Can't get the kick to sound right!

I know. I was just saying why samples might work better is because they’ve been processed. That’s all I was merely saying.

fwiw here’s my method:

I have a few go-to sounds in my sound pool that I turn to whenever I feel like playing it safe with a kick in a pattern. So, whenever you get a kick going that sounds better-than-usual, save it as a sound to your sound pool. Then, when you reuse that sound, if you manage to tweak it even further, re-save the sound to the same slot (overwrite). Little by little you will accumulate a nice collection of go-to kicks that you can just load as a sound and go

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Gotcha, yeah, for sure. You see I have this guilt whenever I end up putting a sample in instead of using the AR for drums… #sampleshame?

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hehe, no shame in that man! Ultimately the AR is at its strongest when you combine samples and synthesis.

Sometimes I like to load up a solid (soft-ish) kick sample and add a transient to it using the noise machine. This can work really well!

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Aint no shame when it comes to this here music game.

Layering drums is how it’s (often) done. I think the AR was made to layer. If it works with or without or only, it works.

discussing this here too

but for me layering is the way to go. Usually running a analog kick + sample and low tomb. So usually layering 2 or 3 kicks works best for me. been using d16 punchbox for the samples which is great! but just using one plain analog drum from the AR never really worked for me.

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Seems Autocorrect got you, but “tomb” is pretty accurate.

I find this very hard to believe tbh. Care to post an example of such a kick?

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oh yes haha! the low and dark tomb :wink:

this was done with AR and a sample kick, so two sounds layered, but quiet old already and not mastered.

https://soundcloud.com/sert-berlin/landr-artefacts-of-dr-mehose

https://soundcloud.com/sert-berlin/landr-snewoge-rising

I haven’t had time to bounce some of the new stuff since I’m working live act oriented not producing finished tracks in the last few month. I’ll see that I bounce some stuff this week and share it here!

Hard to believe because?

I know what you mean using samples is like is not pure , is not you , is cheating LOL , i recommend trying the Bp filter and then the envelope you will get various textures and you can add a lot of overdrive , also lfo in one mode modulating pitch , freq filt or something else , also think about the bassline , you need to create a relationship between the kick drum and bass , is music forget about making a perfect 4/4 kick drum alone you will need a bass to pump up your kick drum , try to tune them at same tone even if the bass is really deep or filtered , also don’t work at 127 vel in BD HD for example, analog rytm has too much power sometimes you just need to low the volume , velocity or decay !!

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Yeah actually part of the problem is that I have a hard time making the AR kick work with ANY bass line. And by that I mean that the AR is OK, but I always end up using a sample because it works out better in the mix. Of course I don’t have a lot of low end on my NS10s - this is probably part of the problem, but I like to work on them, they’re so focused!

yes i see your point! try using analog rytm alone for a moment and make the "bassline " from the BT or another kick drum engine ( sharp or plastic is great for this ) of course try to quit all the attack as possible so your kick drum run freely on the field your bass is the companion and mix all well to see , I had the same feeling two months ago but i think you can achieve what you want without samples , are you working with headphones , monitors ?? and what music are you trying to make etc ??

@IVAN_B When you’re using samples, you don’t have to import a sample from a kick.
This can be a waveform to add a support to the bass part, or to get LFO FM crazy on it…
Samples are a tool, you may lay any sound, not necessarily your target sample :wink:

Have you tweaked the compression ?
If not, it should be the first part to look into.
If you did, well, maybe it’s time to do it again :smiley:

Hmm, have you rolled off some low freqs from these examples’ kicks?

The second examples’ kick sounds like it could be challenging to coax from a single bd machine, but upon a quick listen I think I could replicate the first examples’ kick with a single machine (might not get a 100% identical result)

The reason I asked is because personally I don’t feel like I need to layer that much to get the kicks I want, especially after the 1.30 update. Usually a single machine is enough, sometimes I use two in a transient/body combination but that’s rare for me… Buut YMMV

IIRC there used to be a lot of talk on this board about the AR kicks “not sounding thru cheap speakers” or something similar. Using larger amounts of overdrive and pitch modulation seemed to make the kicks translate better in those situations.

On some gigs with ghetto PAs that I’ve played in, I had to crank both pitchmod and overdrive to near ridiculous levels in order to get the kicks cutting thru. Then, on the next gig with a decent PA, I had to spend most of the soundcheck dialing those suckers back lol

oh yeah, one more thing came to mind - make sure your amp envs are tight enough! The default amp env settings suck (wayyy to much decay), and can drown out almost any bassline

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I’d be happy to learn how to make it without the samples! cutoff might happen at 30 hz since my speakers go to 45hz only and sometimes I forget to put them back in.
tbh I havent played much with the new engines yet, but hopefully find the time soon!

man, you need to check the new kick machines ASAP - so much new possibilities for kicks (and well tracking synth voices too!)

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That’s something I never thought of! I’ll definitely try this. Maybe I will also try to use the individual kick output to bypass the compressor entirely. I’m also not sure about using OB as input or simply recording the audio through my interface.

@tsutek Thanks for the amp envs advice, will definitely take a look!

Been a struggle for me too. Side chaining and multimaximizing have helped me out the most. Also i like to use a hint of abletons saturation plugins. Low latency and customizable. The next thing im going to learn about is imaging. Hope this helps someone out tho!

Can anyone recommend any low latency imaging plugins i could use on my kick track?

Edit: I am using overbridge.

Yeah,

the thing is: If you search for a sound that bomb like actual releases from good artist, you compete with real good mixing and sound arrangers… you will never get a that good result just “plug and play”

But The good news: AR gives the perfect “raw sound” for cool mixes… Just using it live (with the stereo out), i like a little compression (medium attack, long release) and Equing in the mides and highs on the mixer (outboard, sometimes a lot) to get a good out of the box sound.

Preprocessed samples help a lot, though in special for the kick i love damn good processed samples and clear out the low frequencies, so you can mix it perfect with the fat AR basses…
having that good processed samples you get better results out of the box, cause the AR has no EQs, which would be crucial needed to do a good soundmix within the AR…

still i love the results better than my jomox, with all in all sounded way to rough for me… the AR has that beautyfull warm soft bassness (and harshness, if i dial in overdrive or crank up the parameters) :slight_smile: