Add Power to Your Kick Drum
Last Edited: Nov 21, 2023
The techniques for tuning, mixing, and overall processing of the kick drum represent a form of "audio science" in the realm of today's electronic music. There are countless methods used in order to achieve a perfect-sounding kick drum. Compressors, EQs, or distortion effects are just some of our daily tools. On the other hand, there are some experimental tools that, when used properly, can unexpectedly boost the quality of the kick drum. Check out the following tutorial and discover a trick to add power to your kick drums!
Maschine 2 by NI
As usual, we can start by selecting a kick drum. After that, I'll load it to a newly created audio channel within SoundBridge. Next, I will load a fresh instance of the Maschine 2 FX plugin to the audio channels plugin rack. Remember that when you first load the Maschine 2 FX plugin to the rack, there will be no sound when you press play in the sequencer. You need to set the output routing within the Maschine 2 plugin. I will show you how to do this step by step with the help of the following screenshots.
Parameters and Settings
As you can see in the picture below, the whole interface of the Maschine 2 FX plugin looks pretty slick. This tutorial will not be dedicated to the full capacities of this awesome plugin (although they are advanced). Instead, I will concentrate on routing and parameter settings of the Ice reverb effect within Maschine 2. The first step would be to navigate to the upper part of the interface, where we can find an icon represented as mix console faders. I marked it with a red circle.
Routing and Mixing
After clicking on this icon, we are shifted to another routing and mixing menu. In this menu, we can see different channels and group tracks. Again, clicking on the following icons shows the drop-down menus spread below all available channels.
Input and Output
The first icon (IO) stands for input and output. A new line with "Audio IN" written on it will appear by clicking on this icon. This is crucial because the pop-up menu will appear after clicking this icon. Inside, we can select the desired output. This needs to be set so that the actual sound can be heard.
Internal FX
The icon below, presented as a power chord, opens a new line that lets us select the Maschine 2 internal FX effects and other plugins you have installed on your system. I will choose the Ice reverb from the inner effect menu, which we will use for further kick drum processing.
Ice Reverb
By selecting the Ice reverb from the plugin list, we notice a small interface in the lower part of the Maschine 2 FX interface. This effect is relatively simple and consists of just a few parameters. It delivers a resonant sound, so it's suitable for this kind of processing. The first parameter, "Color," controls the reverb's tone, from bright to dark. The following parameter controls the amount of the actual "Ice" effect. The mixing parameter is set next to it; I think it doesn't need any particular explanation. The last parameter, "Size," located at the lower part of the effects interface, controls the size of the reverb room.
Small Amounts
The key to altering the kick drum is to add individual parameters in small amounts. That being said, you can see that I have set the "Color" parameter to 3%, "Ice" to 27%, "Mix" to 25%, and the "Size" parameter to 15%. This setting is set because the kick drum is a more-less constant element in the track, so the coloration by this effect should be short and subtle. Let's now hear the difference between unprocessed and the kick drum processed with the Ice reverb.
~Kick Drum - Unprocessed
~Kick Drum - Processed with Ice reverb
New Low-Frequency Dimension
I suggest using studio monitors or good-quality headphones so you can hear the full effect of Ice reverb processing. You will listen to a whole new dimension in the low-frequency spectrum that the kick drum gained by this processing. Although most sound engineers claim that the kick drum should stay in mono, this plugin adds a bit of a stereo image. If it's too much for your liking, you can always add a stereo imaging plugin after this effect to decrease the spreading of the stereo image a bit.
~Kick Drum - Processed with Ice reverb and Stereo Imaging plugin
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