Can Modo Drum 1.5 make tight oldschool funk or hip hop kicks?

[supplanter]

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I've been recently going through jamcat's suggestions for modo drum on this forum and it's made a night and day difference in sound.

- turn off all modo drum effects and processing
- start with overheads and get the drums to sit well there, then add the close mics
- mix in the room sound sparingly as it's not great
- send all channels out to the daw, along with an additional bus channel for a new room mic sound to be created in the daw using tverb or other room sound plugins
- use predelay on the room sound to help make it sound more realistic

But what I haven't been able to figure out is getting a kick similar to the following styles. I'm not sure if I just don't know how to mix it, or Modo Drum just doesn't have the kits that are close enough to get it.

Michael Jackson - Billie Jean [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zi_XLOBDo_Y (%5Bhttps%3A//www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zi_XLOBDo_Y)
Dave Grusin - Mountain Dance https://youtu.be/56wAzljvIjQ?si=YSo-G40Pahm2Zd-2&t=277
TLC - Waterfalls -https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8WEtxJ4-sh4
Four Tet - Love Cry - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4KgyMNoN1a8

I tend to end up with kicks that are too lumpy and have too much low end, and not enough of the tight dampenedness, mid range and high end of these kicks. My approach so far has been to make the kicks as small as possible and turn down shell sound of the kick in and kick out, sometimes turning off the kick in completely. Also turning up the dampening and make the tuning higher. Sometimes making one high and one low helps. Sometimes the room sound won't work with these so I may have to take it out of the OH or room as a lot of boxyness will be added.

Any advice?

[jamcat]

Hey, thanks for taking note of some of my suggestions. Don't forget also to pan your close mics to align with where each drum appears in the overheads' stereo image.

Listening to the sound examples you've provided, the first thing that strikes me is the drums are quite dry, and for the most part fairly natural without much sustain.

First, I would select an appropriate kick. The kicks in your examples sound quite pillowy with a nice round attack that is defined and snappy, but still soft. The "Mountain Dance" example sounds like there is an 1176 compressor on the drums, or perhaps VCA compression. TLC of course sounds sampled and processed with a good bit of compression.

Any of the MODO kicks could work, and which one works best is really going to be dependent on the particular song and how you visualize it. But I would say the best candidates would probably be Brit Custom, Rock Custom, Djentleman, and Reference.

Now here's the MOST important part: set SNARE BUZZ and TOM BUZZ to 0, and both DAMP settings to 100%. And start with the ROOM mix very low.

You can try bringing the batter-side DAMP (that's the kick head on the left) down a little, to taste. But I would leave the back (resonance) head at 100% DAMP, because nothing good is going to come from it.

To get that really natural "in the room" sound, I would lean heavily on the overheads. Keep the close mic mixed down enough so that it's not real obvious. Finally try bringing up the room mic a little, to taste.

I wouldn't bother messing with other settings like the drum dimensions. They're almost always best left at default.

Finally, you'll want to put some compression on the kick, medium attack and release. Just enough so the transients slips through before it kicks in. This will make the kick extra tight and snappy. It works on snare the same, too.