A kick drum can be one of the easiest things to mix or one of the most frustrating, and most of the frustration comes from not knowing what you’re actually listening for yet. So in this one we’re going to start about as basic as it gets and build up from there. Everything works the same on the Midas M32 too, since it’s the same engine under the hood.
Kick in or kick out? Know what you’re working with
A kick drum usually gets mic’d one of a couple ways. The most common is a kick in mic, one of those flat pancake-looking mics that sits inside the drum, and then a kick out mic in the port hole on the front.
At my church I run both, a kick in and a kick out, but I almost always use the kick in because I like the sound of it. The kick in is fuller and thuddier, the kick out is smackier. Neither one is right or wrong, they’re just different, and a lot of times people use them together so they complement each other. So the first thing to do is listen to each one on its own with all the processing off and figure out which sound you actually like.
A simple EQ formula for when you don’t know where to start
If you don’t know how to EQ a kick yet, here’s a way to learn to listen instead of just guessing.
Think in three areas: the low end, the mid-range, and something up top. On a digital board like the X32 you’ve got an RTA meter, and you can use your eyes to learn to hear. Play the kick and look. You’ll see a natural bump in the low end, a scoop in the middle, and some information up top. What’s wild is the kick in and the kick out look almost identical on the meter even though they sound totally different, because that shape is just the sonic shape of a kick drum.
So here’s the move. You’ll probably want more low end, so boost what’s there. Sweep the low band up slowly and listen for where the drum comes alive. On this one that was right in the mid-50s Hz, not way down at 30 where it just feels like air moving. Then get rid of the junk in the middle, that boxy resonance around 200 Hz that just sounds like noise. Make the cut fairly wide. And then find where the drum has its attack up top and add a little with a shelf. Boost what’s there, cut what isn’t. That’s the whole game.
And if it still sounds woofy and muffled like a pillow after all that, don’t boost more low end. Cut more down low first, or even lower. A lot of times 100 Hz on a kick is just an awful, woofy spot, so pulling that down cleans it right up.
Gating the kick
Now the gate. On the X32, select your gate, go to view, and you’ve got a key filter. That sets what frequency range triggers the gate to open. Set it on a narrow Q on the peak and find the fundamental of the kick, which is usually right around 60 Hz. That’s the most powerful part of the drum, so that’s what you want opening the gate.
The threshold is the line the signal has to cross to open the gate. Attack is how fast it opens, hold is how long it stays open, release is how fast it closes. A quick tip: don’t set the attack all the way down at zero, because the gate can get confused when a signal is hanging right around the threshold and you’ll get clicks and pops. Putting the attack around one or two milliseconds usually cleans that up.
And instead of cutting the sound off completely, I like to keep the range up in the 20s of dB. That way when the gate closes it never drops to total silence, it just pulls the bleed down, and it sounds a lot more natural sitting in with the rest of the kit.
Compression
Same as everywhere else on this board, if you’re new to compression, turn on the auto setting first. It’ll handle the attack and release for you. Set your ratio to 4, which means for every 4 dB the signal goes over the threshold, only 1 dB passes through. Bring the threshold down until it’s working, and add makeup gain to bring back what you knocked off. On a kick, having it work to about 6 dB of gain reduction at the most is a safe bet.
Once you want to do it by hand, the way to learn is to compress a lot on purpose and move the attack until you like the shape of the drum, then set the release so it isn’t just clamped down the whole time. You’re shaping the drum with those two knobs. On a kick I’m usually just taming the front end a little so it stays consistent, not squashing the life out of it.
Using both mics together, and watching your phase
If you want to run the kick in and kick out together, you have to make sure they’re in phase. Sound is a wave, and if two mics are hearing the same drum but their waves are moving in opposite directions, they cancel each other out and you lose signal, low end first.
So play both mics together and hit the polarity button on one of them. If you lose a bunch of low end, that means it was more in phase before, so flip it back. Go with whichever way keeps the body. Then blend the two, usually leaning on the kick in for definition and bringing the kick out in underneath just for low end.
One more trick: the Pultec low-end move
If you want a little extra body, the X32 has a dual Pultec EQ in the effects rack you can insert on the kick channel. The fun trick on it is to boost and cut the low end at the same spot, say 60 Hz. Do a low boost and a low attenuate at the same frequency and it creates this weird scooped tilt in the mids that adds beef to the kick. It’s not a make-or-break move, more like an extra 5% of secret sauce, but it’s fun and it works.
Bottom line
A kick drum comes down to boosting what the drum is actually producing, cutting the noise it isn’t, and using the gate and compressor to control it, not to fix it. Learn to listen in those three areas, low, mid, top, and you’ll get a usable kick out of almost any mic.
If you want my full X32 scene with the kick presets, gates, and compression already dialed in so you can load them and go, they’re in my X32 preset packs.
