kick consistency

[PT]

I recently tracked a drummer who played his kick with too much dynamic range. I'm mixing a rock song and want the kick fairly consistent in level. I've been having trouble using compression because the dynamic range is simply too great, so one setting or another kinda kills the tone on either the softer kicks or the harder kicks. My thought is that I should try to, in advance of a compressor, essentially turn up or down the level of the soft and hard kicks, respectively, and make a new, more consistent kick track that will be easier to manipulate in the mix.

My question is: If I do this, is it better to turn the soft kicks up? Or turn the hard kicks down? My feeling is to turn the hard kicks down, as this seems like less audio resolution would be lost.

OR...

Do I just need to use a compressor/limiter, first off, to fix the huge exaggeration between the soft and hard kicks? Is there a way to do this so it sounds really natural? Squashing the hard kicks down to the level of the soft kicks really takes out all the punch. But maybe I'm not using the right settings?

[mjau]

Some judicious automation, along with some compression, will very likely help. If you have access to a sound replacement plugin, like drumagog, that might help, too. I've used drumagog to take a "good" sounding snare hit and replace some of the poor hits with it. Works wonders.

[Corey Y]

One option if it's really bad and compression just doesn't cut it, limit the track. Not my first choice by any means, but it will certainly take dynamics out of the picture. The obvious drawback being that if you wanted some dynamics you're going to have to fader ride or automate.

I've had to do it with bass guitar before. Luckily it was punk rock and there was pretty much no dynamic change in any of the bass parts. Not the preferable solution, but it does work and preserves the general tone of the kick.

[farview]

I wouldn't worry about the resolution. If you recorded in 24 bit, you would have to turn something down to PEAK at -48dbfs just to lower the resolution to that of a CD.

You probably have a bigger problem on your hands. Soft hits don't sound the same as hard ones. If the dynamics are too out of whack, even if you get every hit the same volume, it still won't sound right.

But to answer your question, bring the hard hits down. It will be easier to get the compression and EQ to sound good that way.

Drumagog is great at fixing stuff like this.

[PT]

The problem I have with fader riding...

I'm using ProTools LE. I know how to automate using points the "volume line" and it would be no trouble to go in by hand and turn down the loud kicks. But this, then, essentially disables the fader. You've now set your level for that track and can't easily turn the track up or down.

I wish you could use the fader and have it move all you volume automation points up or down, accordingly. But LE doesn't work this way, right?

This is why I was thinking a good approach would be to automate the levels by hand, first, then print that to a new track. But is there a problem with sound-quality doing this?

(Farview, you posted just as I posted the above. Thanks for addressing the resolution issue.)

[ashcat_lt]

I think printing the track after automation is the right way to go. Don't throw out the old track, just in case.

You might also try your most transparent compressor with everything - threshold, compression, attack, release - set very low. So it's aways doing a little something when the kick is playing at all. This should preserve at least some of the dynamics of the individual hits (the punch, or whatever) while helping witth the consistency between hits. It'll likely require quite a bit of makeup gain afterwards.

Of course, the right answer is to re-track with a competent drummer.

[PT]

Of course, the right answer is to re-track with a competent drummer.

Let's not get into that!

[Brian]

I would give it a little expander gate keyed at 63 hz as a start, but, not so much that it cuts all the background out, Make sure it's lower than the lowest kick sample so that every hit will open it but not so open that you can't tell it's on, you just don't want it affecting what transients you have.
If some of them are too quiet for this, replace them with louder adjacent or near hits.
That will keep it from sounding weird so far.
Take a listen,
Then hit it with some compression, pull it down between 6 & 12 db, attack at 9-11ms, release as it sounds good.
Take a listen,
You may be able to hit it again with some post comp expander or gate, you may be able to gate out all the background noise if desired,
Automate a tone control to sweep a boost or cut around 4.8k and let it sweep frequencies through one bar, copy this throughout the entire track.
Then you can write any fader automation.
Give it a shot, it'll waste an hour for you.
You may need some low end roll off from the quiet hits, it won't hurt the loud ones.

[Mane1234]

I've never done this but what if you found your kick waveforms that were too high and then click/drag on them, apple+E to make a region out of them and then use your gain plugin to bring the volume down. This way you don't give up control of your fader. Is that right?

Brian's fix sounds like a good idea too and you'd learn how to do all that in the process.

[PT]

Thanks for the suggestions, all.

Separate regions, a gain plugin, using an expander instead of a compressor...I've got some good ideas to try out.

[AD DD]

perhaps just splice the best kicks, to retain consistency..

[Brian]

That's what I do when I'm desparate or just want to get it over with. Not calling it bad, but, I'm a little MASO!

[stuntbutt]

I'm using ProTools LE. I know how to automate using points the "volume line" and it would be no trouble to go in by hand and turn down the loud kicks. But this, then, essentially disables the fader. You've now set your level for that track and can't easily turn the track up or down

After you automate individual hits you can still select the whole kick track and volume up and down.

[PT]

After you automate individual hits you can still select the whole kick track and volume up and down.

I think i've done this before. You're saying you select the entire track, in the "volume line" view, then you can use the fader to go up or down? I know you can go up or down this way by dragging the whole line or grabbing on to a point.

But this is still sorta of a pain in the butt when you're trying to mix kinda quickly, no?

[digitaldrummer]

just select all and use the trimmer tool to move all of the automation points at once. works well.

but what would probably work better is to either drumagog the track, either completely replace it, or bounce a second track and use it alongside the original (mix to taste). Or if you don't have Drumagog, copy the track, select a kick hit you like then painstakingly go through the kick track (use tab-to-transient) and replace the wanky hits with the one you like until its more consistent. then compress.

Mike