KVR Audio

Neyttable · Post by **Neyttable** » Sun Apr 08, 2012 8:35 pm

Im working on this for quite some time, and this is driving me crazy, i had no other options but to ask here

Bass is the problem. I have a bass and sub bass layered, but they sound kinda awkward and weird to me. Is it mixing, layering, presets ? They don't sound powerful enough to me, and when higher notes are played, it really sounds bad. Here it is a 30 seconds cut when bass kicks in. Please help me, i really don't know what to do. Thanks in advance!

http://soundcloud.com/neyttabble/12345-1

IELMusic · Post by **IELMusic** » Mon Apr 09, 2012 12:53 am

To be honest, I could hardly even hear the bass in the clip, you might want to consider, first of all, lowering the levels of your synths a tad, and bringing up the bass a couple dbs. Secondly, what octave are you playing your bass in? The little that I heard sounded a tad high, like you could maybe get away with playing a little lower. The sub, I couldn't hear/ feel at all, so it's either too quiet, being played too high, or being played too low. As to why it may sound weird, it's tough to tell exactly why, given the low volume of the clip, and no clip of the bass and sub solo'd, but it could be due to phasing. Put a phase correlation meter on the master buss and solo your bass and sub bass, so that they are the only 2 things playing. Watch the correlation, and if it dips into the negative, that means your bass and sub are partially cancelling each other out. Make sure your sub is an octave lower than your main bass, this helps to reduce phasing. In addition, check any time-based and stereo processing your have on your basses (reverb, delay, chorus, phaser, flanger, etc.), as improper usage of those, especially on low frequencies, can have really messy results, and cause phase cancellations (don't get me wrong, they're GREAT to use on bass, you just gotta use them right). Hope this helps!

Neyttable · Post by **Neyttable** » Mon Apr 09, 2012 7:49 am

Thanks a lot for your answer, really appreciate that. Bass octave is D5 (which is also the lowest octave of main lead), and sub bass octave is D4. I tried experimenting with them before, lowering both by one octave, but they were to low to have any impact on the track. Gonna play with them now, hope i will achieve something

Thanks once again.

Awkward sound bass