How Duda Changed Deadmau5 Kicks FOREVER (10+ years)

How to get the perfect EDM kick? Deadmau5 and Steve Duda can help...

ABOUT THE VIDEO
After seeing Deadmau5 rant about short kicks, Marcell Kovacs
sent me a video with Steve Duda - the video that started the whole Deadmau5 kick rant and a video that reveals a lot about the perfect edm/house kick. So when it comes to getting the perfect kick, I think it makes to listen to Steve Duda, and get a few Deadmau5 mixing tips!

🎵DEADMAU5

🎹STEVE DUDA

🎵PYRAMIND

👋SOL STATE

🔥MUSIC BY SOL STATE (The Outro Song)

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Same idea as the channel, help you master music production (no spam)

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⏰ TIME STAMPS
Steve Duda = Deadmau5? - 0:00
Don’t Lose Sight a Big Picture - 0:24
Have an Artistic Vision - Macro & Micro 0:50
Create Space - “what can I afford to get rid of?” - 1:31
Waves of Bass - 2:35
The Story: What Duda told Deadmau5 - 3:35
Why Less Bass Can be Good (headphones are not clubs) - 4:39
Genre Matters - but how long should the kick be? - 5:49
Faking Loudness (Like / Sub / Comment for more) 6:40

Author - Deadmau5, Wikimedia Commons

Help me help you...master music production

[SolStateMusic]

Shoutout to Pyramind & Marcell Kovacs for sparking this whole video!

[djcj]

The craziest part about this is that Steve Duda had a "Sol State" sticker on his laptop 10 years ago... dude is an OG fan man! 😉

[mparkerdrums]

That last tip was huge. High end frequency reverb on a kick… illusion (huge kick) and then the bass hits (actual low end information) result=massive.

[bitmau]

The video being 8:08 long is the pure genius.

Jokes aside, this clarified a lot for me, intuitively. Thanks.

[nikolaudio]

Steve Duda is the one who came up with so many of the clever tricks deadmau5 uses and its unreal how well together they work. They were made for each other

[urphakeandgey]

Deadmau5 and Duda are real good because they're some of the few dance producers to put "you can't have loud without quiet" into practice.

In an age of dance music that's all brick walls sausage limited, it's nice to hear their stuff.

[drifter]

Mate it's all those Vengeance packs that everybody used to buy a few years ago. Those kicks are HUGE.

[danielabdelmalak]

I’ve never heard music explained like this.

“Feels like water after being in the desert” when talking about deprecation of bass.

Love the commentary and short form video.

Thank you!!!

[ssuperfour]

Watch the whole Pyramind talk! Duda is so insightful and you'll remember his tips years down the track! One that stuck with me is, when you introduce a new instrument or sound, automate the volume (e.g using Utility in Ableton) instead of the Gain for the entire track. This lets you bring that instrument track into focus for a moment, and then back down once its had its moment (and automate it back down to clear space in your mix)

[nathaniel_cook]

this guy is such a great speaker, really felt like i could understand everything well

[Enders]

12 years of making music and I still get a tiny tip from Steve almost every time I hear him talk... Also I've played about 40 of my own productions on "big systems"... you don't want muddy low end, for sure.

[winterlogical]

As a wise man once said: Production is *reduction.* I'm an amateur but I am starting to think about my mixes in this way too. Typically I find when I start getting a general vibe going I start muting various elements - and per what I learned in another Sol State vid, if you don't miss the element you just paused, don't bring it back! Think of kicks this way too, in the context of your mix if you shorten it and it works better, don't elongate it again because it sounds good on its own. Think about preserving the core of your idea as much as possible.

[KniteGraffiti]

that last part about dubstep is really enlightening

[jeremyjohnson]

I'm a passionate producer and musician for over 40 years now. (I created this account just to comment, I don't want to reveal my artist name), Quincy Jones is a close friend of mine. I remember when he asked me: "Who do you make your music for?" ... I answered "for no one but myself!".... And Quincy laughed and said, "Right answer! Only for you! Not for the others, not for any events, and not for the clubs! Just for YOU!" ... Then I said "but of course it means the world to me if others like it and I make money with my music!" Quincy laughed again and said "Of course! And it's the best feeling in the world to become successful with something you made just for you!".

I would never mix music like that to have the poor acoustics of a club in mind. If a great track that was mixed in an acoustically perfect room is terrible booming in a club, then the problem is the acoustics of the club, not the track. The video just made me shake my head, because there are tracks with long 808 kick drums, with a fat sub bass underneath, and in an acoustically good club it sounds incredible! So my advice to any real producer: Make music for YOU, not to please others. Mix your track the way YOU like it, but still keep certain basic rules in mind. Don't ask yourself if your track sounds good in a stupid club, if it sounds great on a reference system, on your kitchen radio, on a hi-fi system and in the car, then you've done everything right! Deadmau is a cool guy, but his music and methods are not to be taken as a reference. END OF STORY.

[ekyo_stuff]

actually that dubstep kick reverb trick is a super nice tip! I hadn't even thought of that!

[artemetra]

this next tip is also very useful in arrangements:
there's a psychoacoustic effect that states that the listener gets completely used to the constant bass/sub bass in about _40 seconds_ (or even less). so by that time, huge kicks won't sound huge, constant basses won't be as good. that's why Duda talks about _excitement:_ if you make breakdowns or just parts without kick/bass relatively often, you preserve the punch and the excitement, the listener doesn't get bored/used to it (if you don't want to remove your sub, you can also change its pitch, btw!)

also, if you are making techno with huge quarter note humming and rumbling kicks, try making the sample of the kick fall in volume (doesn't have to be to -inf db), this will 1) preserve the punch and the excitement 2) allow for much more headroom in general, not just in the low end

hope this helps! :p

[ettorel]

Recently, I've found this to be true. Shorter kicks really makes a difference when aiming to create more space. Your channel is my favorite for music production and I won't get tired of saying it. Those edits of the kicks graphically showing what Steve was explaining was spot on. Big fan.

[strm]

3:28 The real Steve Shady spittin bars

[sandwich-breath]

Creativity and editing are mutually exclusive. A good workflow I've developed over the years is to first add all the ingredients without judgement or editing). I then come back to edit and remove what's not adding to the core of the track to make it stronger/better. Following this I'll come back to review prior to mixing to make sure nothing is overlooked like wonky programming. After taking a break I'll come back to mix with fresh ears. And then finally come back to master with fresh ears. This separation is more about the headspace required to do each task properly, because it actively requires different parts of the brain and to do it effectively requires preparation and the proper mindset.

[neroverweiss]

This channel is a true gem for producers.