good idea. I think the way it was designed, I think it's a very good idea.
This is where your kick is gonna get you into trouble in a sense in some genres. In other genres, it's actually kind of necessary to be there. But this area is more of the 200 to 500 range, which is generally the weight of a lot of other instruments. This is kind of the boxy area of the kick to me. I agree. Yeah, to me it has that very, and I think the word boxing is to describe it Really? is very apropos here because it does start sounding like a cardboard box to me. It has
that, yes, it's a very natural sound of a kick drum, but it's not a pleasant one. So in most productions that I do, I get super aggressive here. Wide... It would depend on the the fundamental of the kick, but it's generally I would probably start Where's your most aggressive frequency in this range? Yup. dipping probably to the lower end of that, maybe it's like three and then see where it is and... Yeah, I'd agree with that. Somewhere in the 275 to 325 range
Right. And I'm not shy here with the width either. You know, I don't want to go down so that it starts taking out at you. is more of my value for that. You take a wide cue, do you? I do, especially for like rock stuff, because it just it's unpleasant. So I want Rack them up. Here comes the cue ball. According to Chris. Yeah. Right. Yeah, I just knock it out. I'm not shy here at all. Alright, so I usually just use my ear, obviously, to get how much I can without taking all the life out of it. But
I am not gentle here. I'm like, yeah, 10, 11 dB cut. Yep, go for it. Just take it all out. Don't care. That's like the Grand Canyon right there. It is. Yeah. Yeah. But that's, you know, we've said sort of half jokingly in the past, where it's like, (laughs) Yeah. if your EQ starts looking like for an ad for an EQ, it's not recorded properly. But the reality Of course. here in this case is that kick drum has a range there. It has sound there. It's just not pleasant [silence]
in your mix and it takes up space from other instruments. Now this is fairly genre specific because let's say if you're doing like a jazz track, right, you're not gonna be aggressive Trio, yep. Mm-hmm. [silence] cutting here if you do any cutting at all because you want that sort of like roomy sort of natural vibe more than likely. You don't want to like hyper-produced kick on your jazz kit, right, You know? [silence]
So when you start pulling out like 10 11 DB, that's hyper produced on your kick. Is that what you're trying to say? just not going to sound appropriate. Well, no, but I'm saying I'm not if you're, let Okay me turn that argument around. I get where you get where you're trying to get up. But Mm-hmm. You have a lot more room for all kinds of information in there. That's for sure
if you have a jazz trio from what? Right. There is that. And it's also from my perspective, I'm probably listening for more of a natural sound of three or four people playing in a room. Right? And that's what it kick sounds like naturally in a room. So you Mm-hmm So don't go Michelangelo on it is what you're saying might take some out, but that's part of the live feel. If you end up sculpting it too much, at least to my ear, just start sounding unnatural for what you're trying
to accomplish. I say be gentle if you're doing a jazz thing. Now if you're, yeah Right on a jazz thing. I'm just talking about your style is more Michelangelo removing marble for the statue of whatever Yeah, yeah, well, yeah, I mean, yeah, I'm not gentle here at all. Oh You It's one of those things that where I had to get over the sort of saying that, oh, you [ Pause ] should never boost or cut more than a few DBs, right? Well, no, in this case, it's what's appropriate. [ Pause ]
You know, I just take all that out because I have the weight of from, let's say 150 on down below, right? That's what the weight is. And then as we'll cover here going forward, I'll get other elements of the kick to be present. But in that range to me, there's nothing there that the bass drum is going to carry. So That's going to be guitars, that's going to be bass, that's going to be keys, whatever So you're talking more like sugar lay sugar Ray Leonard it is.
The punch in that area would be like a lightweight boxer, but down at 40 and 50, that's Mike Tyson. Well, I'm not sure I would pick him, but anyway, I'm not a boxing expert, but I imagine like Neither am I the low end is like that that's my ties in your head and the All right face right so or in the chest in this case as it were and it Sure probably break your chest and yeah. All right, we'll move on to tips number four and number five right after these words from our sponsor.
And we're back in the next thing we're going to start talking about is click of the kick. Where is this at, Chris? I'm thinking now, I hinted at this before the break, but other areas of the kick drum to make it present for me and sucking out all the boxiness and that's the click of the beater. Mm-hmm. And this is something that I tend to search for where it's going to be most appropriate for the song. And this is pretty... Kind of takes a microscope sometimes to get that, doesn't it? It can.
It just depends on what's going to sound good. I tend to do a sweep here with the gentle boost first, not a super wide one, not a super narrow one, All right. (whistles) but I tend to go and end up somewhere around the one All right. all the way up to maybe like a 4K range. Where just to find that click, Mm-hmm. and again here is context dependent, right? Mm-hmm.
But if you want the more aggressive click of the beater, you might have to go a little bit higher, but it's just to make that stand out. And especially if your mix is relatively dense, you yeah. So if you, hold on a second. Back up, rewind. Here we go. You're talking about using a gentle cue sweeping kind of thing to find out where that is. To me, I would go more aggressive with the cue and a much higher push in order to sweep through a frequency range to find it.
Why do you go gentle in a dense mix? You said gentle and wide. When I say the I say a gentle boost, maybe I didn't make myself clear that but I don't with a click here it's it's probably no I said, okay, then I know I then I misspoke I meant That's why I assume you mean a wide queue. Aha. to say I don't have a wide queue when I do this when I do this Okay. boost. So this is it's not super narrow. It's not super wide. Gotcha.
It's just a little bit of boost probably a couple of dBs. And then I would sweep the frequency of that to find words the most pleasing where it stands out to the amount that I want in said mix. No, no, but. I just think it's interesting you said that it was kind of wide and all that. To me, to find that sweet spot, I would actually narrow up the queue pretty hard, find it by No wait.
Yeah I sweeping around in the area and then open it back up and then do exactly as you just said with a couple of DB boost on a not super wide cue but a much narrower than a very focused like if you have a cue range that goes from zero to 10 I might be using 10 to find that kick, click, and then I would bring it back down and open it up to like maybe five. Yeah, I, yeah, generally I would agree with you there when you're sweeping for frequencies Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Yep. to have a very narrow 10 dB boost perhaps, right? Yep. Just to find and sweep that frequency. All right. No, of course not. In this case though, with the beater click, I don't necessarily feel that I need that All right. much of it. So I find it just by ear and it's just, it's almost set where I want it to be and I just No, of course not. kind of sweep around that and I find where it is.
Because it's not one of those where it's necessarily a pitch thing or like a ringing noise or anything that's ringing out there trying to find. So that's my methodology for not going like super narrow and wide on it. Gotcha. The other thing that probably should be mentioned here is that this is also style dependent. And as we were talking before the break here, we were mentioning that jazz trio kind of Yes, exactly. thing. Your jazz trio is probably not looking for the beater click in your mix.
Whereas in something that's like metal, you're going to want to have that click in there Yeah. because you're getting so much guitar information and other things that are taking up so much room in the boxy area of your kick and everything else and then you've got hopefully your super powerful punchy in the face base as well that the kick will get lost and when it gets lost that beater click in a particular style will help bring it back to noticeability
makes it more present and you feel right. Yeah, very much style dependent here just as with like (breathing deeply) you said the boxiness of the mids where do you have that super EQ'd kick like you said in jazz? Mm. Hmm. No, it's going to sound out of place, right? And even the rock genres, if you're doing like an No.
aggressive more extreme form of metal, this is way more prominent. But even if you're doing, let's say similar realm but you're going back to more like a 70s type of a thing with like perhaps a Led Zeppelin or maybe even like an AC/DC thing, that click is not going to be as present. So it's sort of like you probably want to go what's sort of appropriate for the genre there [silence] and going for possibly a little bit more of a natural sounding kick whereas you know modern
metal, there's nothing sort of like natural about it. It's all about extreme and in your face and all about emotion, that type of thing. So yes, exactly. As you tend to. Yeah. All right, rip the skin right off of my skull. All right. Well, what what ends up being our point number five here? One thing that I think is important to bring up and you hinted at that a little bit when we talked Mm hmm. about the the hundred range where getting your kick to come across all Yeah. [pause] Yeah? [pause]
Yeah. systems whether that's you know you're listing on your iPhone you get your [pause] Yeah. [pause] earbuds and whatever happens to be if you have a hard time getting that to Yeah? [pause] Yeah. [pause] Yeah. [pause] translate you might consider something like Waves R-Bass where I believe it Yeah. [pause] Yeah. [pause] Yeah. [pause] works with adding in fundamentals and I think it's psychoacoustically to kind of Yeah. [pause]
Yeah. [pause] Yeah. like hear certain things, but it adds weight to stuff. Yeah. Yeah. [pause] So that's something that you can do as well. Yeah. Right. If you want your kick to be bigger or sounding bigger than it really is to add that in there. Where to caution? Waves isn't the only one to do that, but yeah, there are others that do it. No, that's just the one I tend to think about because it's been around since 1846. [Laughter]
So that's the one that's in my plugin folder, Yeah, there's one by BX. but very easy to overdo because it does sound exciting. And then all of a sudden you look at, hey, why am I clipping my master bus? Well, it's because of all that low end. But what do you use? I mean, you mentioned other stuff. So do you ever reach for anything else or what do you tend to go for? Oh, the subfilter? The interface is bright red. And if I'm having it sub-filter, that's it.
Yep. And that is a really nice plugin to enhance your kick in a dense mix as well. Mm-hmm. Mm, no. And to top that off as a Logic dude, if I'm doing the mix in Logic, which is rarer these days, or if I'm exporting my tracks from Logic and I'm trying to produce like pre-flight check on some sounds as they get exported, I might use Logic's sub-bass filter in there too. It does a similar thing on a slightly different level, Yeah. but there are a few others out there that do similar things.
Yes. And beyond that, if I go to like 5A, your bonus tip, if you're the one tracking this, I'm gonna suggest you try a few different mics on your kick Mm-hmm, yeah.
and get it from the source direct with a proper miking, even though it sounds weird to say that a proper miking Yeah, anytime that you can do as like you said, you correct as many things and get as is gonna help the EQ of a kick, but by far and away, when you mic things right and you get it right at the source, it makes your mixing so much easier. Do it right the front. Mm-hmm. good as you can as possible at the source. you're just saving yourself a headache down the line.
or you're saving or someone is saving you the headache And, yeah, and also as I guess we'll go 5C here on this one if they do it right up front. (laughing) or 5B or whatever letter we're up to now, (laughing) it's also easy to forget, let's say that we're working on a mix and we go, I'm not getting as much kick as I want. Well, that might not be an EQ issue you do have a fader there, presumably, that says kick. So just the volume ride is, you know, That's why I laughed.
it sounds laughable when you bring it up, but it's common things because you go, oh man, I'm not hearing enough kick. I got a boost more at 50 or hear me out. You can just raise the fader up a little bit, you know? So it's not always an EQ thing, but those ranges that we talked about there, There you go. I think would get you in the ballpark of most issues that we can... yeah that's the major leagues of mixing the EQ of a kick.
All right, let's knock it out of the park now the areas that cannot pay attention to, at least I do. Well we got some interesting news this week didn't we? With sound wide, now what with Friday Fines. Chris, what have you got for us this week? Oh yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yes.
is Soundwide. To me it's a little bit unclear yet if this is going to be a brand new company or just like an umbrella, but if you haven't heard of this it is a merger of sorts with Plug-in Alliance Brainworks, Native Instruments and Isotope, where from my understanding is that it's going to be Isn't the guy that invented JUCE otherwise known as juice like part of this? essentially an information sharing thing in the development of plugins. That can
be interesting. Whether that's gonna be great for every one of us or not so great, well that remains to be seen, but I think there could... I hadn't heard that but it's very possible. Oh yeah, well then there's some hardcore technology I think he's part of this. Yeah. It's the framework for a lot of audio plugins. changing hands there from because what I understand that juice is the language and yeah exactly so we'll have to see but you could argue that that's three Oh, yeah.
very different bases of plug-in development that are coming together under one tenth so it's something that I'm gonna keep my eyes on for sure it's I'm a little bit behind the curve on this being that I am a UAD user. an interesting development so that that was the one that just caught my eyes so that would have to be my Friday fine for this week what about you what do you got Yeah.
However, Universal Audio has released a new system for its plug-in architecture called Spark and Spark allows you to get an unlimited license Wow. Or the UA hardware period, yeah. to use UAD plugins from a native standpoint and not need an Apollo to run their plugins or their shark system technology. So for those of you that would like to run UAD plugins without the Apollos, there is now Spark or the UA hardware. Well, yeah, the UA hardware, the whole UAD system. Good job. That's cool.
There is Spark now. It is rather limited to start. I think there's nine plugins right now. The beauty of it is if you already own the plugin, you automatically get this for free. If you don't, there is a monthly subscription fee Yeah, that's one that caught my eye too. and you can use them as part of a subscription fee and get use of those plugins.
Natively speaking, the roadmap from what I understand is that they will eventually start doing a whole lot more of their plugins and make it way more advantageous, much like a slate digital or a plugin Alliance kind of thing. Yeah. I think that's great for UA. I mean, I think it's going to open up their plugins to a whole new audience that didn't Sure.
necessarily want to buy into the ecosystem, if you will, you know, or they might already have interfaces that they're really enjoying working with. So I think this is great, you know, and, and of course, right. I do too. And I've already got it downloaded and installed and checked it all out. And of course they sound exactly the same as their dongled brothers. I guess it'd be a good way of saying it. And that is my Friday fine for this week. Sounds good. Awesome.
While we've got your attention, Sounds good. we ask that you go to insidetherecordingstudio.com [ Pause ] and sign up for our mailing list. You'll get weekly reminders about the Tuesday tips when they come out. and we'll make sure you don't miss any future episodes of the podcast. Send us an email at goldstar, G-O-L-D-S-T-A-R at insidetherecordingstudio.com with the word kick, and you'll get something back in your inbox.
If you have a topic of suggestion for Chris and I to explain in a future episode, contact us at the contact page and we'll put it into consideration for a future episode. Thanks for listening, everybody. And with that, I'll say, see you next week. (no audio) . Have a good one, Jody. products, conversion plants.