How to I give my gabber kick more "punch"?

[uranutan Profile]

I can distort the hell out of a 909 with Guitar Rig or CamelCrusher and make it sound nasty, but it lacks that front end punch that makes it sound like a kick and not just a noise. How do I do that?

[divtech Profile Website]

layer a nice clean undistorted kick under it and find a way of making the low frequency output of the noise lesser in the beginning when its competing with the kick. +experimentation

then redistort and repeat

this is one of my methods of getting around having to use vsts

[uranutan Profile]

Pretty logical. I'll give that a shot.

[endora Profile]

EQ it a lot !

[endora Profile]

EQ it a lot !

[evilredbull Profile]

this is what i am looking for to

[jimmusician Profile]

well, what i do is lately i grab about four different kicks and then overdrive the same channel, and then get the fruity multiband compressor and boost the bass to the max threshhold

[//Septic Profile]

have a go at synthesizing your own...Iv been searching for a better gabber kick for ages and I only just bothered to give this s proper go...

I started with a heavy reece sound, added a fast pitch envelope and bobs your uncle!!!...

[Vfive Profile]

do i layer the kicks over my break or do i stop the break put them in?

[djrlm Profile]

EQ, and compression it is the key!

[verdroid Profile Website]

in ableton simpler you can filter your kick. Most people use the low pass, but i more like the high pass. Bloody overdrive from fruity is a very nice thing to add. And like other say here: lots of multiband eq and compression. Find a good compromise between those.
May not be helpfull cause i like my kickz noizy :s
Oh yes, 2 kicks at same could help to, or a kick layered with a bass

[tedchaos Profile]

You could try adding a standard sampled kickdrum with quadrafuzz to give it a nice barking sound

[DISEMBOWELLED Profile]

you need to layer your distorted kick with a super-clean, punchy kickdrum, the kind you would hear in a trance track (no seriously...). this will make the initial "punch" of the kickdrum. your distorted sound will come after, making the body and tail, which will give the overall kick its character.

depending on what kind of sound you want, you might want to highpass your distorted kick, but if you want the tail end of it to be subby then don't do this

then you will need to sidechain them so the dirty kick has its gain reduced while the clean kick is playing. if you can't do this then try playing with the ADSR settings on your distorted kick, give it some attack so its quiet during the punch and then loud afterwards.


Seriously, layering is the most important thing to do. in my experience once you've put crazy distortion on your original sound no amount of eqing is going to give you the punch/definition that you are looking for.

[Sense of Direction Profile]

Seriously, layering is the most important thing to do. in my experience once you've put crazy distortion on your original sound no amount of eqing is going to give you the punch/definition that you are looking for.

Nah man just: kick -> EQ(I usually boost around 100 Hz) -> Distortion (fully overdrive it if you want)-> EQ(boost around 100 Hz again and up in the higher ends to taste) -> Compressor/Limiter(just to keep the volume down)
= all you need

[DISEMBOWELLED Profile]

no, eqing will help to an extent, but if you really want proper punch you should layer with a clean kick. especially if you're using a heavily distorted sound to begin with.

or you could set your distortion so it bypasses the low frequencies (below 150 Hz ish) and only distorts everything above that. if your distortion vst doesn't allow this then you can send the audio to 2 separate channels and use hi pass / low pass filters on each, then mix them together to taste.