"My kick drum sounds like a basketball!"

[TheBoatCanDream]

I have a recording where the kick drum sounds like a basketball. What's the most intelligent way to salvage the audio?

[tlester]

Sound replacer, TL's Drum Rehab, or Drumagog. Or by hand w/ a nice sample.

 

How many songs? What format is the recording? Tape, Pro Tools, etc?

[Jarick]

Generally you have to suck out a lot of mids on a kick mic. If you Google "Slipperman" you get a good description of harmonics and where to boost and cut. The reason the kick sounds like a basketball inside is because the harmonics of the fundamental echo into the mic. Cutting those harmonics will give you a clean, defined kick. Then boost or cut the high end (1-3 kHz) to taste.

[siberian]

There are a few different options you can try, depending on your access to certain gear, studio time, etc. Sorry if this gets a bit long-winded, but I'll do the best I can to explain some options...

 

The first thing I'd do is try to salvage it with eq tricks. There is an old saying in the studio... "you can't polish a turd". Well, that's mostly true, but you might be able to salvage it to an acceptable level. That basketball sound is something I've had to deal with before. Typically a lack of bottom end combined with that annoying ringing, and an over-emphasized midrange are what cause that basketball sound you speak of. It probably happened in the first place due to tuning your kick too tight. But that's water under the bridge at this point. :poke:

 

So, what you can do here is try finding that frequency that emphasizes the ring, (it's probably somewhere above 3khz) then just attenuate it until the ring goes away. After you get rid of the ring, then boost the bottom end at around 80hz to fatten up the tone, and you might just have a useable kick sound. If you get it close, try putting it back in the mix to see what happens. Keep in mind that once you put it back into the mix, it might not be as noticeable with all the other stuff going on.

 

First to get rid of the offensive ringing, you need to find the offending frequency by "sweeping" the eq. The danger here is that by cutting out offending frequencies, you also run the risk of killing some of the good frequencies that are close to it, thus leaving you with a dull thud of a kick drum. But at this point, you got nothing to lose so give it a try.

 

Assuming you are using a software recording medium and have access to basic plugins... solo the kick drum track and apply a parametric eq (one that you can specify the frequency at which to adjust), that works in real time. If you are using pro tools this would be an RTAS plugin. Basically an RTAS or "real time" plug-in allows you go make non-permanent, "on the fly" adjustments while listening to the track at the same time, so you can hear the immediate result as you go. So, back to what I was saying... In the eq window, find the knob or fader that adjusts the level or volume of the frequency and turn it all the way down. Now, while the kick drum is playing, slowly adjust the frequency setting and listen to the kick drum. Start at the lowest frequency and sweep through the entire range going up. The whole time, listen for that ringing sound. Eventually you should hit a frequency at which that ringing starts to go away. At this point you have identified the frequency. Now play with the attenuator and Q level until you find a balance of reducing the offensive sound, while still keeping some of the attack of the kick drum.

 

Assuming you were able to accomplish this, now go back and boost at about 80-100hz to get some meat into the kick. If you still hear too much mid-range on the kick, then find a frequency at about 500hz and attenuate that a little bit. Again, you can use the sweep method here to find a frequency that, when attenuated, makes the kick sound a little fatter.

 

Okay, so if that didn't work, the next thing I'd try is to re-track the kick with an overdub. Just put a mic in the kick and make sure you have a good tone this time. Then re-record the entire song, playing on your entire kit, but don't record the snare and toms. Just solo the kick and hit record on that track only. The rest of your original performance will still be intact, and the new kick track can replace the old one. And if you didn't use a click track, you can still use the other parts of your track as a guide to keep you in time because they can be played back through your headphones.

 

The last option would be, as was mentioned by another response, to use a sound replacer. I actually did this once and it worked pretty well. We recorded to analog tape, and the kick drum sounded horrible. I had a drum module that could be externally triggered with an audio signal. So what we did was take the kick track and output the signal to the trigger input of the drum module. I selected a kick sample I liked, then sent the output from the drum module back into a new track on the tape hit record. Then we played back the original kick and every time my original kick drum was hit, it triggered the drum module to play the new kick sound, and it was simultaneously recorded to tape. After the recording was done, we just muted the old track and used the new track in its place. This can also be done in software using sound replacer and a decent selection of kick samples if you have access to it.

 

Sorry if that was a bit long winded... I hope that may have been of some help to you.

 

Good luck!

[boxofrocks]

Isn't that floppy kick freq around 60-65hz and the meat is around 80-85hz? So I think if you cut around 60-65hz and boost a bit around 80-85hz you should sound ok, and yeah tweak high freq to taste.. I do it by ear but I think those are the main eq freq I use for kicks if I remember right...