What are your best practice settings for kicks on the Rytm, that translate well in a club with maybe not optimal room acoustics but of course large subwoofers? The Rytm can quite easily get very bass heavy or aggressive.
Let’s start with a synthetic machine on track 1 to be optimized for about 133 bpm. How much EQ (peak filter), what tuning, how long could the amp envelope be set etc. I have only live experience with the MD, not the Rytm, and I experienced that I might have been too careful with my kicks because DJ’s cranked the bass EQ up a lot for their sets.
I played a couple of gigs at various locations the last 2 months and noticed that as much “kicking” the AR is, my kicks definitely lack some low end power.
at home with my ADAM A5x everything sounds perfectly fine. But in Clubs - compared to the DJ that played before me - my bassdrums could have more lower punch. I know its always silly to compare live with mastered records. But thats my goal. So dont get me wrong here, the problem is me not the machine. I just want to understand what kind of frequency it is that im missing. Like, that one frequency your kick should “have” to make it work on big club soundsystems.
For example: when i made that track at home i thought it would be sooo huge and hitting in the club… but no… its ok but compared to records still pretty thin.
been wondering to what extent you use AR’s filters to increase BD low end?
I sometimes spend quite a bit of time combining the right bd synth settings (tune, decay depth&time, decay) with filter settings. typically, I end up with very low and punchy bassdrums. usually, the synth without filter does usually not satisfy me.
A lot of the punch is created from surrounding “space” or “silence” like black is contrasted more if it has white around it. It sounds like you have some reverb or subby parts tailing right of your kick. Have that sidechained, or if you allready have, longer release.
133bpm, what is this, 1993!? Just kidding
Great topic mate, I’ll be watching closely. Always struggled to get a real punchy kick without it sounding overpowering in the mix.
well sounds like its your room. Most likely need better bass treatment in the room. bass is the hardest to control but it sounds like you have bass waves bouncing around and amplifying bass frequencies. so in Effect you hear huge bass but on other systems especially clubs it sounds week.
Foam makes horrible bass treatment its only good for treble frequencies not to mention foam cost soo much. their are much cheaper and effective ways to treat rooms. Make sure u use bass trap.if your room is already treated then you need to move things around to get the flattest bass response.
Room treatment for bass is a very lengthy subject which is why people have their stuff mastered. It is possible to train your years to your room so you know what works in the club but treating your room is best. Your room acoustics are very important it will also improve your mixing. you will do way more for your music then any nice gear will if u have good room treatment and speakers.( your A5x are good though you might want a sub woofer to hear the low, however only if your room is well treated)
133bpm, what is this, 1993!? Just kidding
Great topic mate, I’ll be watching closely. Always struggled to get a real punchy kick without it sounding overpowering in the mix.[/quote]
yeah my room definitely sucks. im aware of that. its like 10 square meters but almost 4 meters high. maybe i should consider moving my music stuff into another room.
There’s no lack of low end in that… It’s just perhaps a bit uncontrolled as you can’t expect the kick to have any low ‘punch’ with the low rumble going on there as the rumble takes all the low frequency space up. I like it with the rumble btw and personally I’d pull the kick down slightly but that’s me.
Is the kick and any kick reverb high-passed?
the kick is definitely layered from 3 or 4 differtent sounds. depending on what i used the specific sound for i eq´ed waht seemed neccessary.
One kick just for the “click” one kick for the body around 80-160 hz and one kick for bottom. And then another super pitched down tom sample in between with a LFO to duck it down on the steps where the kick happens. theres also a little bit of compression on the RYTM to glue everything together a bit more.
Actually, i think the Adam A5s are just too big for my room.
They are great speakers but i also know that they are a little tricky to handle in the lower freuquencies.
Heres another track ive worked really hard on the bassdrum.
I started it with headphones and then switched back and forth from headphones to speakers all the time.
I played that a couple of weeks ago on a Function1 and i was kind of dissapointed of myself again ah well. thats life i guess. keep on learning.
Starting to sound like room acoustics problems more and more… Have you checked your room with any measurements? If I’m guessing correctly, your room has serious modes around the 60-300 Hz range. Without fixing the low freq response in your room you will forever be “shooting blind”… Too big speakers are not a prob as long as you can use them with low enough volumes…
Great thread. Making pounding kicks can be quick on the AR, or even instant, but great ones still elude me. Like many people, I try layering samples on the bassdrum machines a lot. I had recent limited success with a low tuned piano, of all things.
What I’d do is tune the kick while in the venue, man we have the killer option to adapt our sound to the enviroment. Almost every time i performed live it sounded better (punchier, cleaner loud) than the DJ acts before or after me.
We can mold our sound to resonate with the club, one step beyond DJing
I often bump the low end on the Rytm’s channel in the dj mixer, it can be too sharp, and the added bass dampens it a bit, while giving it that low end boom.
The grin that comes when your kick starts shaking up the place, priceless.
Maybe my suggestions are obvious or already known, but I’ll share some of my AR kick knowledge. I’ve been playing RYTM for over 6 months and it’s the centerpiece of my setup. The BD is the centerpiece to my AR so obviously I made it my goal to learn every in and out of the 3 BD machines. So much so that I can build a fresh kick to tailor to the song or sound system or environment on the fly. BT can make great kicks too, but I usually use the BT for my sub layers. Learning every facet to the AR is, to me, like learning all the scales and chords on a guitar and practicing like crazy until it’s an extension of your body. Also it should be noted that I don’t play on monitors ever. I play on a PA system or headphones. I know it’s not the right way to do it, but it’s fun and I have all these subs and speakers, but no good monitors … so whatevs’ ! hah
Lately I’ve been actually getting some INSANE kicks from the FM machine. I find the right speed of FM sweep and tune really makes the kick stand proud of everything in your mix. I rarely use samples anymore for the kick. Maybe a REALLY small transient for the click, but thats it. I find the analog machines with you all you need. If anyone is interested I can give up some sysex files of my FM kicks or post some demo sounds on soundcloud.
Here’s some of my other tricks I do every day:
FX! First thing on any kit I make is really beef up the compressor settings as well as the Overdrive. In compressor 1:4 ratio, and really fast atk. Threshold varies so go by ear. I like a mix around 50% for a sort of parallel compression dirty overall feel when you have overdrive on the sound. In the Overdrive section of FX I always up the amt, change the symmetry by ear and put the del and rev to PRE. I don’t mess with delay overdrive.
Overdrive in the amp menu of the kick. Not like a ton maybe 8-15, but I overdrive every kick. I guess I just like that punch when it hits the compressor. IMHO the overdrive, compressor, and filter are everything on the AR for punchyness.
The filter. I don’t do this on every kick, but I found this really sick YIP type hit at the beginning of a kick if you hit the highpass filter with a really fast downward envelope. It makes the kick stand out bigtime. Basically its just Res about 80 or something pretty high - you want it to squeel because it’s a fast little hit. Dec is down low like 3-15 (fast) and atk, sus, and rel are all off. This will give a super fast downward env. Env depth up just a bit, and then adjust it up or down by ear. Now Frq is where the magic is … there’s a sweet spot (actually a few I find) where you make a laser sounding ZAP and take out just enough low end to make it pop, but don’t go high enough that you lose all your low end. I can’t tell the number for freq it changes per kick but it’s somewhere around 30% mark. This is my secret weapon of kicks these days.
LFO If my filter envelope and synth settings (mainly the tune sweep) aren’t getting me enough SMACK then I go to the LFO. I make a really fast downward drop using Exp wav and setting the mod to ONE or HLF. Depth is always set to taste, but really mess around with the speed and the depth until it is going really fast from a ZA to a ooooooom.
Don’t overdo the bass on every other track. You can lose a really nice sounding kick in the mix. Separating all your instruments by freq range is gold. I kinda learned that watching tut vids back in my ableton time HAHAH those silly ableton days. I also try and keep all the bass hits short dec including the kick so they stand out.
Anyways … this may have been totally out of place … I’m honestly really shy about this stuff, but I wanted to add my 2c cause I’ve been seriously having too much fun with kicks lately.
Hey! I’d be super pumped to grab a couple sysex files from you just to see how you’re working - been struggling to keep my rytm right now and this just might push me over the edge!
ah well. thats life i guess. keep on learning.
