David Glenn for The Pro Audio Files and davidglennrecording.com, home of the free VIP Mix Training Bundle.

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Today's video comes straight out of my latest course called Producing and Mixing Volume

1.

The beast has been unleashed, it's here, and I would love for you to check it out.

These are videos that have come straight out of the course.

I pulled them because I felt like they stood on their own as valuable content.

The last thing I want to tell you about with the new course is currently, I've got some

exciting bonuses.

We've got a free plugin, right?

Free plugin for Pro and Elite bundle customers, and that plugin is Levels from masteringthemix.com,

connected with Tom Frampton, the owner and developer over there.

Incredible guy, and I'm stoked to include that in the Pro and Elite bundle packages

for Producing and Mixing Volume 1.

Go check that out, I'll shut up, moving on to the video, I hope you guys dig it, and

we'll see you soon.

Alright guys, in this video, we're going to have some fun.

We're going to layer some kick drums, and we're going to do a couple of examples, and

show you one way to be very intentional with the different samples and what you allow them

to contribute, be it subs, punch, mid-range, room sound, verb, clarity, top end, click,

etcetera, to kind of build one cohesive sounding kick drum.

This process can be applied to kicks, snares, or just throwing a bunch of stuff together

and creating your own sounds.

Some sound design stuff.

The second example we're going to look at would be where we're going to get a little

bit more technical on layering multiple sounds where you want to retain low end for multiple

elements.

Checking phase, the difference between that and then also looking at how to make sure

that you get the best phase relationship out of your samples.

Before we do that, the thing I want to note is one kick drum, or one snare drum, sometimes

that's enough.

A lot of times, you get a kick drum sound, it's got a nice sub, a nice punch, it's got

the right mids, good top, bam, you're done.

All you need is that one sound.

But that can be kind of boring, and it can be a lot of fun to layer kicks, especially

when you can create your own custom sound.

So be it to enhance the song, or put your own kind of stamp on the production, the sound

of that kick drum layering it, all of a sudden kind of becomes your own thing.

Unless you're watching a video and copying the exact same settings, then you're just

taking someone else's — as I smack the mic — you're just taking someone else's sound.

But if you get in and just kind of mix up libraries, and you pull things, and you create

your own sounds, that's what this is all about is creating art and something that's unique

to you and expressing yourself through it.

So get all artsy about creating the perfect kick drum, but I did want to say, sometimes

that one sample is enough, but we're going to have some fun and we're going to layer

multiple sounds.

I don't want you to just start clicking and dragging clicks or snares for no reason.

Let's have intent.

Let's do this with a purpose.

For this example, I've got a starting kick drum, and then we're going to layer multiple

sounds, but we're going to filter out and focus in on, frequency wise, whatever those

sounds are contributing to the original.

We're not just going to layer for layering's sake, and we'll look at that in a second,

but the — you know what, nope, it's time to look at that, so here we go.

As I talk, I think there's more to say, but let's look at this first kick drum sound.

I'm going to solo it — actually, I don't even need to solo it, because I have my control

surface here and the faders are all down, so here is a loop of this first kick drum.

I just pulled it in from the That Sound library.

This is called Tight Kick 2.

[Tight Kick 2]

And we have a nice tight kick.

Okay?

To me, I would love to have some more bottom end in this kick.

I think a little room sound or something so it's not so clean and direct sounding would

be cool, and then maybe a unique top end, or some click in the kick would be really

cool.

Now, I have these samples, but if I just put all of these at zero, and I hit play, let

me turn this down a little bit, make sure it's not going to blow your speakers, these

are all — you know, here's what we started with.

[Tight Kick 2]

Then I've chosen them for certain things, but then if I just hit play...

[kick]

It could be cool, you may like that, but I think we can make it sound a lot better, so

what we're going to do is we're going to do this with purpose.

So the first sample I want to talk about is the sub.

So let me solo that.

[sub kick]

Okay.

Not so sure about the top end, it's a little bit extended, the note, the sustain is a little

bit much for me, so I wanted to control that, but blending the two together, let's go back

to what we started with.

[Tight Kick 2]

Okay?

And then blending in this for sub frequencies.

[Tight Kick 2 and sub kick]

Could be cool.

Top end is not bad, but I'm going to go ahead and get creative with this.

I'm going to take out the top end.

I only want to hear the subs.

So let me just listen to this sample.

[sub kick]

Come in here and just take out — I'm even going to go a little bit more — there we

go.

Somewhere around there sounds pretty cool.

Now, let's play these two together, and I'm going to blend in the subs.

[Tight Kick 2, blending sub kick]

Okay.

We're feeling the subs, but to me, I think it needs a little bit more work.

I want this to be really tight, so we have some tools at our disposal.

Right here, we're just going to use nice, tight fades.

I'm going to break up this clip, put a little fade, and let's see where that gets us.

[Tight Kick 2 and sub kick, with fades]

Okay.

It's quite a bit tighter.

I'm going to go even further with the fade.

Then I'm going to copy — let's go ahead and get rid of these — I'm going to copy

the edited kick drum.

Nice, tight sub frequency kick drum, and let's hear those together.

[kick]

Okay.

One more time, before, without this guy.

[Tight Kick 2]

Now with our extra sub frequencies.

[Tight Kick 2 and sub kick]

Okay.

Still a little bit loose.

We'll look at phase in a minute.

There's a couple of things we can do to tighten that up, but I feel like we're getting somewhere.

Still a little bit tight, a little bit dry, I think we can do with some room sound.

I was searching through my libraries, I found this one, and I really like the room in it.

Let me pull open the — this one in solo.

[room kick]

Okay, it's extended, it's got a lot of subs, we don't need that.

We already have our subs.

We already committed to that second kick drum contributing to the sub frequencies, so let's

pull open an EQ and let's get rid of the subs.

We're going to do the opposite.

Instead of taking out top end, we're going to take out bottom.

[room kick, filtering]

So I'm just going to come out here.

I've kind of lost some of my room sound, so let's pull it back a little bit.

Okay, so somewhere in there, I still don't know if I want any of that 100Hz.

That's kind of the punch frequency range.

I'm going to pull that back.

[room kick]

Okay.

And then I'm not sure that I really need the top, so let's take out the click in it.

[room kick, filtering top]

A little bit.

Then maybe something in here.

[room kick]

Okay, before this sample — excuse me, before the EQ.

[room kick, no EQ]

Then after.

[room kick, after EQ]

A little bit of extension.

Now let's see what we get when we blend that in with the original two kick drums.

[kick, blending in room]

Okay.

I think it sounds pretty cool.

It's not in context to a song or anything at this point, but the only other thing I

would say is maybe some fades here to kind of tighten it up a little bit more.

There's always some things we can do after the fact that will help us a little bit too,

but let's hear that again.

[kick, with room]

Then without it.

[kick, no room]

Okay.

Might be a little bit choked.

The OCD in me is kicking in.

Okay, now let's go to this final kick.

I really liked the — when I was listening to it — and this is trial and error too,

just for demonstration's sake.

Sometimes it doesn't work out.

Sometimes you go, “Oh, I didn't need that last kick,” totally cool.

This one, I've got — I pulled in for the click, so let's get that guy up in the mix.

Let me solo it so we can hear it by itself.

[click kick]

That's just this last kick.

I've got the punch I want, I've got the beef I want, I've got the sub frequencies that

I want.

Let me go ahead and take out the sub, similar EQ, first move to that guy, let's hear that.

[click kick, filtering low end]

I think somewhere around there is going to be cool.

So we're going to start with that, and let's blend some of that in.

Some click.

So here is out.

[kick, blending click kick]

Then we're going to blend it in.

Without it.

[kick, no click]

Very cool.

These samples could still be a little bit tighter with the phase relationship.

We're going to look at that in another example, but here is a very basic way to then have

these kick drums locked in together.

You could bounce these down as one.

I tend to be the mixing engineer, producer that leaves them on their own tracks, because

then I can automate between different sections, or I could pull out — like, you're going

to see what I did in the track once we get to it.

These are different kick drums for example's sake, but then let's say, the first hit, I

don't want the click, but the second and fourth I do, then we could come in and manipulate

it like this.

[kick, automating click]

There you go.

So different things you can do once you layer them, but the biggest thing I wanted you guys

to take away from this was filtering to allow the different kick drums to be focused in

the area that they're complimenting the original.

So blending kick drums, the next video, the next example we're going to look as is going

to be taking these same kicks and then diving deeper into the phase relationship.

I'm going to kind of explain the samples and nudging, and trying to get the best out of

our kick samples so that we can retain the low end for multiple kick drums, and it'll

come out with a good sound there as well.

So next video, we're going to take a look at that, and I'll see you there.