Making 808 kicks sound punchy

[RWDD]

It seems that every 808 kick sample i ever find is too subby and doesn't have as much punch as i want them to have.
How do i give them more punch? Should i put a compressor on it?

[mmjdw]

It's punchy enough.

The 808's you hear in records probably had nothing done to them apart from mastering at the end which increases the volume = increasing the perceived "punch"

leave it 95% dry or it sounds terrible

[Shum]

Try layering with a punchier kick sound. EQ out the lowest of the low on that kick so it doesn't clash with your 808 sub but not to the point that the two sounds don't mesh with each other.

[ianks]

often times a simple click sound layered at the beginning can help it cut through the mix. if you need more. try layering another kick (or if you wanna be creative, get a field recorder and try layering something less traditional). add some crunch with distortion, experiment with subtle use of effects, etc. EQ the top kick by high passing it around 150hz. compress it if necessary. throw that on top of an 808, make sure they are tuned together and you should be good to go. if it still isnt cutting through the mix, add a click as well as the top. if that doesn't fit in your mix, you should think about arranging your kicks differently. oftentimes, if you focus on making the tune fit well with the beat, you dont even need to put a topper the 808. it should flow well without it.

[nowaysj]

This has been asked before, and some accomplished people had some stuff to say. I don't feel like it was ever resolved, but there were some good ideas brought out in that thread.

Search in the production forum.

For posts by username: serox

and search for keywords: 808 AND punch


That should bring up the thread.

[dav.id]

Tight compression and kick enhancers are your friend:)

[the dub lemon]

Layering is most definitely one way to do it but there are a few other things you can try.

If you look at manage drum sample packs designed for dance music (Vengeance packs for example) you will see a lot have kicks have the initial transient then a dip in volume after the transient to give it the punch, after the dip the body of the kick comes back up in volume to a similar level as initial transient, this gives the rest of the kick some weight. You could do this with volume envelopes or something like that if you want but quite a good way to do it is with a compressor followed by a limiter.

Put the compressor on the kick and make it do squash it quite hard (fairly high ratio and low threshold). Adjust the attack so that it's quite quick but lets quite a big transient spike through, set the release fairly long so the compressor doesn't recover until after the kick has finished. You should now have a fairly weak, over compressed sounding kick with a big pop at the start.

Now you can use a limiter to bring the body of the kick back up, set the thresh hold to just catch the transient of the kick then turn the attack down as low as possible so it starts squashing the transient down right from the start, now set the release pretty quick but a little bit longer than the attack time of the compressor, this allows the limiter to ease off shortly after the transient has passed and brings the volume of the rest of the kick back up.

Another thing you can try is distorting the transient, you can do this with gated sends and what not but a simpler way is to copy the kick to 2 tracks, fade off the transient on one track and cut off everything after the transient on the other track, now add some distortion to the track with the transient, mix levels to taste and bounce. Obviously the transient doesn't actually have to be from the same kick or even from a kick at all, you could use a rim shot or something.

There are plenty of things to try and experiment with but hopefully there's some things to get you started

[lowpass]

Parallel expansion + Parallel limiting = ftw

Dunno what peeps do to their 808's but I am caining this atm, set this up then dial in however much "punch" or "weight" you want

[breakitdown]

Maybe just some smart compression?

Some EQ
up 70-80Hz, drop a little 250

Some light drive/distortion too also...

BTW - where did you get your samples?
I recommend these ones - http://www.goldbaby.co.nz/tape808.html

[lowpass]

Maybe just some smart compression?

Some EQ
up 70-80Hz, drop a little 250

Some light drive/distortion too also...

BTW - where did you get your samples?
I recommend these ones - http://www.goldbaby.co.nz/tape808.html

Thankyou for that (808 samples I mean)

[Sharmaji]

i rarely do much to 808s beyond saturation and some compression to bring out the front.

the majority of the 808s i use are some samples i've re-pitched in exs24, so if i want to push the 808 back in the mix, or bring it fwd, i can change the envelope there.

but yeah, definitely nothing complicated. save the complicated, parallel, multi-band processes for situations where you want to create relationships between sounds.

[Vesicle]

Short pitch bend in the beginning of the sample works fine as well

[nowaysj]

i rarely do much to 808s beyond saturation and some compression to bring out the front.

the majority of the 808s i use are some samples i've re-pitched in exs24, so if i want to push the 808 back in the mix, or bring it fwd, i can change the envelope there.

but yeah, definitely nothing complicated. save the complicated, parallel, multi-band processes for situations where you want to create relationships between sounds.

I don't know if you recall, or if you were involved, but I think you were, in serox's thread on the same subject. Loefah's 808 was FAR punchier than a standard 808. I don't think anyone was able to produce an 808 that was as punchy.

[wooda916]

i rarely do much to 808s beyond saturation and some compression to bring out the front.

the majority of the 808s i use are some samples i've re-pitched in exs24, so if i want to push the 808 back in the mix, or bring it fwd, i can change the envelope there.

but yeah, definitely nothing complicated. save the complicated, parallel, multi-band processes for situations where you want to create relationships between sounds.

I don't know if you recall, or if you were involved, but I think you were, in serox's thread on the same subject. Loefah's 808 was FAR punchier than a standard 808. I don't think anyone was able to produce an 808 that was as punchy.[/quote]

Loefah is a badman with the 808's

[th@-pu$$y]

Whenever I use an 808 kick I usually layer it over a really stiff dry kick then run a spectrum over it and EQ. From there I limit or compress them depending on how punchy I want it to be. When ever I layer drums I create a new channel for each one so i can really dial in the sound.

[hankerins]

To make a sound punchy it has to have a very fast attack. Because 808 sounds are such low frequencies their attack cant be superfast. It takes a quarter oscillation for a wave to reach its first peak, so a 100 Hz 808 can't have an attack any faster than 2.5 milliseconds, a 50 Hz 808 can't have an attack any faster than 5 milliseconds, etc. So, if you want an attack < 1 ms, the pitch of your 808 has to start a few octaves higher and drop to an appropriate frequency very quickly. You can do this by automating the frequency of your 808 with an envelope.

Logic's Ultrabeat is well designed for this very purpose and i think its even explained in detail in the Ultrabeat tutorial. And of course this technique can be combined with all the others listed in this thread, but for a 'pure' 808 sound with a real punch this is your best bet.

[wooda916]

To make a sound punchy it has to have a very fast attack. Because 808 sounds are such low frequencies their attack cant be superfast. It takes a quarter oscillation for a wave to reach its first peak, so a 100 Hz 808 can't have an attack any faster than 2.5 milliseconds, a 50 Hz 808 can't have an attack any faster than 5 milliseconds, etc. So, if you want an attack < 1 ms, the pitch of your 808 has to start a few octaves higher and drop to an appropriate frequency very quickly. You can do this by automating the frequency of your 808 with an envelope.

Logic's Ultrabeat is well designed for this very purpose and i think its even explained in detail in the Ultrabeat tutorial. And of course this technique can be combined with all the others listed in this thread, but for a 'pure' 808 sound with a real punch this is your best bet.

wicked bit of advice! nice one!

[staticcast]

To make a sound punchy it has to have a very fast attack. Because 808 sounds are such low frequencies their attack cant be superfast. It takes a quarter oscillation for a wave to reach its first peak, so a 100 Hz 808 can't have an attack any faster than 2.5 milliseconds, a 50 Hz 808 can't have an attack any faster than 5 milliseconds, etc. So, if you want an attack < 1 ms, the pitch of your 808 has to start a few octaves higher and drop to an appropriate frequency very quickly. You can do this by automating the frequency of your 808 with an envelope.

Logic's Ultrabeat is well designed for this very purpose and i think its even explained in detail in the Ultrabeat tutorial. And of course this technique can be combined with all the others listed in this thread, but for a 'pure' 808 sound with a real punch this is your best bet.

This is true, but actually an 808 kick does have a very fast high-frequency attack. The initial few milliseconds is more or less a pitch-enveloped sine wave; that's what the "click" is.

But you're right – for added punch I sometimes also add some more pitch envelope, usually 5-10 semitones with a decay of 50-60 ms or so.

[narcissus]

hold it.. 808 BD is click plus sine wave, OP... of course the samples you find are subby..
if you want more mid punch, layer with a middy punchy kick.
but i'm tellin ya..
you get an original sampled TR 808 BD w/ att and dec both all the way up.. . have a master compressor with fairly short attack... guarantee you it will punch. nothing else needed

[nowaysj]

In all honesty, I don't understand punch at all. The attack range on most comps will provide a click, but aren't long enough for that sour puss punch that I hear all the time, but am unable to make.

Yeah, you can find a punchy kick, but let's say you want to synth up a punchy kick, how do you do it? I've done all that pinch envelope bizness, for years, but don't get that solid sour punch.