How to get a Kick out of the Bass Drum using EQ

The bass drum, which many know as the kick drum, plays an important role in music. It stirs emotion in the audience, making them want to dance as it thumps through their bodies. This is of course, what it's supposed to do but if the kick drum is mixed incorrectly, it will leave the audience feeling pretty bored - no matter how good a song might actually be. Don't worry though, because that's why I wrote this post. To help you learn from my bad experiences...

Okay, so it's called the bass drum... So, if you're anything like the younger version of myself, you'll be thinking that the more bass the better, right? Well, I'm afraid not, but I won't just tell you, I'll show you. Below is a picture of the EQ settings for a kick drum. It is evident from the picture that only the bass frequencies (100 - 200 Hz) have been boosted.

EQ for a kick drum, where only the bass has been boosted. Click on Image for full size.

One would think this would make your kick drum more lively. Don't get me wrong, it does give it some thump, however, when added to the rest of the instruments, the bass gets lost and the beat with it. Below is a link to an .MP3 extract from a song where the above EQ has been used.

kick-with-only-bass.mp3 (588 KB)

Okay, you might be thinking that it didn't sound too bad, but if you play around with some of the higher frequencies (3000 - 5000 Hz) you will find what many call "the Click"...

For the rest of this post visit the new home of Brian's Bedroom at the link below:
http://briansbedroom.org/sound-mixing-tips/how-to-get-a-kick-out-of-the-bass-drum-using-eq/

New Ardour Recommended Plugin Effects Page

Sorry it's been so long since the last post. Brian and I have been insanely busy with work.

One of the biggest problems with using Ardour is the ridiculous number of LADSPA effects plugins that are available. It's not easy to find a good plugin and you end up wasting a lot of time trying all the different compressors, reverbs and EQ's.

To help you out, Ardour has posted a new page on plugins with recommended EQ, dynamics, reverbs and other plugins. It also tells you where to get more plugins if you're collecting them:)
If you want to recommend a plugin to Ardour, you can comment on the original plugin page annoucement.

Other posts you might find interesting:
My Favourite Linux Audio Effects
Using a Bus to Route Effects in Ardour
Audio Recording in Ubuntu Studio - Part 3: Adding Effects to the Ardour Drumtrack
An Overview of Compression
Sound Mixing Tips: EQ vs Volume

Using a Bus to Route Effects in Ardour

When using computer audio effects, one must always bear in mind that your poor computer has to calculate the effect output everytime you play back your tracks. So when you go too crazy with effects, your computer will probably seize up, roll-over and die! To save your computer, it is important to use buses to route repeated effects in Ardour.

Okay, maybe that sounds like complete gibberish... but please bear with me and you'll soon understand what I mean. Let's take an example of a multichannel recording of a drumbeat in Ardour (i.e. one channel for snare, one for the kick drum, etc.). For each drum, you would want to add certain effects like an EQ, reverb, and compressor. One way to do this is to add the effects to each channel like in the figure below.


Since you would want the same sounding reverb on each drum, your poor computer has to calculate the same thing multiple times. This is unnecessary because you can create a bus and route all the drum channels to it and then only put one reverb on the bus. This method achieves the same sound whilst your computer does less. You can do this by following the steps below:

Firstly, you need to create a new bus. Go to Session, and click on Add Track/Bus. Configure the window that appears to look like the one shown below. i.e. select Busses and Stereo.


You now need to route all your drum channels to the bus (I have renamed mine to be DrumBus). You do this by right-clicking on the black rectangle below the volume fader (this is called the "post effects" for the track). A menu should appear and you must select New Send... Configure yours to look like the one shown below. You do this by firstly adding an output (click the Add Output button) and then selecting where you want the output to go. In this case you choose DrumBus/in1 and DrumBus/in2 from the Ardour tab on the right of the window.


Since you have rerouted the output of the each drum track, it no longer needs to be connected to the Master Bus. So disconnect it by clicking on the Output button (just above the Comments button) at the bottm of each drum channel and select Disconnect. Your drums should all be sounding through your Drum bus. This means that if you adjust the DrumBus volume, all the drums' volumes should change. It also means that any effects you use on the drum bus will be applied over the whole drum kit. The figure below shows how the bus greatly reduces the amount of reverb effects used.


Note that I have left the EQs and Compressors in each channel and not on the bus. This is done because the EQs and Compressors are set differently on each drum and thus cannot be applied to the whole kit via the bus. I hope you found this tip useful, and that your computer will also appreciate it :). A special thanks goes out to Jakob Lund for suggesting this method of adding multiple effects.

Other posts you might find interesting:
Audio Recording in Ubuntu Studio - Part 3: Adding Effects to the Ardour Drumtrack
My Favourite Linux Audio Effects
An Overview of Compression
Panning for Gold : How to Pan Tracks
Mastering Tips: A Picture Says a Thousand Words

Audio Recording in Ubuntu Studio - Part 3: Adding Effects to the Ardour Drumtrack

Okay, by now you should have a drum track recorded in Ardour as the first step for your recording project. If not, check out Audio Recording in Ubuntu Studio - Part 2: Recording a Hydrogen Drumbeat. The drum track really is the backbone to your recording because it is often filled with the most emotion (i.e. build-ups, double tempos, break-downs etc.) However, in order to allow the recording artists to feel the full emotion of the song, we must add a few basic effects. These effects can then be tweaked towards the end of the project for the final mixdown.

Let's take a look at what we have. The figure below shows my multiple drum track recording of Sunday Bloody Sunday in Ardour.


It is important to record the drums as dry (i.e. no effects) as possible because this will make your recording more versatile. You can easily add effects to a dry recording but you cannot easily remove recorded effects. The above tracks are therefore dry and can be heard from the MP3 below.

DryDrums.mp3 (555 kB)

We now need to add effects to each drum by using Ardour's Mixer. The mixer can be opened from Ardour's Window menu by selecting Show Mixer (or pressing Alt+M). This should look similar to the one below, minus all the effects on each drum.


You can add effects to each drum by right-clicking in the black rectangle above each drum's level fader and selecting New Plugin. A list of all your installed effects will be shown, choose the relevant effect and select Connect. You should now see your effect appear in the black rectangle. The effect should still be bypassed so double click on it and a window displaying all the effect's options will appear. You can vary the effect options and click the Bypass button to switch the effect on or off.

Now that you know how to add effects, which effects best suit drums? Firstly, if you want a natural sounding drum kit, stay away from EQ. The effect which is easiest and most effective for use on drums is reverb. I used the TAP Reverberator which requires a a stereo input. I therefore used the Hilbert Tranformer to convert my mono track to a stereo one. I also used the TAP Equalizer to make my kit sound a bit more like U2's, but as I said earlier, be subtle when using the EQ. The drum track with added effects can be heard from the MP3 below.

WetDrums.mp3 (555 kB)

Compressors are very useful for drums because they make the drums sound powerful. However, you can add these during the mixing stage of the project. The early use of effects is merely to inspire the artists with a emotion-provoking drum track. For more information on some cool Linux effects, check out this post: My Favourite Linux Audio Effects.

In the next part of the Audio Recording in Ubuntu Studio series, our song should start taking shape as we add a guitar track.

Other posts you might find interesting:
Audio Recording in Ubuntu Studio - Part 1: Plan your Project
Audio Recording in Ubuntu Studio - Part 2: Record a Hydrogen Drumbeat
Overview of Compression
Hydrogen Drumbeat Templates - A Non-drummers Best Friend
Panning for Gold

Hydrogen Drum Machine Basics

This post aims to cover the basics around the Hydrogen Drum Machine interface and hopefully get a newbie feeling comfortable with the setup. Firstly, start up JACK and then Hydrogen. Once in Hydrogen, you want to select a drumkit which will suit your song the best. You can do this by opening the View menu and selecting Show Drumkit Manager. This will look like the figure below:


You can select which drumkit best suits you and then click Load Drumkit. If you don't like the default selection of kits, there are quite a few you can download from:
Hydrogen Drumkits or Hydrogen-music.org Drumkits

Once you have chosen your kit, you can familiarise yourself with the Hydrogen interface. The components of the interface are explained below:

• The Pattern Editor

  This is where you write each drum pattern or fill by selecting which drum/instrument (y-axis) makes a sound at what time (x-axis). The figure below shows what this looks like.
  
  
  As you can see from the above figure, the time at which an instrument is meant to play, is represented by a dot. The vertical line below each note represents its volume. If you click and drag the line down, the volume of that particular note will decrease. Attached to the pattern editor window is some useful stuff shown in the figure below:
  
  
  Explaining the figure from left to right: The pattern number and name; the size defines how long a pattern is; the resolution defines how many notes can fit into that size pattern. The recording bar allows you to record what you play on your computer keyboard or via a MIDI input. Play around with the pattern size and resolution to get a better idea of what it does.

• The Song Editor

  This is where you schedule when each pattern will play during the song. As seen in the figure below, many patterns make up an entire song and these patterns can be repeated or overlapped. You can also change a pattern's name by right clicking on its name and selecting Properties.
  
  

• The Mixer

  This allows you to change the level/volume of each drum and also allows you to add effects or pan the instruments. The mixer is shown below:
  
  
  You can add effects by clicking on the FX button in the bottom right corner of this window. This will open the window seen below.
  
  
  A total of four effects can be added to each instrument. These are added by clicking on the Edit button and selecting an effect you like. The wetness (or level) of the effect can then be varied on each instrument by using the four dials found above each volume fader on the mixer.

• The Transport Bar

  The transport bar is shown in the figure below. It allows you to play back either one pattern or the whole song. The tempo is shown as large numbers which represent the beats per minute. This tempo can be altered by selecting the + and - buttons found next to it or by double clicking on the numbers. The transport bar basically allows you to navigate your way around the song and to play it back.
  
  

• The Instrument Editor

  This window is not too important for making a Hydrogen song but can be used to edit the drum sounds. To find out more about this window, read my post on How to Make a Hydrogen Drumkit.

Those are the basics of the Hydrogen interface, now you can get cracking with making some awesome drumbeats

Other posts you might find interesting:
Hydrogen Drumkits
My Attempt at a Hydrogen Drumkit
Pimp my Hydrogen Beats
Making a Roll Sound Realistic
Sunday Bloody Sunday Hydrogen Beat

My Favourite Linux Audio Effects

Ubuntu Studio comes with hundreds of pre-loaded effects. Although I haven't gone through all of them, I have come across severval effects I found useful. I have described each effect below and also provided a screenshot in order to get a basic idea of what controls they have.

• Equalizers

  Equalizers are used to individually vary the gain of several frequencies.

  Multiband EQ (by Steve Harris)

  This EQ has 15 frequencie faders (50 Hz - 20 kHz). Each fader's gain can be increased to 30 dB and decreased to -70 dB. See figure below.
• 
  
  

  TAP Equalizer-BW (by Tom Szilagyi)

  This EQ has 8 floating frequency faders along with gain and bandwidth faders. i.e. You must select the frequency that you want to boost/attenuate and then alter the gain. The bandwidth [usually referred to as quality (Q)] determines how much the surrounding frequencies are affected i.e. width of the notch.
  

• Reverbs

  Reverbs essentially simulate a room/hall sound by introducing echoes.
  

  Gverb (by Juhana Saderharju)

  I found that this reverb was quite easy to use and produced fairly decent results with a bit of tweaking. The faders are pretty self-explanatory.
  
  

  Plate Reverb (by Steve Harris)

  This is a very simple reverb for quick and easy use. The damping fader determines how much of your higher frequencies are included.
  
  

  TAP Reverberator (by Tom Szilagyi)

  This is by far the most versatile of the three reverbs I've mentioned. The most important thing to remember is to set your reverb type. It defaults to Afterburn which sounds pretty bad. I like the Halls, Rooms and Plates.
  



• Compressors

  Compressors allow you to either bring down louder parts or bring up the softer parts. This allows you to get more punch out of your mix. Check out my
  Overview of Compression post for more information.
  

  SC4 and SC4 mono

  The SC4 compressor is for stereo tracks and the SC4 mono is for... can you guess?...mono tracks. It has all that I require from a compressor as well as a neat Gain Reduction meter which shows you when it is working and how much is being compressed. The faders can be complicated if you haven't used a compressor before so please check out my post:
  Overview of Compression if you are confused.
  



• Amplifier Simulators

  These effects aim to simulate how a certain type of amplifier would make an instrument sound.
  

  TAP TubeWarmth (by Tom Szilagyi)

  This cool effect, recommended by a fellow Brian's Bedroom reader here, basically makes you track sound fat (or phat if you're a gangster). It does this by simulating a tube amplifier which typically have a warmer sound. Drive is the essentially warmth and the Tape-tube Blend is basically a wet/dry mix fader.
  

Other posts you might find interesting:
Overview of Compression
High There?!
Live Sound, Monitors and Pepper Spray
Speaker Placement
Panning for Gold

An Overview of Compression

As a newbie to recording, you may have heard of compression or even played around with a compressor. However, at first it is quite difficult to understand exactly what all those knobs do.

First things first... a compressor essentially limits all signals over a certain threshold value. When it limits these peaks or high volumes, it does not simply chop then off like a limiter. It reduces the peak's volume over a certain period governed by the attack and release times. Also, the size of the adjustment to the peak's volume is determined by the compression ratio.

Compression is useful for two things,

1. to reduce high peaks which saturate the output.
2. to louden the quieter bits. By reducing higher volumes and raising the make-up gain, the track volume becomes more constant. i.e. The chorus has loud drums and electric guitar and the verse has acoustic picking - naturally, the verse will be far quieter than the chorus. The solution would be to use a compressor on the master track which limits the chorus but not the verse, and then bump up the volume with the make-up gain.

The following link defines in detail what each knob on a compressor does: Compression Glossary