The Meta-Instrument Becomes the Mega-Instrument

The kick/bass meta-instrument we discussed in the first kick/bass article is still used in these styles of music, but, not surprisingly, it is taken to another level: deeper and lower. The basic technique remains the same. A pitched decay is added to a dry kick drum impulse. This, to me, is the most distinctive feature of the low-frequency elements of this music. Take a look at Figures 1 and 2:

	Envelope of very dry kick drum or sample, the gate envelope derived from it passing a low-frequency sine wave.

	Flow chart of the above gated sine wave plus kick sound.

Using a simple oscillator patch, a low sine wave tone is created (other waveforms can be used for really interesting effects). The kick drum, kick sample or even the sequencer itself is used to key a noise gate with a timed or slow release, and a sine wave is passed through the noise gate. Typically, its frequency is in the second or third octave (between 40 and 120 Hertz). However, it often feels as if the loudspeaker could go no lower. Due to the absence of harmonics in the sine wave, its pitch is rather vague. The length of the decay (or timed release) is critical to the character of the sound, and should be determined by the feel of the song. Hip-hop tunes use this technique often in their quest for heavy, heavy bass. The result is a super low bass pulse falling into a pattern of kick hits that keeps the bottom end of the mix plenty active. Tunes worth checking out for some demonstrations of this include Salt-N-Pepa’s “Groove Me” on their latest Very Necessary and, in the dance category, Stereo MC’S “Creation” on Connected.

Rap and hip-hop styles have been so aggressive with this that there is often no need (and, spectrally speaking, no room) for a traditional bass line. The mega-low, pitched kick is enough to take care of the entire low end of the mix. Tone Loc kicked “We Are the World” off the pop charts with “Wild Thing.” It makes full use of a kick/oscillator combination; note the complete lack of bass line for the entire tune. “Funky Cold Medina,” on the same album, Loc-ed After Dark, offers a similar demonstration. This lack of bass is pretty much unheard of in non-hip-hop influenced pop music. A quick search of a few hundred albums revealed only Prince’s “When Doves Cry” as a rare example of a successful pop single without a bass. In hip-hop it is a proven, perfectly valid arrangement device.

Then, as if in direct challenge to the bass-free sound, listen to the combination of heavy bass lines with super low kick/oscillator sounds on Dr. Dre’s “____ Wit Dre Day,” from the gangsta rap touchstone The Chronic. This tune, and many others on the record like it, shows some pretty clever production thinking. The kick feels super low. The synthesized bass line sounds mega-low, though a lot of it is sonic illusion. It feels low because of the growling top-end pseudo-distortion added to it. The result is a ‘spectrally correct’ combination of kick and bass that feels amazingly full of lows, using essentially two bass instruments which never compete for the same space in the mix.

The Fun and Profit Part

In case you haven’t noticed, there is some serious opportunity here for some fun and profit. You do not have to have a room full of gear funded by a couple of points on some multi-platinum records to make your low end sound state-of-the-art . The gear found in even a modest home studio is capable of creating fantastic low frequency musical activity. A sequencer and a synthesizer alone can let you explore unique kick/bass techniques. A couple of compressor/limiter/gates with side chain patching, plus some general purpose signal generators, will help things along immensely. If you have a multitrack, a sampler, a bass guitar and an analog drum kit (you’ve seen pictures of ‘em) then your ability to design kick/bass sounds is limited only by your creative daring and the time you have for such pursuits. Just make your mixes kick bass!

Happy infrasound!

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