Back in the day (mid to late 80's ) I was mounting speakers inside my drum shells at about an inch below the head. The output of the speakers went into the trigger inputs of a Roland Octapad. The Octapad was connected to an Atari 1040 (via MIDI) which had a Hybrid Arts ADAP sampler connected to it. It was a blast. I could sample anything I wanted then play it back by triggering the sample via the speaker. The kick drum was always my favorite to play with. The drummers I did this for loved them because the drum felt "real," but it made them quiet for those "certain gigs."
I loved the line about cutting your least-favorite mic cable: "make sure you cut off the right end." That made me laugh out loud thinking of the embarrassment of getting it all soldered up and going to plug it into the board and realizing the error.
At the moment, when I don't have drum microphones yet, I use only a subkick and 3 other random micks me and my friend could find. The sounds has been surprisingly good! Now that I have a summer job, I will be able to get drum micks in the future. These videos are super helpful and are teaching me a lot about what kind of micks I should buy. Thank you!
Glenn! A cheaper way to get away with the mic pad is to solder a 150 ohm resistor between the speaker terminals. I've done it and it works just fine. You should try it. Greetings from Bolivia.
I am so anxiously waiting the room microphone episode. Since you mentioned you had a breakthrough on ribbon microphones, I'm holding back from buying one to get your opinion before getting one! Great channel Glenn!
I can hear the enhanced bass response the subkick adds (I almost always watch your videos using headphones to listen to the audio) but it sure is subtle.
+SpectreSoundStudios 6" to 8" gives you better freq range 12" grabs frequencies to low to hear so for my diy i stuck to 8" try an 8" one on your diy subkick or check the math
I did a similar thing back in the 60s. I put a 2 1/2" or so speaker into a plastic cup, filled with cotton batting, with a hole in the back for the wire. It augmented the Astatic mic I was using ( we didn't have a lot back then, also used some 664 something or other) worked out pretty good!
I did this a few years back. To mount the speaker / subkick, I used a simple property of the speaker itself - magnetism. Basically, I stuck the speaker on a ferrous paint can and placed it in front of the kick drum. It worked like a charm.
I just did this project and built it into an old snare drum. I used a short desk mic stand and a couple 5/8ths nuts to make it stand up and then to make it look really good I cut the heads off of the rings and put one layer of one of my band shirts over it and put the rims back on, it looks good and works a bit like a pop filter!
Here in South Africa we call tie wraps "cable ties" =) Great video! We have the unusual opportunity to record extreme metal drums this weekend! Thanks from Cape Town SA
I've heard that this works really well for a vintage bass tone too. The Beatles used it for Paperback Writer after Lennon listened to some Wilson Picket and complained about how weak their bass sounded in comparison. The result - A thick, punchy, creamy tone that drives the whole song. Or maybe McCartney just stuck some new strings on, we'll never know.
Hey Glen! DW started making a subkick called "The Moon Mic". My guess is that they bought Yamaha out of making it so they could take over the subkick monopoly. Muhahah! It looks like they put some more thought into the design to get more out of it than the Yamaha version was able to do. It looks pretty slick!
Thanks for the fantastic advice on how to create your own sub-kick, hopefully we get around to making one for our studio. Although the audix microphone were currently using is doing a much better job than we first thought it would.
Great DIY info guy! I will defo be trying that! I'm extremely new to studio eng, and have built my home studio in my garage so this type of cost saving info is great. Thanks.
I've taken junk speakers and even fucked up ones with ripped cones / suspensions and excited them with working speakers to record (or re-record) things and get all kinds of different tones or distortions. It sure is cool. Also, you can pad the speaker's output with a simple resistor or even a potentiometer at little cost.
did this back in the day with a 15" vintage fender cab, just wired the xlr to 1/4 and put it about 3ft in front of the kit.....the whole kit gets huge.
Fantastic videos, Mr. Glenn. I do have a question about building a subkick. Does the size of the speaker effect the capturing of the low end on a bass drum? If so, is there an optimal size to use for many different types of music? Thanks!
Most of your average nearfields - with 6" - 8" woofs, really only reach down to around 40Hz or so, in similar amplitude as the low mid frequencies - some get a bit lower than that - - but you won't hear a lot of those sub frequencies because most average studio monitors can't reproduce down that low at volumes that you can hear... so you'll hear the portion that lives in the 40 Hz ranges and up, ( depending on your hearing) but to really hear the full affect of this kick mic, you should monitor with a sub; and part of the effect is the air movement at those lower frequencies that you can "feel" more than you can hear. It's that "thump" right in the center of your chest.
So I read an article (cant remember where, but they had a lot of science to back it up lol) that said that a subkick really isn't capturing the sound of the bass drum, but is in fact generating it's own sound. Shortly after reading that article, I found out about Wavesfactory's FREE subkick simulator (SK10) and it works great! Try this plugin out before building a complicated synthesizer lol. Of course this is almost 6 years after this video came out, but just FYI!
Thank you for mentioning this plugin, I agree it's somewhat of a waste of an input to use a subkick instead of a synth. I was hoping there was an easy substitute for this, turns out there is
Skar Productions hi (no - i'm not glenn lol..) - i keep it on a separate track and mix into the kit as suits your taste. i don't think i do much in the way of eq (maybe suck out some higher end) and a bit of compression and bosh - you have a kick signal that ranges from 20Hz up to 100Hz that sounds sweet and warm with your normal kick mic. it is to die for.....
They sound pretty damn good live also. I was working some gigs for an audio compay doing outdoor festivals they sound great on the 8x10 bass cabs too!..you know bass players need all the help they can get.haha
Wow that sounds great, similar to that you can use headphones as a mic. Not for studio recording (obviously) but when the mic of your phone is broken, or you need a mic for a skype phone call, they are usable. Of if you want to make really dirty Punk Rock (or Black Metal) with a cassette deck.
Hey Glenn, just wondering if you mic up the skin that is being hit on the kick drum. My music technology teacher told me that 'only the big studios do it' and we shouldn't bother doing it. I personally don't remember seeing any mics in that position in any online videos (though this may be due to the fact that you hardly see the drummer's feet in a recording studio). Is it important? Does it add anything or was my teacher just being dopey? Cheers
I'm not sure if you're even reading comments on such old videos, but I'll still try to ask - at some point in later videos you show a trick with gated tone generator for sub-bass on kick. Would that be a subkick replacement, augmenter, or a plebeian way to go if subkick is just not an option for whatever reason? Thanks in advance!
Just built my own out an old 4 cone speaker cab using the only properly working driver. Sounds decent on a test run but we'll see what happens when the band I work with are rehearsing on Wednesday
I've seen people do this with open-back cabs as well. I think I liked the higher atonality of that setup, as well as the volume gain, vs either of these. Having said that, I agree that the homemade one sounded better than the prefab one. I wonder, could this be made from an old bass drum as well? Or does the rectangular shape of the cab make for better tonality? What about cutting down an old barrel if a bass drum isn't available? Questions, questions...!
Could you please make some mixing tips videos? For example, I don't have pretty much the idea to mix "correctly" a subkick to a heavy mix :( And then it goes to guitars, bass, drums.. I would be very appreciated! Keep it rocking
Canadians say "tie wraps" instead of "zip ties"? Or is it just you Glenn?(I love learning about language differences like this). Also, thank you very much for this informative video. I think the first time I ever saw one of these was on one of Neil Peart's drumkits. Back then I thought to myself "why does he put a snare drum on the bass drum?".
Hey Glen, you said any speaker will do the job, but do you know if different speakers react and sound different? If so is it subtle or prominent? Thanks
Very Nice... a quick question, I have a Marshall MG50(my first amp) laying around and gathering dust, do you think I can use its speaker for the kick sub?
Hey Glenn, The inline pad you were talking about... Would that be useful in cleaning up the clipping in Guitar DIs? I'm sure that's exactly the application it was made for (as for other instruments as well), but what sparked the question is that I'm unsure of exactly where the clipping in going on, with the example of my Ibanez RGA7 with shitty active pickups. Like, whether the pickup itself is clipping and will still translate into Reaper as a clipped signal regardless of the input gain, or if the pickup itself is clean but doesn't clip until it hits Reaper due to the hot input levels in between the pickup and input of Reaper. Thanks G.
I think Subkick was actually the model name by Yamaha and not what you would call the concept of a large diaphragm mic. Anyhow, DW has one called the Moon Mic that currently on sale, but how wants to pay $400 for something you could build for $50?
Why not just sidechain the kick to a low frequency generator (like a 55hz tone) and a gate??? I'm not being a dick, I'd really like to know the difference. I've used both techniques, and find that I like the sidechain better. Thoughts?
***** My #1 reason for using a subkick would be phase alignment. The frequency generator plus gate gave me a lot of phase issues that a subkick didn't. I've found it sounds most natural, when using a frequency generator, to choose a frequency that's pretty close to the pitch of the kick already. If that wave is just playing the whole song and the gate opens to "reveal" it when the kick hits, it's very likely to be out of phase. The generator is going to be playing a steady signal so, unless you're lucky enough that the signal is exactly in phase every single kick hit (which means the drummer would have to be playing perfectly in time and the signal generator would have to be outputting a tone that's lined up with the tempo of the song rather than tuned to a certain pitch), it's going to be out of phase and give you some weird low end hollowness, peaks, and nulls depending on when in the signal generator's cycle each kick hit triggers the gate open. If the subkick is used, the phase relationship between kick inside and subkick mics might not be perfect, but at least they're always off by the same amount. If you really need to, you could nudge the subkick signal earlier in the timeline to align with the kick inside mic better. A good way to use a frequency generator rather than a subkick: make a sample out of the generated tone and use the sample to augment the inside kick mic (using the inside kick's hits as a trigger). You'll just have to make sure the sample from the signal generator starts at the Zero-Line of the waveform (or you'll get nasty, non-musical clicks) and plays out in a phase-coherent way (it's moving in the same direction as the low frequency content of the inside kick mic - you might have to hit the polarity button to flip it into phase). I know "sample" is a dirty word around here - hell, I hate using 'em, too - but they CAN be beneficial at times and this is an example of using a sample for good rather than evil. One thing is certain, though. If it sounds good, it IS good. If you're getting good results by using a frequency generator (maybe you're cutting enough lows out of the other mics so you're avoiding phase issues all-together) then keep doing what you're doing. It didn't work well for me but there's nothing to say it wouldn't work well for you! Keep bangin' it out!
DontWorryImAPilot Excellent insight. Yea, I do a LOT of low end filtering, in combination with checking the phase coherency. I typically use a 55hz tone because I'm trying to emphasize the lower octave of 110hz on my kick low end. Furthermore, I keep the 55hz low in the mix; I'm only trying to get a little bit of woofer movement/energy, not 'bass up' my kick (a kick, in metal, is really a low-mid instrument, not a low instrument). In college, they told us to filter everything at 60hz, or below. However, I find myself filtering my kicks up to 85-90hz. This helps clear out some space for the low frequencies in the bass guitar.
+DontWorryImAPilot hahahaha the part u said about the word "sample" actually made me laugh as an electronic music producer (I usually use around 50-70 mixer tracks for each song so yeah..). However what u are explaining is very interesting to me, since I don't know how rock/metal producers deal with stuff. Note that I use guitar and bass guitar on my tracks but I havent encountered that sub kick issue, since I use heavy dubstep kick samples. Could you please explain to me what is that "generated tone" you mention? A simple sine wave with some pitch envelope going down? :)
Yeah, it's basically a sine wave, though it could be anything. By the time I get through processing it, the wave's probably pretty bonked. It's typically just used to provide a little extra sub content to existing kick drums without adding too much of anything else. You just bounce/render out a sample of the gate opening and allowing that generated tone through and use that as a sample to augment the existing kick tone. By using a specific sample rather than catching the sine wave at any random phase of its cycle when the gate opens, you'll theoretically get a sub tone sound that's less likely to give you random phase problems. If the tempo of the song is 60 bpm (for easy math, one beat a second) and the kick hits on every single beat, then we need a generated low frequency wave to be in the right portion of its phase at the beginning of every second. What if the generated frequency is something like 43.5hz? Then sometimes the tone is in an upward amplitude swing and sometimes its in a downward amplitude swing at the start of any random second - where we always want a consistent direction to match the existing kick's phase...that one's going to be pretty consistent because it's a new "sample" every hit. I'm not sure I'm explaining it clearly enough. Of course, it might all be 1000% theoretical, too. I've only had any problems like that with a gated generated tone a few times. It's probably something you'll only run across a few times and not have to think about ever.
Thank you for explaining it so much! I suppose it's not a bad idea to fill the low end with something since rock/metal kick drums are usually weak and not so bassy, but not too much because fast double kick 16s or 32s will muddy up the song (if the sine wave generates at that speed).
Sup Glen. I saw some photos of dave grohl's drum setup during the recording of nevermind, I noticed that there was a bass drum shell in front of his bass drum. Was wondering if you have worked with anyone who has done this /know what the purpose of the extra shell is
I find ribbon mics usually do the trick for me "well for what I do at least" , I just place it in front of the Kick about 12 in away, I also have a sub kick but lately I've been sticking to the ribbon
Reece113 Agreed, the kick mic solo'd sounded pretty good, but the second the subkick came in it just sounded muffled and damp, the DIY one had way more power IMO.
Reece113 this is what everyone says (including me) when you listen with the drums soloed. The instant you try to mix in a low frequency signal, like a bass guitar or bass synth, you *will* hate the DIY subkick; it just eats up most of the low-low frequency spectrum and leaves no room for anything else, unless it is heavily processed. It's the main reason Yamaha actually made a "real" one. I'm not sure if he was the first person to do it, but George Martin was doing this on Ringo's drum kit in the mid-60's, so the idea has been around for years, but it was only about 10-12 years ago that someone actually started manufacturing one. Their reasoning was they thought they could tame some of the crazy low-end by enclosing the speaker in some sort of resonant shell (like a drum) which would serve to absorb & diffuse some of the massive amounts of air flowing past. In modern times, we have access to crazy amounts of powerful processors that basically make this problem null & void (that is, *if* you know how to you use yer plug-ins/gear!), but here's the other thing: it looks pretty. And we all know how important looks are to musicians. Hahaha. So Yamaha made a good profit mainly due to aesthetics and the silliness of musicians.
Johnny Don't! I'd say do the opposite of what yamaha tried to do (making it more broadrange) and instead lowpass and gate so it practically does a similar thing to the sine wave gate trick and mix you bass above the low end of the kick. Another trick is a resonant high pass filter stick it to where the lowest part of your kick is (where you want it) and crank the resonance and then move it till it is a similar pitch to the sub harmonic of the kick.
Hey Glenn, I noticed you record with one kick drum and a double kick pedal. I was wondering if it made a huge difference to record with two kick drums and two separate kick pedals instead? I'm sorry in advance if this question is stupid, as the only skin I beat is below the belt.
Ever tried this with guitar or bass as a second mic to fill in gaps? It strikes me that the weight of the cone is the only problem, in that it would give muddy low-end instead of anything nice and defined. Perhaps try a 6" or 8" full-range hi-fi or monitor speaker for the "mic"? Those cones tend to be lighter (and faster), so you might get some interesting results there. It could be worth butchering a pair of Tannoy Reveals; second hand, they're much cheaper than mid-range mics anyway.
question....I have a kit that never moves and had to be set up facing an inside corner of a 4 foot wall. The wall destroyed the resonance somewhat. I'm building a subkit now but wonder what result is just suspend the speaker inside the kick drum itself? my goal is to use the subkick to "hopefully" engineer some resonance to overcome what the cornered wall did.
Am I right in saying that the larger the speaker the better bass response you get in the homemade situation? ie a 12" would be way better than a 8" or something?
Can you recommend a mic pre-amp for this? Is this best for recording/live? What amperage should it be? You mentioned it can be too much on double kick runs. I do a lot of both singes and doubles. Will it overpower the mix live?
Glenn, is there a cheap way to get multi inputs for tracking drums if u only have a 2 input interface? Do they make a cheap alternative or is there any less expensive multi interfaces worth using
how do you find just the main mic, then splitting the signal and eq-ing one for sub and one for your attack sound and blending then? i've found that to work pretty well. also in higher tempo double kick metal i'm 99% sure it's all triggered so a sub mic would be next to useless.
Back in the day (mid to late 80's ) I was mounting speakers inside my drum shells at about an inch below the head. The output of the speakers went into the trigger inputs of a Roland Octapad. The Octapad was connected to an Atari 1040 (via MIDI) which had a Hybrid Arts ADAP sampler connected to it. It was a blast. I could sample anything I wanted then play it back by triggering the sample via the speaker. The kick drum was always my favorite to play with.
The drummers I did this for loved them because the drum felt "real," but it made them quiet for those "certain gigs."
I loved the line about cutting your least-favorite mic cable: "make sure you cut off the right end." That made me laugh out loud thinking of the embarrassment of getting it all soldered up and going to plug it into the board and realizing the error.
i actually preferred the ghettosubkick to the real one.
At the moment, when I don't have drum microphones yet, I use only a subkick and 3 other random micks me and my friend could find. The sounds has been surprisingly good! Now that I have a summer job, I will be able to get drum micks in the future. These videos are super helpful and are teaching me a lot about what kind of micks I should buy. Thank you!
check out the Samson CS for snare
SpectreSoundStudios Thanks for the tip!
Glenn! A cheaper way to get away with the mic pad is to solder a 150 ohm resistor between the speaker terminals. I've done it and it works just fine. You should try it.
Greetings from Bolivia.
You, Fluff, and Ola are the only ones on youtube actually worth taking notes from, even when they are short videos.
Thanks for being awesome.
I am so anxiously waiting the room microphone episode. Since you mentioned you had a breakthrough on ribbon microphones, I'm holding back from buying one to get your opinion before getting one! Great channel Glenn!
I can hear the enhanced bass response the subkick adds (I almost always watch your videos using headphones to listen to the audio) but it sure is subtle.
you won't get the huge bass with headphones. try a subwoofer instead :)
+SpectreSoundStudios Exactly even with monitors you still need a sub to hear it good.
+SpectreSoundStudios 6" to 8" gives you better freq range 12" grabs frequencies to low to hear so for my diy i stuck to 8" try an 8" one on your diy subkick or check the math
I did a similar thing back in the 60s. I put a 2 1/2" or so speaker into a plastic cup, filled with cotton batting, with a hole in the back for the wire. It augmented the Astatic mic I was using ( we didn't have a lot back then, also used some 664 something or other) worked out pretty good!
I did this a few years back. To mount the speaker / subkick, I used a simple property of the speaker itself - magnetism.
Basically, I stuck the speaker on a ferrous paint can and placed it in front of the kick drum. It worked like a charm.
I actually liked the subkick you built a lot more than the other one. It sounded bigger and made more of a difference in the sound
Built on of these for a community college's recording studio, ended up using an old snare stand and tie wraps to hang it. Worked out great.
I just did this project and built it into an old snare drum. I used a short desk mic stand and a couple 5/8ths nuts to make it stand up and then to make it look really good I cut the heads off of the rings and put one layer of one of my band shirts over it and put the rims back on, it looks good and works a bit like a pop filter!
Here in South Africa we call tie wraps "cable ties" =)
Great video! We have the unusual opportunity to record extreme metal drums this weekend!
Thanks from Cape Town SA
Same in UK! Cable ties forever :D
in the computer world we call them tweezers
I've heard that this works really well for a vintage bass tone too. The Beatles used it for Paperback Writer after Lennon listened to some Wilson Picket and complained about how weak their bass sounded in comparison. The result - A thick, punchy, creamy tone that drives the whole song.
Or maybe McCartney just stuck some new strings on, we'll never know.
Hey Glen! DW started making a subkick called "The Moon Mic". My guess is that they bought Yamaha out of making it so they could take over the subkick monopoly. Muhahah! It looks like they put some more thought into the design to get more out of it than the Yamaha version was able to do. It looks pretty slick!
I'm new to recording and have been trying do some home recording and this series has helped me so much!!
Thanks for the fantastic advice on how to create your own sub-kick, hopefully we get around to making one for our studio. Although the audix microphone were currently using is doing a much better job than we first thought it would.
I re-used a brokebn PA speaker, just removed the tweeter and soldered in a -20dB pad. Sounds great
I made one of these a few years ago. You will want a -20db pad for these things.
I used a snare stand to place it in front of the kick. Works well.
This is incredibly useful info for me. Thanks so much for sharing.
Great DIY info guy! I will defo be trying that! I'm extremely new to studio eng, and have built my home studio in my garage so this type of cost saving info is great. Thanks.
That's a great speaker Glenn. those G12k-85's were from the old Peavey VTM cabs. they were made in England.Have a ballsy metal tone to them.
I use a snare stand to mount my diy sub, works great!
I've taken junk speakers and even fucked up ones with ripped cones / suspensions and excited them with working speakers to record (or re-record) things and get all kinds of different tones or distortions. It sure is cool. Also, you can pad the speaker's output with a simple resistor or even a potentiometer at little cost.
did this back in the day with a 15" vintage fender cab, just wired the xlr to 1/4 and put it about 3ft in front of the kit.....the whole kit gets huge.
Thank you so much! Totally excited to try this. Got the soldering iron heating up...
That's a really useful info. Actually your DIY was much better than the factory one.
I made one a few years back. 8" woofer suspended inside a 10" tom with bungee-cords. I call it "THE WAMPA MONSTER"!
Ok I´m impressed, with this you realy don´t need samples anymore.
Fantastic videos, Mr. Glenn. I do have a question about building a subkick. Does the size of the speaker effect the capturing of the low end on a bass drum? If so, is there an optimal size to use for many different types of music? Thanks!
a bigger speaker wud capture more low end but be less responsive, not tried this so not sure about size
Most of your average nearfields - with 6" - 8" woofs, really only reach down to around 40Hz or so, in similar amplitude as the low mid frequencies - some get a bit lower than that - - but you won't hear a lot of those sub frequencies because most average studio monitors can't reproduce down that low at volumes that you can hear... so you'll hear the portion that lives in the 40 Hz ranges and up, ( depending on your hearing) but to really hear the full affect of this kick mic, you should monitor with a sub; and part of the effect is the air movement at those lower frequencies that you can "feel" more than you can hear. It's that "thump" right in the center of your chest.
thank u so much for all these videos sir! its just amazing. thank u.
I tend to use either trigger, or the close mic signal to gate the subkick. Can make it a bit tighter :)
So I read an article (cant remember where, but they had a lot of science to back it up lol) that said that a subkick really isn't capturing the sound of the bass drum, but is in fact generating it's own sound. Shortly after reading that article, I found out about Wavesfactory's FREE subkick simulator (SK10) and it works great! Try this plugin out before building a complicated synthesizer lol.
Of course this is almost 6 years after this video came out, but just FYI!
Thank you for mentioning this plugin, I agree it's somewhat of a waste of an input to use a subkick instead of a synth. I was hoping there was an easy substitute for this, turns out there is
when the subkick and kick mic came on at the same time I said "whooooooooo"...that tone is incredible
Hey Glen, would love to see you try to build one of those subkicks with a bass cab speaker.
Didn't actually know you could that :O That's awesome, thanks Glenn!
Sounds fantastic Glenn! Did you do any mixing on the subkick track or was it placed in a group track with the kick mic?
Skar Productions hi (no - i'm not glenn lol..) - i keep it on a separate track and mix into the kit as suits your taste. i don't think i do much in the way of eq (maybe suck out some higher end) and a bit of compression and bosh - you have a kick signal that ranges from 20Hz up to 100Hz that sounds sweet and warm with your normal kick mic. it is to die for.....
They sound pretty damn good live also. I was working some gigs for an audio compay doing outdoor festivals they sound great on the 8x10 bass cabs too!..you know bass players need all the help they can get.haha
Glenn the wizard, thanks for all the tips!
Not directly related to subkicks but I record my snare drum with a shure headset mic and I also fixed it with cable ties. Perfect solution.
Awesome video Glenn, quick question: How does a subkick compare to a boundary mic like the Shure Beta 91?
wow thats crazy! im definitely gonna have to look into this!
I'm a bassist, and I WANT that shirt!! Do they come in extra-medium?
I came across this open source DAW called ardour. Can you do a review on that? Great videos. Keep them coming!
Another awesome job man.
Awesome series.
Going to build me one of them soon. Short question though: When it's all done, the mic cable will still be unbalanced, right?
Wow that sounds great, similar to that you can use headphones as a mic. Not for studio recording (obviously) but when the mic of your phone is broken, or you need a mic for a skype phone call, they are usable.
Of if you want to make really dirty Punk Rock (or Black Metal) with a cassette deck.
As a bass player, I like your t-shirt!
Hey Glenn, just wondering if you mic up the skin that is being hit on the kick drum. My music technology teacher told me that 'only the big studios do it' and we shouldn't bother doing it. I personally don't remember seeing any mics in that position in any online videos (though this may be due to the fact that you hardly see the drummer's feet in a recording studio). Is it important? Does it add anything or was my teacher just being dopey? Cheers
I'm not sure if you're even reading comments on such old videos, but I'll still try to ask - at some point in later videos you show a trick with gated tone generator for sub-bass on kick. Would that be a subkick replacement, augmenter, or a plebeian way to go if subkick is just not an option for whatever reason? Thanks in advance!
Just built my own out an old 4 cone speaker cab using the only properly working driver. Sounds decent on a test run but we'll see what happens when the band I work with are rehearsing on Wednesday
I've seen people do this with open-back cabs as well. I think I liked the higher atonality of that setup, as well as the volume gain, vs either of these. Having said that, I agree that the homemade one sounded better than the prefab one.
I wonder, could this be made from an old bass drum as well? Or does the rectangular shape of the cab make for better tonality? What about cutting down an old barrel if a bass drum isn't available? Questions, questions...!
What is the mic you use in tandem with your DIY subkick @3:45 Glenn? It looks like a broadcast microphone. Sounds great!
As a bass player, your shirt is hilarious 😂😂
I like this and I have a question. Can't I just use one of my 1x12" cabinets and connect it to the interface using a jack-XLR cable?
nice diy tutorial! pretty cool!
Finally a use for a line 6 spider
Could you please make some mixing tips videos? For example, I don't have pretty much the idea to mix "correctly" a subkick to a heavy mix :( And then it goes to guitars, bass, drums.. I would be very appreciated! Keep it rocking
Canadians say "tie wraps" instead of "zip ties"? Or is it just you Glenn?(I love learning about language differences like this).
Also, thank you very much for this informative video. I think the first time I ever saw one of these was on one of Neil Peart's drumkits. Back then I thought to myself "why does he put a snare drum on the bass drum?".
ferdinandstrat We use both 'tie wraps' and 'zip ties' interchangeably. Its like bathroom and restroom.
Chris McCartney Thank you kind sir! It's just that I havent heard that term before. Is it used by Americans and British too or is it purely Canadian?
I'm not really sure. Can't say I've ever heard a Brit or American use the term. Something I'm curious about now, myself lol
Chris McCartney More info on this, everyone!
Chris McCartney It's 'cable ties' over here in England. 'Tie wraps' are another name for 'wire ties' which we use to seal sandwich bags over here.
Hey Glenn! Thank you for all your tips. What about a ''How to record heavy vocal''?
Sweet. I always wondered about that. Massdrop had a SOLOMON MiCS LoFReQ for sale recently. I think this is essentially the same thing right?
I don't get it. You put a speaker in front of the kick drum. Now how did you plug that into your interface to record?
Hey Glen, you said any speaker will do the job, but do you know if different speakers react and sound different? If so is it subtle or prominent? Thanks
Very Nice... a quick question, I have a Marshall MG50(my first amp) laying around and gathering dust, do you think I can use its speaker for the kick sub?
Hey Glenn, The inline pad you were talking about... Would that be useful in cleaning up the clipping in Guitar DIs? I'm sure that's exactly the application it was made for (as for other instruments as well), but what sparked the question is that I'm unsure of exactly where the clipping in going on, with the example of my Ibanez RGA7 with shitty active pickups. Like, whether the pickup itself is clipping and will still translate into Reaper as a clipped signal regardless of the input gain, or if the pickup itself is clean but doesn't clip until it hits Reaper due to the hot input levels in between the pickup and input of Reaper. Thanks G.
I think Subkick was actually the model name by Yamaha and not what you would call the concept of a large diaphragm mic.
Anyhow, DW has one called the Moon Mic that currently on sale, but how wants to pay $400 for something you could build for $50?
24 hours and no thumbs down. awesome.
Hi Glenn! What do you think of using instead a Sine Wave with a noise gate when using a sub kick is not an option?
Hi Glen, I'm really enjoying the series. Could you do a video on a more limited mic setup? e.g recording drums with 3 or 4 mics
I might be the only one saying this but I do really like the kick and subkick combined
Why not just sidechain the kick to a low frequency generator (like a 55hz tone) and a gate??? I'm not being a dick, I'd really like to know the difference. I've used both techniques, and find that I like the sidechain better. Thoughts?
***** My #1 reason for using a subkick would be phase alignment. The frequency generator plus gate gave me a lot of phase issues that a subkick didn't.
I've found it sounds most natural, when using a frequency generator, to choose a frequency that's pretty close to the pitch of the kick already. If that wave is just playing the whole song and the gate opens to "reveal" it when the kick hits, it's very likely to be out of phase. The generator is going to be playing a steady signal so, unless you're lucky enough that the signal is exactly in phase every single kick hit (which means the drummer would have to be playing perfectly in time and the signal generator would have to be outputting a tone that's lined up with the tempo of the song rather than tuned to a certain pitch), it's going to be out of phase and give you some weird low end hollowness, peaks, and nulls depending on when in the signal generator's cycle each kick hit triggers the gate open.
If the subkick is used, the phase relationship between kick inside and subkick mics might not be perfect, but at least they're always off by the same amount. If you really need to, you could nudge the subkick signal earlier in the timeline to align with the kick inside mic better.
A good way to use a frequency generator rather than a subkick: make a sample out of the generated tone and use the sample to augment the inside kick mic (using the inside kick's hits as a trigger). You'll just have to make sure the sample from the signal generator starts at the Zero-Line of the waveform (or you'll get nasty, non-musical clicks) and plays out in a phase-coherent way (it's moving in the same direction as the low frequency content of the inside kick mic - you might have to hit the polarity button to flip it into phase).
I know "sample" is a dirty word around here - hell, I hate using 'em, too - but they CAN be beneficial at times and this is an example of using a sample for good rather than evil.
One thing is certain, though. If it sounds good, it IS good. If you're getting good results by using a frequency generator (maybe you're cutting enough lows out of the other mics so you're avoiding phase issues all-together) then keep doing what you're doing. It didn't work well for me but there's nothing to say it wouldn't work well for you!
Keep bangin' it out!
DontWorryImAPilot
Excellent insight. Yea, I do a LOT of low end filtering, in combination with checking the phase coherency. I typically use a 55hz tone because I'm trying to emphasize the lower octave of 110hz on my kick low end. Furthermore, I keep the 55hz low in the mix; I'm only trying to get a little bit of woofer movement/energy, not 'bass up' my kick (a kick, in metal, is really a low-mid instrument, not a low instrument). In college, they told us to filter everything at 60hz, or below. However, I find myself filtering my kicks up to 85-90hz. This helps clear out some space for the low frequencies in the bass guitar.
+DontWorryImAPilot hahahaha the part u said about the word "sample" actually made me laugh as an electronic music producer (I usually use around 50-70 mixer tracks for each song so yeah..). However what u are explaining is very interesting to me, since I don't know how rock/metal producers deal with stuff. Note that I use guitar and bass guitar on my tracks but I havent encountered that sub kick issue, since I use heavy dubstep kick samples. Could you please explain to me what is that "generated tone" you mention? A simple sine wave with some pitch envelope going down? :)
Yeah, it's basically a sine wave, though it could be anything. By the time I get through processing it, the wave's probably pretty bonked. It's typically just used to provide a little extra sub content to existing kick drums without adding too much of anything else.
You just bounce/render out a sample of the gate opening and allowing that generated tone through and use that as a sample to augment the existing kick tone. By using a specific sample rather than catching the sine wave at any random phase of its cycle when the gate opens, you'll theoretically get a sub tone sound that's less likely to give you random phase problems.
If the tempo of the song is 60 bpm (for easy math, one beat a second) and the kick hits on every single beat, then we need a generated low frequency wave to be in the right portion of its phase at the beginning of every second.
What if the generated frequency is something like 43.5hz? Then sometimes the tone is in an upward amplitude swing and sometimes its in a downward amplitude swing at the start of any random second - where we always want a consistent direction to match the existing kick's phase...that one's going to be pretty consistent because it's a new "sample" every hit.
I'm not sure I'm explaining it clearly enough. Of course, it might all be 1000% theoretical, too. I've only had any problems like that with a gated generated tone a few times. It's probably something you'll only run across a few times and not have to think about ever.
Thank you for explaining it so much! I suppose it's not a bad idea to fill the low end with something since rock/metal kick drums are usually weak and not so bassy, but not too much because fast double kick 16s or 32s will muddy up the song (if the sine wave generates at that speed).
This is great! Thanks for the tip
Sup Glen. I saw some photos of dave grohl's drum setup during the recording of nevermind, I noticed that there was a bass drum shell in front of his bass drum. Was wondering if you have worked with anyone who has done this /know what the purpose of the extra shell is
I find ribbon mics usually do the trick for me "well for what I do at least" , I just place it in front of the Kick about 12 in away, I also have a sub kick but lately I've been sticking to the ribbon
Damn that sounds nice!
shoutout the drummer for rocking that Rammstein t shirt!
Drummer representing Rammstein! OH YEAH!!!
Have you done any rigging or sound checks for live performances and how different are they to set up?
The DIY one sounded better than the Yamaha, the Yamaha sounded like cardboard.
Reece113 I was going to say the same thing.
Reece113 Agreed, the kick mic solo'd sounded pretty good, but the second the subkick came in it just sounded muffled and damp, the DIY one had way more power IMO.
Reece113 this is what everyone says (including me) when you listen with the drums soloed. The instant you try to mix in a low frequency signal, like a bass guitar or bass synth, you *will* hate the DIY subkick; it just eats up most of the low-low frequency spectrum and leaves no room for anything else, unless it is heavily processed. It's the main reason Yamaha actually made a "real" one. I'm not sure if he was the first person to do it, but George Martin was doing this on Ringo's drum kit in the mid-60's, so the idea has been around for years, but it was only about 10-12 years ago that someone actually started manufacturing one. Their reasoning was they thought they could tame some of the crazy low-end by enclosing the speaker in some sort of resonant shell (like a drum) which would serve to absorb & diffuse some of the massive amounts of air flowing past. In modern times, we have access to crazy amounts of powerful processors that basically make this problem null & void (that is, *if* you know how to you use yer plug-ins/gear!), but here's the other thing: it looks pretty. And we all know how important looks are to musicians. Hahaha. So Yamaha made a good profit mainly due to aesthetics and the silliness of musicians.
Johnny Don't! I'd say do the opposite of what yamaha tried to do (making it more broadrange) and instead lowpass and gate so it practically does a similar thing to the sine wave gate trick and mix you bass above the low end of the kick. Another trick is a resonant high pass filter stick it to where the lowest part of your kick is (where you want it) and crank the resonance and then move it till it is a similar pitch to the sub harmonic of the kick.
JimijaymesGuitarist Sweet! That's a good idea. I'll definitely look into it. Thanks much, mate!
Hey Glenn, I noticed you record with one kick drum and a double kick pedal. I was wondering if it made a huge difference to record with two kick drums and two separate kick pedals instead? I'm sorry in advance if this question is stupid, as the only skin I beat is below the belt.
Ever tried this with guitar or bass as a second mic to fill in gaps? It strikes me that the weight of the cone is the only problem, in that it would give muddy low-end instead of anything nice and defined.
Perhaps try a 6" or 8" full-range hi-fi or monitor speaker for the "mic"? Those cones tend to be lighter (and faster), so you might get some interesting results there. It could be worth butchering a pair of Tannoy Reveals; second hand, they're much cheaper than mid-range mics anyway.
question....I have a kit that never moves and had to be set up facing an inside corner of a 4 foot wall. The wall destroyed the resonance somewhat. I'm building a subkit now but wonder what result is just suspend the speaker inside the kick drum itself? my goal is to use the subkick to "hopefully" engineer some resonance to overcome what the cornered wall did.
Very cool idea! What if you took an old rack tom and mounted a mic inside it? that's pretty much what that subkick looks like...
Would you recommend using the speaker in a Line 6 spider to make the subkick?
Thanks Glenn
Dear Glenn, your DIY subkick will probably sound even better when you use some sort of cabinet for the loudspeaker driver.
Am I right in saying that the larger the speaker the better bass response you get in the homemade situation? ie a 12" would be way better than a 8" or something?
Can you recommend a mic pre-amp for this? Is this best for recording/live? What amperage should it be?
You mentioned it can be too much on double kick runs. I do a lot of both singes and doubles. Will it overpower the mix live?
You should throw out some stems sometime for a mixing contest Glenn, throw a T-shirt in there as a prize. Should be heaps of fun
Glenn, is there a cheap way to get multi inputs for tracking drums if u only have a 2 input interface? Do they make a cheap alternative or is there any less expensive multi interfaces worth using
Lovely and informational,
and I NEED that shirt. I must proclaim my enthropic worthlessness to the world
sounds heaps better. certainly visible with two twelves. not so visible on headphones but is way more crisp.
how do you find just the main mic, then splitting the signal and eq-ing one for sub and one for your attack sound and blending then? i've found that to work pretty well. also in higher tempo double kick metal i'm 99% sure it's all triggered so a sub mic would be next to useless.
Glen. Is there a specific way to wire this up after cutting the XLR cable?? I’m asking for a Bass player.
Very cool. New toy :) Now ...can I find that old 30 inch speaker?
Could you use the subkick for guitar/bass cabs? Is it even worth trying to do? Since you are capturing more sound, wouldn't it sound better?
Do you apply any plugins like compression or EQ in your DAW before laying down a drum track?
Im thinking of making one of these..Do you need to reverse the wires (positive / Negative) ? thanks man.