HEVYDEVY FORUMS

Was the kick drum on Addicted beefed up with a sub-bass sample? Listening to it rather loudly through some headphones and I've noticed an odd sound to it which is noticeable in the first couple of bars when it's just guitars + kick.

i can't hear it much myself in this case, but adding in bass frequencies to the kick drum is a common technique in all kinds of genres. usually it's just about picking a common tone across all or as many of the chords in the song, or the tonic, with a signal generator, then clamping it down with a gate sidechained from the kick drum (so it opens when the kick hits, then closes when it goes away). given how Dev's beefed up the kick drum since the old days — usually with samples, though — i wouldn't be surprised if there's a bass tone in there.

yeah sorry, that was a bit geekier than i needed to be xD

Triggers man, they're pretty common nowadays. Look at it like playing an acoustic drumset and an electric drumset at the same time. It does add a little beef to the sound of the bass drums, cuz sometimes the frequencies of the bass drum tend to mesh in with the frequencies of the other instruments and sounds, making it more difficult to hear. I could be totally wrong, but Addicted sounds like it uses a blend of the recorded acoustic bass drum sounds AND the triggers, the triggers adding pry a little more high-end to the bass drum allowing it to penetrate the wall of sound (maybe a bit more bass too, I notice the high end triggering more). I've never used triggers (been drumming for nearly 13 years, and writing/mixing in my spare time for about 6 years), but I don't have any problems with them, as long as they're not being used as a replacement for the recorded bass drum & quantized afterwards (l33t speak for midi'ing a drumset and adjusting the delicate timing of each individual hit so the rhythms are computer "perfect"). The drum parts need to be very very intricate for me to be OK with the artist flat-out quantizing the drums (aka Periphery...they're freakin great). But that's just me

Of course, what you're talking about, at the very start of the album, I think there is probably some heavier triggering happening. If I wasn't in the middle of "Awake" right now in my playlist, I'd go back and listen to it haha

Haven't got the cd with me at the moment, but from what I can remember the kick is fairly beefy on this album, especially compared to older albums, I wouldn't be surprised if both the kick and snare are made up of several samples layered, a lot of mix engineers do this kind of thing to get a bigger drum sound.

The kicks at the very beginning sound like they have an electronic kick with it. There's a lot of it on Addicted to give heavier accents to some downbeats whilst the acoustic kick is keeping a groove going. Can hear it better on live versions:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCakibHJo94