How to mix kick and bass together successfully?

[stresstour]

Is there a good rule of thumb on the best way to mix a kick drum and bass guitar together in a mix? website tutorials, articles, comments from womb users....anybody? Help!

[Skwaidu]

Doesn't that slipperman character talk about that stuff?

[DPower]

Sure...

Pick one, make a space. Take the other, give it another space. Sometimes, try to make them work together.

It's kind of like rats in a small cage.

Sort of...

Look up side chain compression, it sometimes helps.

Otherwise you can try to determine who's the better player, the bass or the drummer and give them your priority and bury the other one.

Scratch that, replace them both with samples.

[6x2]

Add at least 40dB - preferably a lot more - of 8Hz on both. If there's no such frequency present in either, you're fucked! Get a signal generator and generate a very loud sine wave at 8Hz. Leave it in your mix. Bang. Job done.

:grin:

Just kidding, just kidding...

It really depends on the sources and style of music, but as a rule of thumb if you have loads and loads of low end in both, you'll end up with a messy bottom. And you don't want a messy bottom.

I think I should continue on a better day.

Slippy may carry on...

6x2

[Mixerman]

Is there a good rule of thumb on the best way to mix a kick drum and bass guitar together in a mix? website tutorials, articles, comments from womb users....anybody? Help!

Think of it this way. Either the kik needs to have a lower fundamental frequency than the bass, or the bass has to have a lower fundamental frequency than the kik. One or the other.

Enjoy,

Mixerman

[stresstour]

Thanks all. very helpful stuff! I own a pair of Dynaudio BM5A's and a pair of NS10s. Would it be wise to start my mix off in my Dyns for the lowend then the rest on the NS10s?

[Fulcrum]

Remember that you're dealing with getting two instruments to share space in two frequency ranges. Specifically:


the kick drum, which has a lower, meaty area of energy along with the initial transient of the beater hitting the head
the bass, which also has a lower, meaty area of energy along with the initial transient of the string being excited either by finger or plectrum

[Mixerman]

Thanks all. very helpful stuff! I own a pair of Dynaudio BM5A's and a pair of NS10s. Would it be wise to start my mix off in my Dyns for the lowend then the rest on the NS10s?

Whatever works for you, man. For me, I sweat and labor over the low end until the moment I print the mix. The low end of a mix is what separates the men from the boys. It's the foundation that everything sits upon. If you have a lousy foundation your house will crumble.

That said, I can mix an entire album, and even get the low end right, exclusively in NS10s. That doesn't mean you should. Try switching back and forth at different points in the mix. This will reveal different things about the mix. And over time of doing this, will tell you which speaker you can rely on more for which judgements.

Mixerman

[Brendo]

Sure...

It's kind of like rats in a small cage.

Sort of...

I still don't know what Billy Corgan has to do with this.

[recall]

sometimes you can get them to balance but it just doesn't feel like they're connecting o I sometimes mult them to a spare aux and use some kind of heavy compression and tape(ac2, massey) or Valve (duy) emulation. This mult should sound pretty "undynamic" but just bringing that up with the rest of the kit sometimes works for me.

I'll also use Roger Nicholls inspector free plugin, hen my monitoring is not 100 per cent reliable to tell me what instrument is doing what where. It'll show you a frequency analysis of your instrument, hastens the scooping of redundant freq's and giving you more space and a tighter low end.

[airborne]

Think of it this way. Either the kik needs to have a lower fundamental frequency than the bass, or the bass has to have a lower fundamental frequency than the kik. One or the other.

Aha, but your bass guitar fundamental frequency will change depending on what note the fucker is sounding...

How do you get around this bee-yatch? Links in with my 'EQ for tuned instruments thread'

[Baddo]

Aha, but your bass guitar fundamental frequency will change depending on what note the fucker is sounding...

How do you get around this bee-yatch? Links in with my 'EQ for tuned instruments thread'

One way would be to look at this in octaves. ie: use the octave around 60hz for the kick drum and boost around 100 - 120 or so for the bass. or the other way around.

[Mixerman]

Aha, but your bass guitar fundamental frequency will change depending on what note the fucker is sounding...

How do you get around this bee-yatch? Links in with my 'EQ for tuned instruments thread'

That's true, however the bass will tend to appear either higher in frequency or lower in frequency as compared to the kik, depending on how the bass was recorded, and depending on what frequency you're boosting for each.

This is one of the early decisions I make in mixing any song. Does the bass live down below the kik? Or does the kik live down below the bass? That decision depends on the instrumentation, the recording, the type of song, the key of the song, and the bass (is it a 5 string?).

Think of the low frequencies of the bass and the kik as the difference between deep and punchy. For instance, if in a mix, I use a high pass filter to control and reduce the sub-frequencies on the bass, and then boost in the 100-200hz-range, I'm probably going to have a punchy bass. If I don't use a filter, and I boost in the 60hz range or possibly even lower, I'm probably going to have a deep bass.

Now, all of that is dependant on the recording, the bass, the bass amp, etc... So, I'm not proposing some cookie cutter way of dealing with a recording I've never heard. I'm merely attempting to illustrate a way of thinking about the bass and where it sits frequency-wise into the landscape. The most important part of the thought process is to allow the kik and the bass to have different fundamental frequency positions in your mix. If your kik is deep, your bass needs to be punchy. If your kik is punchy, your bass needs to be deep.

Mixerman

[Mixerpuppet]

and if your bass is too punchy your guitars get screwed......

I might add that it also depends on the timing of the two. You can go deep on the bass with a kik thats deep if they are not happening at the same time or overlapping very minimally.

Riff dependant...

[weedywet]

and if your bass is too punchy your guitars get screwed......

...

a SMALL price to pay for a great bass guitar sound.

Priorities!

[Charles Dye]

... said the bassplayer

[Mixerpuppet]

a SMALL price to pay for a great bass guitar sound.

Priorities!


heh heh....


maybe in POP music from the 80's...


wait....


Those "eyes" in the avatar look soooo familiar...


Oh its all coming back to me now...


ack choke cough!!!

[luke_m]

thanks for doing a rubix cube on my brain, you explain it in a way even i can understand.

is there any rule of thumb how low you should never go with basses, do you ever eq the very bottom off your bass.

i'm new to this (eqing bass & kick) and there seems to be sea of frequencys that when loud im not too sure how to handle them, im mixing in the genre of hiphop, with sub basses and things, not your standard basses, sometimes basses off vinyl.

i guess i should just open a commercial song, and model my bass after that. :Yawn:

[slabrock]

is there any rule of thumb how low you should never go with basses, do you ever eq the very bottom off your bass.

Always.

Basically you are into problems, if there's too much (means: any) stuff in and below 20Hz, although in theory you can go all the way to 1Hz on CD.

Welcome To Sunny Florida by Tori Amos is a good example of a great-sounding record that you just can't listen on average consumer equipment. Not at least without some serious damage to the speakers.

50 Hz is a good point to start driving things down. If you've got your kick's lower peak there, nothing needs to go below that.

And mixing the kick and the bass together, i nearly always comp them together. Either parallel or inline, and the compressor release timed in the song's tempo.

Peace,

Slabrock

[idaguide]

the compressor release timed in the song's tempo.

Peace,

Slabrock

Can you explain how you do this?
thanx
g

[Dubnick]

I actually found the bass section of Charles' video to be an extremely helpful reference in this area and, for me, totally justified to cost of the DVD alone - I'm surprised no one, including Charles himself, has referred you to that chapter. Taking tips away from that section has made it so much easier to get the bass where I want it without it eating away at the rest of the mix.

As far as double checking bass/kick balance, when I'm cool with everything is on my monitors as they are, I try to simulate the old mono/Aurotone check by putting an EQ across the master bus and rolling off the highs and lows to simulate a small speaker or telephone and put the mix in mono - if the balance of everything is still cool, I can hear the kick and bass. Also, I avoid having the bass player play with a P-Bass - I find that there's just not enough mid-range in P-Basses to bring out, and while that's not as much of an issue in sparser mixes, in a dense mix, I personally find it crucial to be able to bring out the midrange of the bass.

[slabrock]

Can you explain how you do this?
thanx


Yeah, sure. That's anyway one of the first things i do when i start mixing a song - to find out the note lengths in millisecond.

If i record with a click track or the song has midi instruments in it, then it's easy. Just divide 60 000 with the BPM and you get a 1/4 note.

If, however, the song is recorded without a click, then you have to find the most average tempo part, which means to count to 25 (full 24 measures) with a stopwatch, and multiply that with 41.81 ...and you get a 1/4 note. Don't just measure a single note, that'll never work.

(These mathematics are not my own, but i've ripped them from one of Bobby Owsinski's excellent books way back. They work. Thank you once again, mr. Owsinski, if you ever see this.)

When i've figured out the 1/4, 1/8, 1/16 and 1/32 notes, i make a note of them in the session. Those will be my starting points when ever applying a compressor or a delay. Of course i can tweak the compressor release a little faster if i want to get an uptempo feel, or little slower if i want the song to appear relaxed even though the band is banging away like cattle on stampede. And same with delay.

Yes, you have to fine-tune the effect by ear. But i've found this a good starting point, which is better than trying the other popular method, which is to aim all dials in the same direction and hope for the best
:lol: :lol: :lol:

Peace,

Slabrock

[Mixerman]

thanks for doing a rubix cube on my brain, you explain it in a way even i can understand.

is there any rule of thumb how low you should never go with basses, do you ever eq the very bottom off your bass.

i'm new to this (eqing bass & kick) and there seems to be sea of frequencys that when loud im not too sure how to handle them, im mixing in the genre of hiphop, with sub basses and things, not your standard basses, sometimes basses off vinyl.

i guess i should just open a commercial song, and model my bass after that. :Yawn:

With hip hop, you want subs on your bass. And you want subs from you 808 style kik. How much is too much? I don't know.

But I do know that low end is the easiest thing to deal with on the entire mix. So if you put too much, and realize it after the fact, it is very easy to filter after the fact without affecting everything in else in the mix.

Mixerman

[luke_m]

thanks mixerman!!:Yawn:

with hiphop the drums are like 90% of the track, so i wanted to seperate my kicks into 3 tracks, hi's, mid's and low's to have more control on the low end "thump" part.

with the original kick sample in one track.
and then the 3 seperated hi,mid,low in 3 more tracks

the eq's i have all seem to have a curve, i can't just squarely carve out a space, some frequencys are always lost, or leak through, and it doesnt sound like the full original kick on the other track, are there any tips for this.

can any eq's do square type of hipass/lowpasses?

ps. i use ssl duende channel eq, and cubase4's eq, and also have protools 7.1

[jord]

I actually found the bass section of Charles' video to be an extremely helpful reference in this area and, for me, totally justified to cost of the DVD alone - I'm surprised no one, including Charles himself, has referred you to that chapter. Taking tips away from that section has made it so much easier to get the bass where I want it without it eating away at the rest of the mix.

As far as double checking bass/kick balance, when I'm cool with everything is on my monitors as they are, I try to simulate the old mono/Aurotone check by putting an EQ across the master bus and rolling off the highs and lows to simulate a small speaker or telephone and put the mix in mono - if the balance of everything is still cool, I can hear the kick and bass. Also, I avoid having the bass player play with a P-Bass - I find that there's just not enough mid-range in P-Basses to bring out, and while that's not as much of an issue in sparser mixes, in a dense mix, I personally find it crucial to be able to bring out the midrange of the bass.

This is probably where I'm going wrong with a particular mix that's just chewing my ass off. For some reason, I just can't get the bass to cut through. I hear that there's a bass, but it doesn't feel like it's part of the song. I should probably be trying to bring out the mids on the bass, rather than the lows. Looks like I have to hit my friend up for his MiLaR DVD again... perhaps, I'll find the answer there.

jord

[Mixerman]

thanks mixerman!!:Yawn:

with hiphop the drums are like 90% of the track, so i wanted to seperate my kicks into 3 tracks, hi's, mid's and low's to have more control on the low end "thump" part.

with the original kick sample in one track.
and then the 3 seperated hi,mid,low in 3 more tracks

the eq's i have all seem to have a curve, i can't just squarely carve out a space, some frequencys are always lost, or leak through, and it doesnt sound like the full original kick on the other track, are there any tips for this.

can any eq's do square type of hipass/lowpasses?

ps. i use ssl duende channel eq, and cubase4's eq, and also have protools 7.1

The problem I always found with hip hop kiks when mixing, was if there is too much low-end, it doesn't punch. If it punches there isn't enough low end. I have found the most effective way with dealing with this issue is not so much with EQ split-offs as you've suggested above (although that's part of it), but rather with a compression splitoff.

If you really want to get some punch out of the kik, the best way is to over-over-compress the kik on a separate channel, and add it in to the uncompressed kik channel. I always used a very quick compressor for this application, (I like the dbx 165a's for this function but really any dbx will work for this. If you don't have a dbx, just make sure it's got a fast atack and release.)

Now, I mean really slam the compressor. This will make the compressed channel sound very small. But when you add this channel in to the uncompressed channel (with huge low end), it will give you both the broad kik and the punchy kik at the same time. You will be quite surprised by just how little of that compressed kik you'll need. And play with EQ (before the compressor) to get that compressed channel doing precisely what you want it to do.

Enjoy,

Mixerman

[luke_m]

your a champion! thankyou!
i could stay up all night and not think of that...:Thumbsup:

[fizbin]

Thanks for one of the most useful threads ever. Carry on.

[ajcamlet]

The problem I always found with hip hop kiks when mixing, was if there is too much low-end, it doesn't punch. If it punches there isn't enough low end. I have found the most effective way with dealing with this issue is not so much with EQ split-offs as you've suggested above (although that's part of it), but rather with a compression splitoff.

If you really want to get some punch out of the kik, the best way is to over-over-compress the kik on a separate channel, and add it in to the uncompressed kik channel. I always used a very quick compressor for this application, (I like the dbx 165a's for this function but really any dbx will work for this. If you don't have a dbx, just make sure it's got a fast atack and release.)

Now, I mean really slam the compressor. This will make the compressed channel sound very small. But when you add this channel in to the uncompressed channel (with huge low end), it will give you both the broad kik and the punchy kik at the same time. You will be quite surprised by just how little of that compressed kik you'll need. And play with EQ (before the compressor) to get that compressed channel doing precisely what you want it to do.

Enjoy,

Mixerman


the SPL Transient Designer seems pretty cool for this as well....

[D.Michaels]

...the bass, which also has a lower, meaty area of energy along with the initial transient of the string being excited either by finger or plectrum

Plectrum?... I hardly knew um...:grin:

[ceco]

how would yuo guys approach this question in a mix where there's an electric guitar which is pretty low tuned, i.e. a baritone one? especially if it doesn't go all the time together with the bass but doing different lines?

[Anduin]

That's true, however the bass will tend to appear either higher in frequency or lower in frequency as compared to the kik, depending on how the bass was recorded, and depending on what frequency you're boosting for each.

But logic tells me there's something missing. I mean, the kik stays the same frequency all the time, but (as previously mentioned) the bass frequency changes depending on the note. So if we decide to mix with the idea that the bass lives lower than the kik, how can that possibly remain true when the fundamental of the bass note (at whatever moment in the song) is above the kik?

[mattian]

The problem I always found with hip hop kiks when mixing, was if there is too much low-end, it doesn't punch. If it punches there isn't enough low end. I have found the most effective way with dealing with this issue is not so much with EQ split-offs as you've suggested above (although that's part of it), but rather with a compression splitoff.

If you really want to get some punch out of the kik, the best way is to over-over-compress the kik on a separate channel, and add it in to the uncompressed kik channel. I always used a very quick compressor for this application, (I like the dbx 165a's for this function but really any dbx will work for this. If you don't have a dbx, just make sure it's got a fast atack and release.)

Now, I mean really slam the compressor. This will make the compressed channel sound very small. But when you add this channel in to the uncompressed channel (with huge low end), it will give you both the broad kik and the punchy kik at the same time. You will be quite surprised by just how little of that compressed kik you'll need. And play with EQ (before the compressor) to get that compressed channel doing precisely what you want it to do.

Enjoy,

Mixerman


yes, i've tried that, i don't squeeze too much because it goes in distortion.. is that a bad thing that you remove with eq (because a lot of time i can't do that.. i remove all the effect) or you don't care about distortion?

[Mixerman]

yes, i've tried that, i don't squeeze too much because it goes in distortion.. is that a bad thing that you remove with eq (because a lot of time i can't do that.. i remove all the effect) or you don't care about distortion?

The main distortion comes from the output of the compressor. You should be able to drive the input pretty hard without copious amounts of distortion. You should be able to compress the kik to a little "pip" wihtout any problems. The EQ can be used to pull out some low end before hitting the compressor and adding upper mid range for more attack. Or you can add low end before the compressor for a beefier sound. Sometimes distortion on a kik is a good thing. Distortion helps instruments cut, especially those in the lower harmonic range (like bass).

Mixerman

[mattian]

ok, but, sorry to contradict you, with electronic samples kick i've often the distortion problem.. maybe because they have a lot of bass. it don't depends to the output i think because i'm always at low peak on track meter.. maybe -10 -12 -6, so i don't think.

but thanks for your important explanation.

[Cheech]

The main distortion comes from the output of the compressor. You should be able to drive the input pretty hard without copious amounts of distortion. You should be able to compress the kik to a little "pip" wihtout any problems. The EQ can be used to pull out some low end before hitting the compressor and adding upper mid range for more attack. Or you can add low end before the compressor for a beefier sound. Sometimes distortion on a kik is a good thing. Distortion helps instruments cut, especially those in the lower harmonic range (like bass).

Mixerman


The past few months I have been getting GREAT results with the addind distortion to the bass guitar track. Currently using clip distortion in Logic...... Solo the bass track and you can hear the distortion, put it in the mix and its like magic to my ears.

Im gonna start experimenting with that on the kick.

Great thread!!! Lots of great info here!