Tutorial: Processing extreme metal kick and making samples

[ahjteam]

Alright, I was talking to lolzgreg the other night on AIM and we were talking about EQ and stuff, and on the side I made some processing on this one kick file I recorded last year at uni. I decided to make it into a tutorial, hope it helps someone... I won't put the exact frequencies I cut, because it varies by the incoming sound. And do note that this tutorial is for processing recorded material, this doesn't work well with pre-cut and pre-processed samples.

PHASE 1: Recording the source

The thing starts with getting the sound good at source. No way around that. If your source tone sounds like shit, your sample will sound like shit too. And record the samples separately from the actual sessions (listen to the recorded clips below)

When choosing microphones and especially if you are doing metal and hard rock music, forget AKG D112. Eventho they are ok kick mics, but they just don't have the snap in them that is needed in metal music. Even Shure Beta52 is a "maybe" as the snap sounds like shit (but it is there), but it can be used if nothing else is available. Audix D6 works nicely, as do PZM mics like Shure beta91 and Sennheiser e901. Here is an example where we compared 4 different mics on the kick (The last one is a subkick so it sounds kinda bad by itself):

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1338211/kicktest-01.wav (groups of 8 hits)

PHASE 2: Choosing source and goal

I chose to go with the first clip, which was Sennheiser e901. It already has a well defined snap to it so it was easiest to start with as I don't have to actually boost the snap to actually get it there. The aim is to scoop the shit out between the timbre and the attack, because those mask especially the low end a lot, and if you see clear spikes (like the ~200 and 470 in the picture below) you really want to use a spectrum analyzer to find those exact frequencies and kill them. The result should look like two equally high mountains and a deep valley in between.



PHASE 3: Subtractive EQ

Then what I did was that I added just EQ. I only did cuts on the 200-1000Hz region, highpass filter at 31hz and a slight low shelf boost to compensate for the lost low end. I also added a highshelf boost just to bring out the air just a bit. As you can hear the "beachball" character went away quiete efficiently. I think I used something like 6 bands of cuts + 3 more (highpass, low shelf, high shelf)


http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1338211/kicktest-03.wav

(pink is original and orange is after)

PHASE 4: Compressing the snap

The next step I did was that I used the Waves Renessaince Vox, aka RVox. The cool thing about that compressor is that it is super easy to use and it has a chacrater to it and it is specially designed to make the vocals cut thru the mix, so I abused it to make the snap of the kick cut thru all the other shit. The bad thing about that compressor is that it also brings out all the shit back, so I had to re-cut some of the mids down and I ended up with this:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1338211/kicktest-04.wav

(pink is original and orange is after)

PHASE 5: Limiting the peaks

As you might've noticed, the kicks are at varying velocities, but since I didn't want that, I jut put a limiter to shave off 2-3dB from each hit so that they are more equal in volume and ended up with this:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1338211/kicktest-05.wav

(pink is original and orange is after)

PHASE 6: Cutting the sample

Then what I did was that I listened thru all the clips and if you listen closely, you can hear the squeeking of the pedal between the songs, so when you are making the sample, you need to (or actually no; you don't NEED to, but I highly recommend it) crop the sample as tight as possible but so that you have as long tail as possible without any squeeks. Crop the start of the clip as close to the beginning of the hit as possible and add a really short fade in (I think I had something like 10 samples or so) and a fade out that starts from the end of the hit. I ended up with a sample like this:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1338211/kicktest-05_single.wav

PHASE 7: Try the sample on a song

The next step that I did was that I tried the sample I just made on my older song. Atleast it doesn't get buried in the chorus like the old sample, but it needed some minor tweaking. I used the Majken Grizzly sampler and I used the distortion effect to slightly shape the sound and cut ~10dB from 200hz that it boosted, but otherwise it was untouched:

song with old sample: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1338211/ahjt...lehead_v05.mp3
song with new sample from this tutorial: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1338211/ahjt...lehead_v06.mp3

the sample after fitting: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1338211/kicktest-06_single.wav

Pink is 05_single and orange is 06_single

edit: Sample 05 used in metal context: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1338211/tut/loop_v7.mp3

PHASE 8: Summa Summarum

So what did we learn? You can get heavy metal sounding kick sample with just 3 plugins in 10 minutes, if it is well recorded. Compare different mics, choose the best sounding as staring point, get rid of the mud in the mids, compress, limit the peaks and cut the sample.

Hope it helped someone.

[Harry Hughes]

Subtractive EQ, not "substractive"

[Sloan]

fuck yeah, i love the way you laid out the post, shit looks HOT and the sample sounds fucking rad as hell. GREAT JOB!

[Morgan C]

I think you went overboard with scooping the mids, but other than that, nice guide and the end sample is huge.

[Maamar Huq]

Great stuff.

Originally Posted by Morgan C

I think you went overboard with scooping the mids, but other than that, nice guide and the end sample is huge.

Good point, but is it too much of a problem considering the kick ambience we'd be getting from the OH and Room mics? Wouldn't that make up for it? In terms of kick, I personally like mids a little ambient and the lows and highs a little 'in your face'

[ahjteam]

I updated the first post a bit, added a "in the mix" example. Not extreme metal, but still.

[Mikaël-ange]

Seriously man, I love you
You answering to lot of questions I had about sample processing workflow and asked before (but when you ask you get 0 reply because isn't focus on impulse, pod)...

[TheBlackSheep]

Tutorial: Processing extreme metal SNARE!
Tutorial: Processing extreme metal TOMS!
Tutorial: Processing extreme metal OHs!

That would be NICE!

[roflsaurusrex]

i love you ahjteam!

[Dexter_prog]

Originally Posted by TheBlackSheep

Tutorial: Processing extreme metal SNARE!
Tutorial: Processing extreme metal TOMS!
Tutorial: Processing extreme metal OHs!

That would be NICE!

+1

[theforgotten]

Originally Posted by TheBlackSheep

Tutorial: Processing extreme metal SNARE!
Tutorial: Processing extreme metal TOMS!
Tutorial: Processing extreme metal OHs!

That would be NICE!

+1

[muckypup1]

Originally Posted by TheBlackSheep

Tutorial: Processing extreme metal SNARE!
Tutorial: Processing extreme metal TOMS!
Tutorial: Processing extreme metal OHs!

That would be NICE!

+10000000000

[Mago]

really nice made! thumbsup!

[ahjteam]

btw, anyone wanna test out those 05 and 06 samples in some metal mix, that poprock example in the OP doesn't really do it justice?

[avrinder]

awesome post! thanks a lot

[StoneLord]

Nice work man.

[ahjteam]

I listened to the Andy Sneap kick and noticed that it was tuned a lot higher and the low end wasn't reaching out as low, so what I did was that I turned up the playbackrate of the sample to ~ 75khz and then just bounced it as 44.1khz. After that I did some extra processing and got this, which was more closes the sneap kick:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1338211/kicktest-07_spedup.wav

But do notice that that one doesn't have the huge low end that the sample above has, so you need to add it with something if you want it, but if you are going to do some +220bpm blastbeat, you might be better putting the bass below the kick and let it handle the subwoofer material.

[Sloan]

the tuned up one sounds like a fatal dickslap.

[Morgorroth]

I love you
Srsly thx for this, it's reaaally cool

[mephisto_loh]

Is it me or the Kick test 5 sample sounds better than the single-cut one? It's a really great guide BTW and it should be a sticky!!!
I'm going to give a shot and post my results
Thanks for the tutorial +10E50 LoL. \m/,

[ahjteam]

Originally Posted by mephisto_loh

Is it me or the Kick test 5 sample sounds better than the single-cut one?

Shouldn't sound, only thing I did was trim and fade in and fade out

[soundsunderground]

remember kids, it doesn't matter what it sounds like. As long as it looks like those plots.

[ahjteam]

I used the kick 5 in this tutorial clip: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1338211/tut/loop_v7.mp3

Tutorial: The importance of context when sculpting guitar tone

[Pedro Teixeira]

I'm gonna be honest, the kick sounds way too scooped! I mean WAY! And I honestly didn't like the end result at all, I actually prefered the "song with old sample", with a little bit of sculping and processing it would sound much better, because not only it is scooped as hell it actually sounds pretty degraded, with this really weird texture in it, that sounds like the compressor brought to surface. I'm not in any way bashing your tutorial because it is a good tutorial for noobs, but the end result wasn't what I was expecting really because the souce sample is actually a pretty good sample.
Also I don't agree with the sentence "The aim is to scoop the shit out between the timbre and the attack", although this is what it is mostly done, I don't believe scooping A LOT is mandatory, I have in many ocasions scooped a lot and have also scooped just a bit but left some mids that actually contained a lot of the kick's character. On the other hand I just read that you used distortion in it, so that might be what I don't like about it. Pretty cool tutorial though

[AllanD]

Cool tutorial, but I didn't like the end result. Sounds like a NES kick sound.