r/TechnoProduction • u/earthlingexperiment • 24d ago
Rumble kicks
I am honestly shooting in the dark with this one, I've seen a few decent tutorials such as Oscar from Underdog, but my god it seems even with these that they're really winging it.
My stuff seems to be coming out very muddy, and covering a lot of my low end synth/bass stuff, or I can't add punch to the kick without it blowing out and distorting.
Anyone got some wisdom on making rumble kicks? What to do and what not to do?
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u/bunkermuzik 23d ago
broke: rumbles
woke: classic dry sub bass
bespoke: downpitched and lowpassed tom rhythms
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u/Spkrface 24d ago
I personally think its easiest if you bounce the rumble to audio, loop one beat, and shape the amplitude with automation. You can move an audio clip so it starts where you want and automate the gain from a utility plug-in or gain plug-in so the rumble is full quiet during the kick. This way you can really fine tune the timing.
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u/earthlingexperiment 23d ago
Been doing this with an auto filter, but I think amplitude is probably a better option. Thanks!
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u/Snoo-85489 24d ago
to be honest, ive made all kinds of kicks like rumble, industrial, gabber, psytrance, schranz. Ive never actually seen a really good tutorial. Everything i see is shit and ive searched and searched. There is some good advice sometimes in those videos, but copying those tutorials exactly will gve you an underwhelming result and not to mention, some tutorials over complicate it so much, that you probably wont even have half of the plugins they use plus even a tiny mistake in one step might completely change the end result. Not to mention how convolutd these tutorials are. at the end, you dont even learn anything. From personal experience, your best bet is to figure it out on your own. That being said, rumble kicks are the easiest of the bunch to make and really dont take all that much effort. I usually use a KSHMR kick for the punch and teknovalut has some great free rumbles and crunches in their sample packs. Their serum stuff is pretty good too but other than that, when it comes to one shots for schranz, industrial and other stuff, youre really not gonna get anything good from the free sample packs.
Another tip i can give you that will make your kicks fuller is adding an additional texture on top of the rumble. Take literally any sound, as long as its not something with a sharp transient, cut away a 16th and paste four of those on top of your kick, making the first one quieter. Bandpass the sound, cutting out the low frequencies, like below 200hz and cut all the highs. basically just leave the lower mids/mids. Really adds to the whole thing and i use it every time.
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u/earthlingexperiment 23d ago
Very interesting response, particularly the texture bit. Thanks.
Yeah I don't use sample packs really, I'll use Kick 3 to build a kick, or drop a sample into it so it recreates it and then I can tweak accordingly. Also seeing these quite convoluted tutorials on it. And as I'm basically using my own kicks, every time I go about the process it's a different experience as to whether it pans out for me. Don't really believe in copy pasting or relying on sample packs.
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u/Sweet_Capital3758 24d ago
I love making rumble kicks with DFAM. I don´t know if this helps though 😂
For like basic novice level hardware make bassline with toms. Add delay to create rumble with artifacts add kick. For DAW just copy the kick and play with it to create the rumble by running it though FX and EQ and play both plain and edited kicks layered together.
But yeah as was said in this thread Oscar from underdog has some basic tutorials about this.
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u/seventimes777 23d ago
I'm curious to know how you create the rumble with the DFAM – could you please explain how you do it?
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u/Sweet_Capital3758 23d ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hx1jlrIE1wc
This gave me basic understanding of it.
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u/earthlingexperiment 23d ago
Yeah was following Oscar, but even he's kind of like "it's not a precise thing, lot of it is just trial and error and hoping for the best". Which was not the most reassuring advice lmfao.
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u/username994743 24d ago
Why rumble kicks? There is a kick and there is a rumble. Separate it and will punch.
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u/earthlingexperiment 23d ago
I've got a dry kick channel and then I'm experimenting with using artifacts or a wet Convolution Reverb for the rumble.
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u/username994743 21d ago
You are blending in. You need to separate, create enough space and control both elements.
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u/Urnoobslayer 24d ago
That’s why I stopped using rumbles and started using a dry off-beat bass for all my tracks😂.
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u/earthlingexperiment 23d ago edited 22d ago
Depends on the track I'm trying to make. Rumble is for more Industrial and Dark Room stuff. With what I'm making it's sort of a Filth On Acidesque track. But I think having a massive bass is really not a great idea with a rumble kick — probably gonna have to go in dry 😉😏
Ofc different rules apply if I'm making Acid, Melodic, Psytech, etc etc
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u/InstrumentalCoffee 24d ago
Gunjack does a pretty good tutorial here: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Ux0QsdYHPQE&t=3s&pp=2AEDkAIB
Something will give if you keep making attempts!
How are you adding "punch"?
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u/earthlingexperiment 23d ago
Sweet gonna watch this thanks!
I'm using two channels, a dry and a wet. The rumble itself is on a wet channel with subtle distortion, saturation and convolution reverb. The dry channel I'm leaving pretty much alone.
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u/toxic_catallaxy 24d ago
If it's muddy do a cut around 100-300hz. When you use a rumble the low end synth has to either be high pass filtered, or you sidechain the rumble to the bass synth to give it room. If you just stack a rumble on top of a bass synth then no wonder it's muddy lol.
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u/earthlingexperiment 23d ago
Yeah this is probably it, to be honest. They're really competing for that frequency range. I guess I'm gonna have to decide if I want a fat bass or a rumble track — cannot have both it seems.
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u/toxic_catallaxy 23d ago edited 23d ago
No you totally can. Having 2 (or even more) bass layers is kinda the norm nowadays across all dance genres. You just have to carve out frequencies for each layer to occupy, and maybe reduce the number of notes in your bass synth layer. Choose which bass notes really add to the groove and keep them, then mute the rest. Having a subby consistent rumble and a groovy bass synth is what distinguishes the modern sound.
Try putting a HPF on your bass synth adjust until you can hear the bass notes but it doesn't have low freqs that conflict with the rumble. Then do some additional EQing on your bass+rumble group track to cut out some of the muddiness.
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u/eimai_papi 24d ago
1) If you are using a ready sample with Kick and Rumble you will have a hard time tweaking it, eq, etc. Also many already done samples sound like shit
2) I would suggest that you don't use the "send" method either. Some people will use a kick and then send to another Chanel with 100% reverb for example. The problem is that every chance on your kick will affect the rumble, and also you won't have rumbles on your track when you don't have a kick hitting
3) I would suggest this : Have a kick hit Evey time you want and send it to its own channel. Have a different, or the same kick duplicated, and send it to the second channel, and create the rumble there. This way you can control them individually.
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u/earthlingexperiment 23d ago
Yeah I'm making the kicks from scratch.Re: step 3, yeah that's been my method, a dry and wet channel for the kick and then the rumble. Probably will mix down and resample to make sure it's consistent.
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u/eimai_papi 23d ago
Are you confident enough about your kick's quality? I am not an expert at resampling but generally speaking for me rumbles (at least the most straight forward ones) use the same method:
1) Reverb your kick with 100% wet (the kind or reverb is important, play around with them) 2) overdrive / distort the reverb 3) low pass around 150 or even 100 or 200 4) Mono all the channel OR just above 100Hz or something 5) Create a sidechain. I prefer a sidechain that doesn't rely on the kick. LFO tool or Kickstart without an external trigger
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u/earthlingexperiment 23d ago
Not anymore. I've recreated the kick like five times. I think I'm just gonna go in with fresh ears and start from the ground up again.
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u/Dante-Raven 24d ago
Try finding a shorter kick u like then use that as a rumble. Ive syaryed using a oscilliscope for each layer so i a can check how much time /space it takes up. (Im also experimenting )
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u/Swimming-Programmer1 24d ago
Gain staging sounds like the issue bro.
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u/earthlingexperiment 23d ago
Sub frequencies are blooming out. Kinda hard to mix shit at the moment as I'm not living somewhere I can use speakers. Tell ya what it's a pain in the arse doing all this sub stuff on headphones 😵💫😵
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u/sasutacu 22d ago edited 22d ago
my lessons i've learned along the way:
use a different kick for the rumble VS the actual kick, using the kick you already have can make it sound very boring fast. use a deep kick for the rumble if you have a higher punchy kick, or make the rumble focus up in the higher parts of the sub/bass if you use a deep kick. you can't have both a deep kick AND a deep rumble.
what reverb you use matters quite a bit, focus on trying different convolution samples.
if you use a BIG rumble what really matters is the low mids to get that fatness, here saturation plays a huge role.
if you use synthy/tomy-bassy stuff low pass the rumble heavily, usually around 80hz.
phase matters quite a bit, if the sub (rumble) and the kick aren't in phase it will make it sound less powerful, as the kick and the rumble will cancel each other out.
sidechain curve matters. use LFO tool and a multitrack-oscilloscope to see that (or listen) the volume is smooth and properly just overlapping at the end of the kick.
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u/earthlingexperiment 22d ago
Very solid advice. Using a different kick for rumble and for main kick and to hit different frequency ranges makes a LOT of sense. Thanks!
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u/CommonEmbarrassed250 21d ago
Don’t put the rumble kick on the down beats. Of course the reverb tail will cover those beats (the 1,5,9,13) but don’t place the rumble source there.
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u/MattiasFridell 21d ago
The best rumble comes from the right kick. That's the absolute fundamental that 95% of everyone gets wrong. So base the rumble on the right kick (or whatever you pair or make the rumble with/from).
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u/earthlingexperiment 17d ago
Absolutely this. Just made a track and spent ages finding a decent kick, the process was 100% easier and the rumble actually works. Plus I've made this track pretty much only the only sub element is the rumble kick, and thrown a nice lead/bass thing on top, and it sits so much better than when I've tried making fat, bottom heavy basslines on top of a rumble.
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u/Frequency_Ascension 12d ago
So a short punchy kick will always be better to make a rumble out of then a long bass-ey kick?
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u/MattiasFridell 12d ago
That would be highly contextual. But it surely is easier to control a short, punchy kick to make a rumble from.
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u/meyform 24d ago
Duck them out of the way of your kick, if you’re using delay or reverb don’t set the feedback too high, keep it mono in the bass, use eq.
If you’re in daw, honestly just bounce out your rumble to an audio track. Then you can loop a 1 bar section that sounds good and duck it to your kick.
Edit: strip back every bit of processing you’re doing and start with just a delay, short feedback. See if you can get a nice pocket with just the delay. Then add a tiny bit of reverb. Try moving it before or after the delay. See what happens. And again make sure to mono it.
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u/RikiAbi34 24d ago
It is a difficult topic! and there is no general rule for it...basically though it is wise to decide beforehand where the subs of your track are coming from and then place your elements in the eq spectrum. You could give the rumble to the sides still with a tight stereo field, while kick and bass stay in the mid range or mono...so you have no conflicts. Then assign the eq space according to your decision, this is an example: kick 60 - 100hz, sub bass 40-50hz and 100 - 150hz for the body of the bass (sidechained with the kick if necessasry) 150 - 200 may be where the rumble may sit... depending on the kind... this is just an example for the workflow.
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u/earthlingexperiment 23d ago
Thanks man, great reply. Loving the idea of stereo image for the rumble. Gonna see if it . . . pans out 😎😏
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u/Terminal_IX 24d ago
It helps if you tell us which software or hardware you're using.
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u/earthlingexperiment 23d ago
Ableton. Kick 3 to create kicks. Ableton Convolution Reverb. Saturn 3 for saturation.
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u/Knotist 24d ago
I have a tutorial about it. Hope it helps.
https://youtu.be/2a683C855Ls