Hi guys, I have an idea of where to begin, but I am curious what range of cuts, attacks and boosts others are doing in eq for their basslines and kiks.
I know every bass instrument or kik has it's own unique sonic qualities, in which case I'm looking for a good place to start, perhaps a general view or magic frequncy overview. If you have sound samples, that would be awesome.
Thanks guys,
Best,
Gabe
How do I mix TRANCE basslines and kiks for maxximum OOMPH?
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- KVRist
- 301 posts since 5 Jun, 2004
Good thing you realise it's not a one size fits all matter. Some general tips
1) Compress the living daylight out of your kick to get it punhcy.
1) Check for strong frequncy clashes between bass and kick and cut in either (i usually find cutting in the bass is better)
3) If the kick swamps the mix try setting the decay of the kick in your drum machine/sampler to a slightly lower value. <- This works wonders.
4) You can always try sidechaining the kick the bass to even if they don't clash to make them have more of a "dialogue" and complement each other better
5) Finally go back to the drawing board (arrangement) and see if you have something you can remove. Sometimes cutting stuff can lead to the sense of a denser mix. E.g. if you have a boomy kick going off at the same time with a heavy bass it leads to a very muddy mix.
1) Compress the living daylight out of your kick to get it punhcy.
1) Check for strong frequncy clashes between bass and kick and cut in either (i usually find cutting in the bass is better)
3) If the kick swamps the mix try setting the decay of the kick in your drum machine/sampler to a slightly lower value. <- This works wonders.
4) You can always try sidechaining the kick the bass to even if they don't clash to make them have more of a "dialogue" and complement each other better
5) Finally go back to the drawing board (arrangement) and see if you have something you can remove. Sometimes cutting stuff can lead to the sense of a denser mix. E.g. if you have a boomy kick going off at the same time with a heavy bass it leads to a very muddy mix.
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- KVRAF
- 8706 posts since 24 May, 2002 from Tutukaka, New Zealand
As usual it completely depends on what you're doing. What style and what effect you want.
One or two things that can help are rolling off the bottom end on basslines - unless you're doing something like dub or D'n'B you actually don't need power at 50Hz - you get more audible power higher up. It also makes compression etc alot more easy. Bass frequencies have the most energy, so the less bass you have, the better compressors can work without pumping all over the place.
Or - you can beef up your bassline and subsequently roll off some subs on your kick - a more accoustic type kick can sit better with deep basslines.
Another tip can be to treat your kick and bassline as one rather than trying to get each one as powerful as you can on its own...route them both to a group and do your compression there rather than on the single channels.
As mentioned - sidechaining can be useful sometimes to reduce the competition between them.
Another very good tip is to actually not worry so much about basses and kicks until the final mixing stage. If they sound good on their own, then they are good. If they sound a bit weedy in an untreated mix, just ignore it - they're going to anyway. Probably many people now use multiband comps, or at least very capable wideband ones...which are so readily available in s/w now. These are going to bring up your bass pretty well without resorting to fancy channel nonsense early on. If you have huge kicks and basslines at the start - it's going to be very difficult for a compressor to deal with them. Most likely you'll just make the whole thing worse.
Get used to the fact that your initial mix as you go is going to sound pretty crap compared to how it all ends up later. Putting compressors at different places in the chain does very different things...compressing a bass channel sounds completely different to how it makes a bass sound when the mix is compressed. Personally I think too many people are trying too hard to get huge bass way too early in the piece. Especially if anyone is into limiting and maximum volume...the less bass, the more volume you can get. And rolling off bass doesn't mean losing audible power and effect.
As always...if your kick is strong in any particular frequency, then cut that same frequency in the bassline and vice versa.
Alos...do you need to have a bassline playing on the kick beat? usually it's unnecessary, so change it. You know those cheesey trance 4/4 off beat basses? That's done for several reasons - apart from being a rhythmic device, piss easy to do so that the composers don't have to actually think too hard about their music....it's also the easiest way to get most effect from both kick and bass - make sure they never coincide, simple as that.
And that's only a few things amongst hundreds of ways of helping bass frequencies - I can think of many more. Experiment - and don't get hung up on bass power - that's probably the surest route to f**king it up, by trying to get everything too powerful.
One or two things that can help are rolling off the bottom end on basslines - unless you're doing something like dub or D'n'B you actually don't need power at 50Hz - you get more audible power higher up. It also makes compression etc alot more easy. Bass frequencies have the most energy, so the less bass you have, the better compressors can work without pumping all over the place.
Or - you can beef up your bassline and subsequently roll off some subs on your kick - a more accoustic type kick can sit better with deep basslines.
Another tip can be to treat your kick and bassline as one rather than trying to get each one as powerful as you can on its own...route them both to a group and do your compression there rather than on the single channels.
As mentioned - sidechaining can be useful sometimes to reduce the competition between them.
Another very good tip is to actually not worry so much about basses and kicks until the final mixing stage. If they sound good on their own, then they are good. If they sound a bit weedy in an untreated mix, just ignore it - they're going to anyway. Probably many people now use multiband comps, or at least very capable wideband ones...which are so readily available in s/w now. These are going to bring up your bass pretty well without resorting to fancy channel nonsense early on. If you have huge kicks and basslines at the start - it's going to be very difficult for a compressor to deal with them. Most likely you'll just make the whole thing worse.
Get used to the fact that your initial mix as you go is going to sound pretty crap compared to how it all ends up later. Putting compressors at different places in the chain does very different things...compressing a bass channel sounds completely different to how it makes a bass sound when the mix is compressed. Personally I think too many people are trying too hard to get huge bass way too early in the piece. Especially if anyone is into limiting and maximum volume...the less bass, the more volume you can get. And rolling off bass doesn't mean losing audible power and effect.
As always...if your kick is strong in any particular frequency, then cut that same frequency in the bassline and vice versa.
Alos...do you need to have a bassline playing on the kick beat? usually it's unnecessary, so change it. You know those cheesey trance 4/4 off beat basses? That's done for several reasons - apart from being a rhythmic device, piss easy to do so that the composers don't have to actually think too hard about their music....it's also the easiest way to get most effect from both kick and bass - make sure they never coincide, simple as that.
And that's only a few things amongst hundreds of ways of helping bass frequencies - I can think of many more. Experiment - and don't get hung up on bass power - that's probably the surest route to f**king it up, by trying to get everything too powerful.