Right about now I have already decided if I want to compress more or not.  I’d said 20-30 % of the time the kick needs no more compression. Usually that is when it has come from a recording that was done by an experienced engineer. Most of the time I’m going to crank on it a little more.

                *remember the kick will get compressed again no matter what, if you are using stereo compression on the master*

    My favorite drum compressor is the DBX 160. There are a lot of versions of it, the “X”, “A”, “VU”... yada.yada... They are all based around the fact that the attack and release were program dependent. I believe this is the reason why I like it so much! The attack would range from 3ms to 15 ms and the release from 80ms to 400 ms (125/db a second). There is no plug-in for it, so I emulate it with what I got. I start with the attack around 10ms and release around 160ms with a ratio of 4:1. Then I bring the threshold down until I hear what I want to hear compression wise. You know what I am talking about, the cool thump. After, that I tweak the attack a little, faster or slower, no rule here, just listen. The release I may fiddle with depending on the tempo. Faster release on a faster song, slower release on a slower song. Bang, you got the kick compressed!

    Okay, now I am going to try to give you a guideline to start your kick eq. As you know kick drums all sound a little different so there is no magical formula, but there are tendencies...

    The graph to right is exaggerated to illustrate what I am going to type. :) Usually, there is a sweet spot to boost between 50-100hz. I find it by boosting and then sweeping till I find what I like using a fairly narrow “Q”. I may open the “Q” later and make it more wide, but after I do the next thing... Say I land on 80hz for this particular kick. Then I look for a frenquency 3 x 80hz to cut. Which would be 240hz. I know this sounds weird and is not in any handbook, but try it. Its never exact, but there is always something worth cutting 3 times above your boosted low sweet spot. Crazy I know, but it will help the kick “speak” and leave room for other things in that range.

    Now depending on how much attack there is on the kick already, you may goose 3-5k a little and add a little air above 10khz. There you go, a great place to start making your own killer killer kick sound. As a bonus for reading all this, here’s a link to some kick samples you can use.....

I personally try my hardest to use the drum sounds that were recorded. They have the personality of the drummer and his kit. Sometimes I will add a kick or snare to the original, but rarely completely replace them.

Give a day or two more to get the samples up.

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