Why does my kick sound distorted?

Sometimes kick drums and other prominent, transient-heavy sounds can change in character or distort after mastering if not properly controlled at the mixing stage. Adding a bit more compression to your kick in the mix could avoid the hard limiting effects done by the mastering process.

How do you get a good kick drum sound?

Here are 7 great tips on how to make your kick drum sound better.

  1. PUSH THE MID FREQUENCIES. Contrarily to what most people think, the bass drum is not all about the low end.
  2. USE SATURATION.
  3. TRIGGERING.
  4. PARALLEL COMPRESSION.
  5. PARALLEL EQ.
  6. MAKE SPACE FOR THE LOW END.
  7. 808 KICK.

How do you fix a boomy kick drum?

If your kick sounds too boomy in the room, try putting a pillow inside of it that touches the resonant head. If it sounds too dead, make sure nothing is inside of the kick drum or try tuning it to sound better in your space.

Are drum samples illegal?

In short, no. Copyright law states that sampling any song without permission is breaking the law. If you’ve sampled sounds from copyrighted content, you need to get it cleared for a commercial release in order to keep it legal.

How loud should kick drum be?

It should be loud enough that the low frequencies are rich and powerful, but not so loud that it masks the bottom-end of the snare drum. Then, start bringing in the toms. These can be almost as loud as the snare if they’re used sparingly, but if they’re heavily featured they should sit a little further back in the mix.

Should you tune drum samples?

There’s no correct way to tune your drum samples because it’s entirely subjective. Knowing a little bit of music theory will help you out here, but at the end of the day, the goal is just to tune your drums so that they sound “good” within the context of your song.

Should you compress kick drum?

Kick Drum Compression is Essential In the context of a solo drum performance, you won’t HEAR any need for a compressor. This is why we need to focus on the bigger picture, not on any particular track.