As a producer your kick drum defines your sound and can make or break your track. Change tempo without affecting pitch in logic pro x. As with most things these days there are hardware and software compressors. John pickford continues his recording series with advice on how to record that backbone of the beat. Make a perfect kick drum tutorial from lenny kiser ableton. After the attack, we get the bassy weight of the kick drum. Most drum rompler software, such as xln audio addictive drums and fxpansions bfd will usually take care of this for you, but if youre building drums using oneshot samples, it might require a bit of thought the human ear is very sensitive, and hearing the exact same hit over and over again may become obvious over time, or if those hits are played in quick.
Its great for taming a loud kick drum that made it past the mixing phase. So, were gonna again change the envelope of the sustainof that drum and make the drum sound a lot longer. Check out the compression tricks to give your drums instant punch page at sweetwater the worlds leading music technology and instrument retailer. This ableton live buss compression trick gives your drums instant. We can squeeze more headroom out of our mix by compressing the bassline with a sidechaining input fed from the kick. This ableton live buss compression trick gives your drums instant punch. It is is easily one of the most important elements in any dance track. Ill select the track, the hihats, in to the region parameter box.
That can mean bass guitar, kick drum, or bass synthesizer. How to make your drum tracks snap with twostage reverb news. Now playing compression application 2 compressing the kick up next compression application 3 compressing the snare. The dedicated electronic hardware unit or audio software used to apply compression is called a compressor. Lets take a look at how to put the punch into that kick sound. We are production music live, doing ableton live sound design videos of great. Live audio effect reference ableton reference manual. Now, we could also do the opposite,which is to have a fast attach that grabs that transientand then a fast release that lets that sustain come up. Ive read it is normal to do this to create a pumping sound in 3 different text books but as i cant get anything good from compressing a kick and you. This will provide your kick with more space in your mix, and result in a kick that is clean and punchy. This, combined with parallel compression can make your drum. Understanding compression and limiting in ableton live. How to use sidechain compression in ableton black ghost audio.
Here are 7 great tips on how to make your kick drum sound better. Pick a kick drum of the same world as the snare clap that youve chosen. With bass guitar tracks, i often use waves bass rider plugin, which will effectively. Using compression correctly in your mixes your complete. Midi time compressing to make drums double time, or half time. Using a reference track, along with these tips, will certainly prove to be invaluable to you in getting you on the right track of attaining mastery of the art of drum mixing. Theyre vital musicproduction tools, but exactly what are compression and limiting, and how do they work in ableton live 10. Live comes with a selection of customdesigned, builtin audio effects. Was a bit surprised to read that you all agree that i shouldnt be compressing a kick. Learn some common and uncommon uses of sidechaining with compression and other devices in part 2 of abletons guide to this important production technique. Roland td10 vdrums and compression sweetwater sweetcare. Learn how to mix and master your own production from start to finish. Kick drum compression and eq comprehensive tutorial, eng audio school online kick drum compression and eq comprehensive tutorial, eng by admin. Take a quick listen to our beat, listen tothe high hats, right now theyre just steady eighth notes.
Compressors often have attack and release controls that vary the rate at which compression is applied and smooth the effect. How to compress drums with ableton glue compressor youtube. Check out the roland td10 vdrums and compression page at sweetwater the worlds leading music technology and instrument retailer. The working with instruments and effects chapter see chapter 17 explains the basics of using effects in live. How to use sidechain compression in ableton black ghost. This video tutorial will show you how to batch collect and compress samples as well as instruments, instrument banks and multis. Compression is normally used to massage the sound so its more even over time. Contrarily to what most people think, the bass drum is. Notice how the sounds in one more time, seem to pump to the beat of the kick drum. Compression tricks to give your drums instant punch. Compressing the drum busthe drum kit as a wholeis a tried and tested method to glue the drum samples together. Grooves are at the heart of many different genres, and ableton definitely built their software with those styles in mind. In this video i give you insight on how i process tune, eq, and limit my kick drum using some tools from ableton live 10 fades, spectrum. Pro tools is the industry standard daw digital audio workstation developed by avid.
How to mix a kick drum full signal chain, including kick. How to compress drums with ableton glue compressor. Ableton live compressor and free presets subaqueous music. I always sidechain the 20hz400hz range on top of carving opposing space, cutting room in the bass track for my subby kick. How to get a punchy kick in ableton live 9 with new glue. Weve all heard that perfect kick drum sound the one with just the.
Whenever the kick hits, the bass dips in level to make more space for it. This could be a useful function when compressing an instrument such as a kick drum. For our drum loop, you could cut away all the high end from the sidechain signal, such that the compressor no longer hears such a high snaredrum level, and continues to trigger its gain reduction only on kickdrum hits, even at a lower threshold setting. Start by loading up 3 separate kick drums into ableton.
Drum machine this is essentially a beat making workstation, you use drum machines to create loops and rhythms. Although a great kick drum may mean different things for different musical styles, its always hard to get a bass drum to sound as big and powerful as the commercial releases out there. Instead of simply compressing drums at two stages, were. Multiband compression on a kick drum to preserve the lows duration.
Ableton lives sampler has a decay slope parameter, which allows us to finetune how quickly the kicks volume level drops. Compression is, however, a crucial component to most kick sounds in. This creates a solid base for the kit, which will already start to sound like a coherent group of samples. Understanding compression and limiting in ableton live musictech. How to compress drums with ableton glue compressor masterclass with guido. Ive read it is normal to do this to create a pumping sound in 3 different text books but as i cant get anything good from compressing a kick and you all agree it isnt necessary then i wont bother. We had some requests for another tutorial on drum compression. How to program realistic midi drums 5 advanced tips for. How to get a punchy kick in ableton live 9 with new glue compressor. Compressors compression application 2 compressing the kick. Maybe your bass line isnt happening with the kick pattern, or the chords are taking up too much space for the melody to play on top.
For ease of demonstration, i will be using screenshots from a simple software compressor, in this case it is the one that comes built into ableton live. Often, overdoing it can sound bad and kill the dynamic range. The fact is that any instrument and any frequency can be boosted by sidechain compression, but the effect has become almost synonymous with bass frequencies in club music. This way you can map a kick to some other element, lets say a. Kick drum eq, compression and effects mixing a kick drum. Jonny strinati walks through 11 essential drum techniques, from programming hihat patterns to compressing kicks. Sounds like you rather should learn to use compressors than spending money on plugs.
Sometimes we need to do that to make the finalkick drum sound work with the. The stock ableton comp not the glue, use that on the drum bus if you want is fine, as has been said, get to grips with that first. How to eq a snappy kick ableton live quick trick for. Lets kick off with a stunning tripledecker unit, and one of the best software emulations of analogue gear that weve encountered to date. Drums selected as the sidechain input track, and a kick drum being tapped post fx. Ive just recently started compressing my kick and bass together with encouraging, although ultimatly lackluster, results. Make the room sound bigger and punchier compressing room mics can make your drum sound even more explosive. As you can see, compressors have various applications, and are an integral part to any recording. Compression and limiting demystified in ableton live tutorial. This method gives the kick drum space to punch through the mix. Learn the secret to mixing better drums in a few simple steps. A boomy kick drum can also cloud up the clarity of your kick drum sound, so its usually a good idea to cut around 200 250 hz if you feel there is too much muddiness in your kick drum sound.
Then, if you feel it is lacking in a certain respect, you can think of what else you need to complement it. How to compress drums with ableton glue compressor the. Check out parallel compression if you dont know what it is, its basically duplicating your drum track, compressing the hell out of one, and blending it back in with the original. This allows the sound to act as if it is one snare by. This is a video explaining how i make punchy drum sounds for my. Ill be showing you how to sidechain your kick to your bass using abletons glue compressor.
The complete guide to using compression correctly in your mixes. Heres how to use sidechain compression in ableton live. Well use drum racks in ableton live in this walkthrough to create a layered kick drum. Truthfully, this is often easier to manage working with software instruments. These genres, with their propulsive 44 time signatures, rely on a steadily pumping bass sound to keep people dancing. Ableton live is a music production and performance software program whos strength is in both midi based projects and live performance based projects. Drum compression with ableton live glue compressor. Hope youve enjoy the how to mix a kick drum eq guide, have fun mixing. The twostage parallel compression technique builds on this in a simple way. This post is part of a series called side chain compression in ableton live 8. We break it down to the practicalities there are times when music production, especially when it comes to mixing, seems like some weird kind of medieval black art, left. Instead, set the compressor s attack to kick in just after the initial attack so that the drum track keeps its. Make sure the drums sound good together and then the bass with the drums, then add the rhythm guitars and so on. Enable sidechain on the compressor, then select the track that you want to.
If youre looking for this vintage flavor in your compression, live 10. How to eq a kick in ableton compressing a kick kick compression ableton. A boxy kick drum sound is also a common nuisance, which can be fixed with eqing out the boxiness that resides in the area around 300 600hz or so. Audio compression explained how it works and when to use. The reason im using abletons glue compressor instead of abletons compressor is that i like the sound of the glue compressor more. Its when you start compressing, though, that the personality comes through. Eqing a snappy punchy kick ableton live quick trick mixing mastering. How to trim the fat from your kick drums musicradar.
Sidechain compression is most often triggered by the kick, as we can hear very clearly in make you feel. Once you have your kick drumcreated by layering 2,3,4. As the kick drum contains the most sub content in your drums, i often compress it heavier compared to any other drums in the mix so that it can make us easier to achieve a louder track after the mastering stage. Software ableton live cubase cubase studio logic express logic pro various. Using hardware synths with live tutorial from mad zach and dj tech tools. Youre going to want to add some glue compression to those. Using the compressorlimiter in pro tools recording.
Thats why compressor, glue, drum buss, and multiband dynamics can all blend the original. Hell focus on drum sounds, demonstrating his techniques for layering kick and snare samples, compressing the sounds, using drum loops, adding a. I usually compress the kick drum by 2db to 6db with a ratio of 4. Rtfm rtfm rtfm, for every piece of gear or software you use.
Ken lewis takes you through his in depth techniques for compressing and equalizing kick drums, as well as a separate focus on. Heres a classic technique to help programming a beat. Up to ableton live version 6, the software didnt include a compressor device with side chain input. How to use sidechain compression in ableton live mmmmaven. Compressors compression application 1 drum compression. With the sidechain compressor set on the bass track to be controlled by the kick drum, every time the kick drum. A compressor set up for a track to duck a 909 kick drum in live 10. The sense of separation between kick and bass can often be further improved by rigging a ducker on the bass channel that is, a compressor whose side. Learn some common and uncommon uses of sidechaining with compression and other devices in part 2 of ableton s guide to this important production technique.
Getting it right will help give your track the right feel, whether youre after a killer funky groove or a hardrocking, driving beat. While this tutorial is done in ableton live using stock plugins, the principles can just as easily be. Virtual drummer a virtual drummer software is created to replace an actually studio drummer. Its mainly for mastering, helping to tame regions of the frequency spectrum without compressing the whole thing. Fgmu is just beautiful across drum overheads, drum sub mixes and overall mixes. After battling kick drums for years, ableton certified trainer lenny kiser has found some simple and effective techniques for getting kicks to. You know that deep, pounding techno kick and bassline that makes you want to pull an.
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