Why and how to tune your kick drums

[@OscarUnderdog]

Find Oscar's video courses here: courses.underdog.brussels 🖤🖤🖤 Join the Underdog Discord channel: discord.gg/z5N9CTA 👾👾👾 Sign up to the mailing list here: tinyurl.com/yy92sx5u 💌💌💌 Pledge to the Patreon: ​ www.patreon.com/underdogmusicschool 🌱🌱🌱

[@calvinschatzke5899]

Lowpassing everything to find a good match between kick & Bass - exectly what I'm doing all the time because it works wonders. The perfect fifth or the supertonic work quite often.

[@jacksonstrutmusic]

The tip about using auto filter to low pass the rest of track to examine how well kick and bass are gelling is a real good idea. Thank you. Great video all around!

[@OscarUnderdog]

Thanks for the cool feedback! In general you can use lowpass, hipass, or bandpass filters to examine different regions of your mix, to see if everything is playing nicely together. 💪

[@briancase6180]

Yes! This is the right way!

[@juanarkantos]

For psytrance, we have to tune the kick to the fifth of the fundamental, because otherwise the bass sub will add to the kick sub. By making it a perfect fifth, the volume is more stable

[@architechproducer]

Super short kick and bass lengths in Psytrance. No room for sidechaining and still use same frequency range. 👍🏻

[@snubdawg1386]

you pitch the kick everytime to the fifth of the fundamental?

[@juanarkantos]

@@snubdawg1386 no, sometimes its a fourth. in some cases the fundamental can work too.

[@snubdawg1386]

@@juanarkantos thank you!....do you figure it out by ear if you want to tune it to a fourth or fifth....or is there a formular, maybe depending on major or minor scale, etc. ?

[@juanarkantos]

@@snubdawg1386 i dont think major or minor makes a difference because the fourth and fifth intervals are universal and their interactions are always the same. i use a fourth when for some reason it sounds more tight and clear, sometimes the fifth makes too much resonance. i think it has to do with the sweep

[@hellkules]

Thanks dude! I was definitely overthinking the whole kick tuning aspect and really got some nice input and confidence by this video

[@sunspells]

Your vids are such a wealth of knowledge. Thank you for you hard work of producing these.

[@tresporros]

yes, good info, but...one important thing is missing - phase issue when tuning the kick - if you tune it very close you can achieve phase cancelation effect, literally 'cutting off' the low end. So use your ears, support yourself with freq analyzer and don't tune kick ideally to the note - ever!, just stay few cents off and you will avoid the problem. Also very good idea is to work with phase meter ON at the master buss and checking if the bass and kick do not cancel in phase. The problem is most folks don't understand the phase issue when dealing with the kick, in hiphop culture it's quite popular to double or triple the kick drum....in many cases cancelling the phase and getting opposite effect to desired...

[@jibberism9910]

We bangin tho

[@Polarityshifter]

A very priceless video right here! Not even in some academics in UK this info is there! Thank you!

[@BenCaesar]

This is a fair breakdown, since Deamau5 kicked off about tuning kicks I've didn't fully agree but this fleshes it out more

[@stephenasmith4192]

wow I love this tutorial! totally underrated in saying that some kicks don’t need to be turned which is true for a lot of new house music today..

[@Berry_Right]

Your video’s are great, everything is explaned very wel. Good job! These are the better video’s on the net !👌🏼

[@TheRhomb]

This really needs some examples. Let us hear what the difference betwwen a tuned and untuned kick drum sounds like in several songs.

[@ratikanto]

every kick is tuned if its not compared to another element

[@scotthunter1678]

Thanks!

[@Submachine_]

been looking for a video like this, great job!!

[@renden469]

Grazie Oscar you're the best , so many good tips from yur videos helps a loooooot! Peace and Love!

[@richtreloar]

Really great videos. Glad I've found this channel.

[@OscarUnderdog]

Glad I found this comment too. 💛

[@ClaudeYoung]

Love this channel! So much great production information!

[@OscarUnderdog]

Thanks Claude 😁

[@todorhristov5246]

Great and well synthesized, as usual. One more thing to mention : A trap for young players will be to want to tune the kick too low. In general 55Hz or A (as you mentioned) translates very well on a club system, as well as on smaller speakers. Going down to a G (49Hz) or even an F (44Hz) might sound well on small studio speakers but the lower you go, the harder it is for the studio speakers (without sub) to reproduce that energy correctly. Something to keep in mind :)

[@OscarUnderdog]

Yes, you're 200% right! I was kicking myself after this video for not mentioning the trap of going too low 😮 gonna need to make even more videos about kick drums 😅

[@jackSo42]

​@@lucmermans37you Can compress as much as you want there IS no correlation

[@Antzs-11a]

Good points

[@__________hugo]

Thank you

[@Pavel-on-youtube]

Amazing! Thank you!

[@michieladriaansens5977]

nice video..i've never put any tought into tuning kicks apart from if it sounds a bit off or no. to preserve punchyness i try to seperate transient and sustain so that i'm able to only pitch correct the sustain whilst leaving the transient alone

[@giannipetrocelli472]

Finaly one wo got clue...bravo. The best Trick is using tuner in ableton...if tuner shows a Tone its tonal...if it shows no tone than dont worry about

[@QUANTUMMUSIC101]

GREAT VIDEO! Thank you!!!

[@briancase6180]

The other thing is something that I hope everyone has already figured out: if you use a pitch device (or the audio clip editor in your daw) to change the pitch of a kick, you almost certainly will destroy the transient and create a useless kick sound; not always, but almost always. Even a change of a half-step can ruin it. Instead, trim the transient from a kick you like, and then trim the sustain from a kick you like (can be the same kick), and tune only the sustain sample. Then, overlay the two. You can get a much better tuned kick this way. On the other hand, Deadmou5 says he never tunes his kick drum; he says if you need to tune your kick, your kick is too long. I agree. Shorten your kick drum. Otherwise, it's an 808, and that's something completely different. Some DAWs come with a library of kick transients already trimmed for you for exactly this purpose of constructing a kick; look through your library, you might find everything you need.

[@wwlittlejOfficial]

That has never ever happened to me. Why would ur transient die? Maybe if u tuned ur kick to the deepest of sub octaves. But there's no reason if ur tune ur drums within the scale to lose u transient. If ur transient is, say 10-20 ms, tuning it down a few 2-3 st wouldn't have a really devastating effect other than stretching ur transient a ms or 3. Again if u tune it an octave or more below then I can see that being an issue, somewhat. Nothing tweaking ur pitch envelope cant help.. and as far as DM comment about kicks, I think that HIGHLY depends on the genre.

[@Keugre19]

I cant shorten my kicks when I make hard techno. Deadmau5 has been stupid saying that, it totally depends on what kind of music you make...

[@calvinschatzke5899]

Thats why I always layer my kicks. But Deadmau5 himself even tunes his kickdrums sometimes. I've seen that video and he's wrong with that. Not only 808s have a pitch. Even if your kick is an exact 8th or 16th note it might have a defined pitch that is crucial for a harmonic sub vibe in combination with the bass.

[@signalfields6763]

@@wwlittlejOfficial I think it’s wise to keep kick sample original if you can but if you want to pitch change make sure you aren’t warping but actually stretching to avoid destroying with warp artifacts of transient

[@alds9729]

​@@wwlittlejOfficial ive also found anything beyond a halfstep to 3 steps adjustments on kicks can literally change the kicks entire tone/character. It makes sense to choose the best kick/transient from the start and if it needs tuning adding the sustain kick and tuning that will give better results OR shorten the kick as Brian also mentioned. Remember real drummers tune their drums by ear to what sounds good right to them and isnt necesarily in tune to the music it just feels/sounds good to them. Unless they have perfect pitch ofcourse haha

[@theunboundsound]

You’re awesome

[@mihovil5806]

Amazing

[@sekritskworl-sekrit_studios]

Thank You!

[@d1e9opomombo]

Hey Oscar....I ve found your channel by chance as it happens often. Im not an Expert and your lessons are well exposed and I got eager to know more about these music topics. The background music you use in your lesson here is awesome. Whats the title? Greetings from italy and keep up with the good work.

[@jibberism9910]

The best part about being a noob is the ability to be thrown off by certain "ideological conflicts". One of the first videos I remember watching last year when I tried to get started was about this exact subject. Being the little duckling I am, it was immediately branded into my consciousness as being "mommy". Anyway, that dude said in no uncertain (yet sometimes to me, unclear) terms that tuning a kick is generally more hassle than it's worth, select a better kick. But I do believe he was talking about samples. I've moved into more synthpop kind of stuff a while back, so some of these things have kind of moved to the bg a bit even though they're still quite relevant of course.

[@redpeople2192]

Lowpassing - great tip

[@briggsmakesmusic]

should you tune all the rest of the percussion to the kick? or not worry about it

[@GimmCity]

7:10 what is that background music called ?

[@ild4099]

Should the pitch of the tail change with each chord change or each time the bass note changes

[@potsandjacks]

If your bass synth VCO is out of phase with your kick that is in tune, wont that cause phas canceling? Most VSOs are free running so there is no way to make sure they will align correctly

[@AntonioBrandao]

Or create the transient and the bass tone of the kick separately.

[@Testgeraeusch]

...that doesn't work nearly as good as it may sound. You can achieve better results by brute force (aka smashing everything together with a compressor) but in general it will mostly sound like a short kick sound over a weird bass-like-sound. I've tried, and i've failed a lot of times. Now i programm my own kicks as a double exponential chirp and that kinda works if you add some amplitude shape...

[@NovemberXXVII]

@@Testgeraeusch Yeah, I don't think the nuances that make a transient and tone sound like a single sound source are necessarily perceptible. I've tried layering bass into my kicks but the result's always more a tone than a drum.

[@homebrewinstrumentals7700]

OK, so when we are referring to the left-most peak - is this the highest peak or the absolutely the left-most peak? Because when I synthesize kickdrums, i end up with smaller peaks beyond the highest peak to the left. Thanks

[@em_the_bee]

Well, the two left-most peaks should be the same note anyway, if they come from the harmonic series

[@briancase6180]

Great advice. But let me put it this way: if your track is so awesome that its biggest problem is that the kick isn't tuned, you've got an *amazing* track. If this is your biggest problem, you don't *have* a problem. In other words, focus on getting expert at everything else FIRST.

[@OscarUnderdog]

I'm a fan of this idea. True true.

[@briancase6180]

It's a lesson I leaned the hard way: I wasted a lot of time trying to tune kicks and watching "how-to" videos when I should have been making music and learning everything else! Once you become good at most of the basics, kick tuning either isn't a problem or you know how to do it right and quickly using everything else you've learned!

[@wwlittlejOfficial]

I think it really depends how u build ur tracks. I 99% build drums first then bass. Gotta get that groove for me to keep interested to continue on. As such, I tune my kicks instinctually., if I'm using samples.

[@wwlittlejOfficial]

Deadmouse tryna fight u bro!

[@dox1755]

Hahaha i was about to write that

[@NNokia-jz6jb]

Why?

[@juhinpavithran9339]

It’s know we have the best sub. Bass between 35 to 6o hz . So choosing an kick between this notes will have the best impact on bass or boominess . ( from note E to G# ) . I think so choosing a kick having the tonal between this notes will be great for impact especially house tracks . What do u think on this Oscar .

[@90dzcohmzter09]

And in the World of Hardstyle the kick had a need for tuning😂

[@brucegaminglee5685]

☝️❤👊

[@crisoliveira2644]

I don't really care about it. If I suppose it was gonna clash with the harmony, it would clash with some of the chords anyway. In a simple harmony, it would probably introduce unwanted dissonance. In a complex harmony, it would muddle it. I'm yet to hear it do any of that , so I don't tune it.

[@signalfields6763]

Don’t tune your kick to the same as root or fundamental! kicks and bass need their own space and ideally their own frequency. Kick and bass root sound best next to each other often. leave room and EQout more room, adjust EQ cut to taste of clean/powerful

[@signalfields6763]

@@technober no it doesn’t. Write a simple track only using sin waves. You lose a lot of headroom (low frequency cancelation) if your bass and kick are kitting exact same note. sure side chain and eq can help but you won’t have nearly as much head room and punch if the kick n bass are hitting same frequency. Only way is if your kick is super short and bass and kick has separation in time

[@Vegan_Kebab_In_My_Hand]

@@signalfields6763 If you use hard sidechaining then the interaction doesn't matter, because there's practically none to begin with

[@daftdj123]

Actually, the peak on a 909 BD is not a A but a G... at least on mine ;)

[@kodymonroe2613]

I have never tuned a kick. It has also never been a problem. It’s not like people won’t dance. Also tuning your kick won’t make a good song so it really isn’t important AT ALL . 😉

[@bobbyarchaic9649]

Acoustic drums are pitched. It's why drumkeys exist. Just because lots of people don't use them doesn't mean there's no reason for them to exist.

[@BeingAMonkey]

They aren't tuned for harmony, but for specific sounds.

[@okashasunami32]

Great vids. But this one. I disagree. Kicks should be just kicks. Kicks shouldn't be tuned nor have sustain. Bass should be bass. Bass should be tuned. Just my honest opinion. Again. Great vids!!

[@patrickguynn8900]

Dosen't bass get tuned any way during bpm pitch bend when mixing?

[@Keugre19]

You cant just agree or disagree. It just depends on what kind of music you make. Pls make industrial techno with edm kicks... You actually need sustained kicks

[@okashasunami32]

@@Keugre19 I can do whatever I want. Which means I can humbly agree or disagree. Maybe I'm confused here. Isn't a kick just a "hit" or a "transient"? Then you layer the bass, at least in electronic music, over the kick?. :)

[@Keugre19]

@@okashasunami32 Kick tail isnt a hit, it definitely has a proper frequency. But yeah, if your kick is quite short, it just doesnt have a tail

[@okashasunami32]

@@Keugre19 Thanks. I enjoyed the chat. It helped me to do some research on kick drums and drums in general. Yes bass drums/kicks do have pitch and a frequency. I stand corrected..

[@musicbymarcian]

no you don't

[@oscarherrerar.3496]

i dont tune it, its a waste of creative time