So “Switch Up” (the ADM/MooN ShynE/K-Maculate and maybe FoRcE oNe pending audition, for the MsP Roll Call ’10 compilation and ADM’s Chamber Waves album) is almost clear of the alpha stages, and we’re looking to get some more vocals in.  One of the most interesting things to me in this particular project is attaining that kick/bass drum that has that familiar hit.  Anyone who’s been in a club when they’ve played “Sexy B*tch” by David Guetta, for example, has heard that really hard, bassy kick drum played on every beat of the measure.

It took a while to really figure out what to do to get that particular sound, but I think I’ve pretty much gotten it down.

It consists of three different parts.

1. “K034″ from the Deep/Hard Kicks set (I believe from Modern Beats?)
2.  EQ this kick around 150Hz, raising it, with a fairly wide Q,
3. Compress the kick: Threshold = -1.2dB, Ratio: 11.5:1, Gain: 7.0dB, Attack = 23.4 ms, Release = 2205 ms

At the end of that chain, that kick will knock you on your ass.  A few alphas before, I had a much higher gain, higher ratio, and faster attack.  This one sounds pretty good to me though; a nice pumpy bass sound with a nice kick in the attack.

One thing I have noticed in these songs is that some of them were heavily limited (limited as in the compression effect, not limited as in with a restraint).  Thing is, some of the versions I have of these songs are limited so hard that even the vocals sound pumpy from the mix.  They obviously all hit very hard, but the mix itself sounds terrible from an overall standpoint.

Hopefully, I’d like to try to get a mix of both worlds; get a good pumpy feel without compromising the rest of the mix.  If I can get the bass to pump and still achieve a favorable mix, then I’d say we’ve done a good job.  The pump of it all (I guess it’s what gives that fistpumping action) is part of the genre, I feel, and without getting that, I’d be betraying the sound we’re trying to achieve here.

So far, ADM and I have gotten a pretty good track so far, and I’m getting REAL excited about this.  We’re looking to work on Sunday to get in some vocals and get this song into the beta stages.

As always, I’ll make sure to keep you guys updated!

-mnshyn

Tags: adm, compression, david guetta, eq, force one, k-maculate, kick drum, limiting, moon shizzle productions, moon shyne, msp, Roll Call '10, switch up

This entry was posted on Friday, March 12th, 2010 at 13:59 and is filed under adm, Chamber Waves, frc1, kmclt, mnshyn, Music Commentary, Production Tricks, Roll Call '10. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.