Know How to Flam Kicks Correctly

Tuesday, 15 January 2008 06:30 Audiotutorials HipHop Tips

Provided by Modernbeats.com

While flams are traditionally used on snare and claps, kicks can be flammed as well. However, due to low frequency conflicts that result when flamming kicks, more care and skill must be applied... While flams are traditionally used on snare and claps, kicks can be flammed as well. However, due to low frequency conflicts that result when flamming kicks, more care and skill must be applied...

Since two kicks played very close together may cause both unwanted pitch oscillations and shifts in phase, there are two main parameters you must tweak in order to clean up (and optimize) your low frequency kick flams. One parameter to tweak involves the tuning of one kick to the other. The second parameter involves matching the phase (or amplitude alignment) of one kick to the other:

• First, choose which of the 2 kicks' pitch in the flam you desire most. Then, adjust the pitch of the less desired kick with "cent" value increments until you hear where the strongest peak in volume occurs. This will indicate both your kicks' pitches are in tune. Alternately, if you like the pitches of both kicks and prefer not to tamper with the pitch of either, a different technique to use is to apply a highpass filter to one of the kick to remove the unwanted low frequency conflicts.
• Second, select the secondary kick in your flam and slowly adjust the sample start time of that kick until you notice an overall peak in volume in the attack across the entire flam. This peak in volume will represent when both kicks' phases are a match. Moreover, to achieve an optimal match in phase, try to combine both an overall peak in volume simultaneously with the point at which you observe the least amount of cone movement on your subwoofer!

You'll be a Pro at "50 Cent Style" Kick Flams in No Time!!!

This article is provided by ModernBeats Loops & Samples

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