Skip forward a couple decades to the 1960s, and home recordings had become big business. The recording revolution and kick reverb boom Live amplification was still a luxury, making it more necessary for ensembles to be acoustically balanced. In this era, the kick drum was acoustically ideal for its loud presence in concert spaces.

Radios were an extravagance (and a non-portable one at that), while home listening formats were similarly expensive and, without the aid of electronic amplification, very low-fidelity. It’s important to remember that, in the early heyday of New Orleans-style jazz (late 1910s/early 1920s), music was still largely an acoustic matter. While early drum kits were used in some marching bands, it was the advent of early jazz music in the 1910s that first introduced the sit-down drum kit that we’re accustomed to today. The modern kick drum is a central part of the drum kit, a configured set of drums used across multiple genres. In orchestral music, the timpani provides tuned bass percussion – watch and listen as New York Philharmonic percussionist Markus Rhoten demonstrates these rumbling beasts: Historically, the modern kick drum is descended from any number of large bass-register drums. How did we get to the modern kick? How do we record and mix a kick? How do we make sure the kick sits properly in a track? In this piece, we’ll learn more about the evolution of the acoustic kick, look at some classic examples, and see how we can use the tools in Ableton Live to get excellent-sounding acoustic kicks that sit well in a mix. Sometimes there are tricky kicks – just check out any metal drummer with a double-kick pedal – but it’s still a centering force of gravity for any modern percussion part. It’s also a grounding force for the rhythm section. In the modern drum kit, the kick drum is a focal point for the low end, and often a key keeper of time. This article also features insights from Abe Seiferth, a producer, engineer, and musician whose credits include Yeasayer, Neon Indian, RAC, and many others.

Now, he’s back with a look at acoustic kicks. Late last year, David Abravanel took us on a journey through the history of the electronic kick drum.

Ableton 10 no arts acoustic reverb