3 Kick and Bass Secrets Every Music Producer MUST Learn!

getting the low end right truly is one of the biggest skills in electronic dance music when you're kicking bass isn't working together but when you got it dialed in just right it can absolutely Rock the cloud so today I'm going to introduce you to my new co-coach Nick De Grace with over 10 years experience creating and teaching electronic dance music and this is the most in-depth low-end tutorial you will find anywhere on the internet so today we'll be covering the perfect sound you should use for your sub bass how to fit it in the mix perfectly with everything else how to layer it up for extra energy as well as literally everything else you need to know about getting your sub bass to sound amazing in your track so without further Ado join me in welcoming Nick to the EDM tip scene and I'll hand you over to him now thanks for the intro will I've set up a step-by-step demo here on how to get your low end sounding big and consistent how to add layers and how to mix it for that really nice tight low end that doesn't overpower the other elements in your mix alright so step one of part one is choosing the right waveform so the most common waveforms used are sine waves and triangle waves with sine waves having a very smooth and clean bass sound while triangle waves have a little bit of added character and warmth and what I've loaded up here is operator and I have chosen sine as our waveform and you can see that represented in the oscillator tab here and as I play the snow you can see with our Spectrum analyzer that we are just playing a clean sine wave as our sub if I change over to the triangle wave you can see that there are some added Parcels here or harmonics and these ones are odd partials and so the tone you're going to get is a little more Hollow but a little warmer for this example I'm going to be using a sine wave because I want to start off with the cleanest base possible step two is setting the pitch so the pitch is going to depend on the key of your track you usually want to aim for a frequency range between 40 Hertz and 100 Hertz this will give your sub bass a solid foundation without overpowering the rest of your track as you can see here I'm going to go into the mini tab and I've chosen G sharp as our note and if we look at our Spectrum analyzer you can see that we're sitting in a really nice frequency range for our sub base specifically the note of is at 51.9 Hertz step 3 adding harmonics this is a great way to get your sub to sound even bigger get it to cut through the mix and have it translate better on smaller speaker systems this is usually done by adding Distortion saturation or maybe even a combination of the two but be careful to not overdo it as this can quickly make your sub bass sound muddy and undefined so I've grabbed ableton's stock saturator here and I'm driving 15 DBS of gain into this thing which is a lot so I need to compensate for the massive volume change here by bringing down the output volume and as you can see here we have our sub hitting at negative 14 DBS and as I increase the dry wet which would be introducing the added saturation we are not getting any volume change whatsoever so all you're hearing is tonal change which is great because you don't want your ears being fooled by something sounding a little louder and you think it sounds better when it just might not be as I turn on the Spectrum analyzer you can see we have our sub here and let's take a look at the waveform as I introduce the saturation you can instantly see that there are harmonics being added in and the way that the sub sounds now is we can hear it a little bit more than just being able to feel it and this is great because this is what's going to allow your sub to cut through on smaller speaker systems and depending on what shape of the saturation you choose is going to introduce different orders of harmonics and so you're going to get different tonal changes from pretty soft to just downright nasty and this is where you can then blend to taste and I really like to use analog clip because it sounds a little warmer and it's a little easier on this on the sine wave itself so I am going to blend this and I usually pick somewhere between 60 to 80 for my own personal taste because I really like to be able to hear the sub but at the same time still be able to really feel the weight alright finally eq'ing step four we need to EQ our sub bass in order to make sure that it has its own pocket to live in inside your track so you're going to want to cut out some of the unnecessary frequencies in the higher range sometimes the saturation can also add unwanted frequencies below the range of your fundamental so it's okay to EQ those out with either a low shelf or a high pass filter okay that's it for part one so let's move on to part two where we're going to be talking about layering this is a great technique to use when you want to add more complexity to your bass line and when done properly it can really add that extra depth and energy to your mix step one of part two is choosing the right sound when layering your sub bass you want to choose the sounds that complement each other this means selecting sounds that have different frequency ranges characteristics that add to the fullness of your bass and don't mask each other when they're playing together so for this example you could layer a sine wave with a Sawtooth wave to add some grit and character and you could also add more voices to the Sawtooth wave and a little bit of detuning to get a nice stereo spread as well alright so here I have loaded up a instance of serum and we are using a Sawtooth wave as our waveform and if I open up the Spectrum analyzer here and play the note you can see there was a lot of harmonic content that a Sawtooth provides and so that's going to be great because it's going to give us a great foundation on starting our layer for our sub bass that's going to have some nice stereo width that a lot of grit and a lot of texture and so I'm going to start by adding some Unison to this and what this is going to do is give us a nice bit of stereo spread really nice sounds like a sweet spot for me I love the seven Unison oscillators and then we can even go a step further by adding a second oscillator as well and this one I've actually placed two octaves above so that it's higher in the frequency spectrum and filling out that area as well and played together doesn't sound like much but let's add some detune to it and unison now we're starting to kind of almost get that house kind of vibe that house saw stack Vibe and so now I'm gonna go into the effects section here because we want a little more grit and a little more stereo width and something that's going to make this so sounding even more interesting so I'm going to open up the Distortion here and I've got it with a bit of more Drive we're at 71 percent let's keep it at 70. and that's really bringing out some nice texture some nice body and now that we have that I want to play around with the phase of that Airy texture as well so let's add some noise in here and that's going to really fill out the top end and if we go back into the effects section here and start adding some flanging and coursing you're going to hear some phasing some movement maybe a bit much there we go I think that's filling up the top end really nicely and let's take it one step further by utilizing everything that serum has to offer by messing with the mix knob a little bit here foreign I like the sense of space that that adds and one extra thing that I've done here is I've macro knobbed the texture and the mix of this hyper section and what that's going to do is that's going to enable us to add some even more movement but really change the Timbre of this [Music] and that might be something that you could utilize later on if you're trying to get a little more creative with this down the line in your own song So now that we have that I want to solidify the frequency ranges of this a little more just squash them down and make them sound nice and fast so we're going to add the classic Ott and you see that's really bringing out a lot of top end really can bring out the body we can even add a little more of the mids if we want and lastly we're going to put a filter on this and I've also matched this to a macro knob so that we can have full control over the cut off you can even add a little more drive a little more fat harmonics to this and now we have more control over this as well so that we can have this be more of a wide layer that adds a little bit of girth a little bit of warmth to our sub bass and maybe if you wanted to as well we could add a little bit of Reverb just to make it live in a space so now that we have that I want to bring this down possibly we have our filter cut off set to about 200 Hertz at the lowest point and I think that sounds pretty good how it is so now let's bring in our sub base and see how we can make those fit together so here's just our sub base on its own and out here is with our added new textural layer I'll bring the filter up a little bit oh and that's sounding nice and fat there's one thing I would like to mention here is that this oscillator the first oscillator is in the frequency range that is below 100 Hertz I want to keep it there because it sounds really nice I like the texture that it gives it's a little darker than having this be one octave higher [Music] and this is subjective and up to you but one thing that we can do in serum here is we can go into the pencil Tab and we click process and they have an option here called remove fundamental and what that's going to do is it's going to remove the fundamental partial of the saw wave and now you still can have the nice darker texture but you don't have the lowest fundamental of this saw wave messing with your sub bass so here's how it sounds foreign and now you can have a nice textural layer that is not going to mess with the low end of your sub step two is level balancing so once you've chosen your sound and or sound you need to balance the levels of each layer so you want to make sure that each layer is audible but not overpowering and A good rule of thumb is to have the sub bass layer at the Forefront and your other layers providing support So now that we have a nice consistent sub we've got a nice layer that adds a little bit of stereo width and fullness to it and nice texture I want to have something that's filling out my top end and that's going to be the kind of main focus of this track that I have here so I found this Loop got some good Groove to it and that's what's going to be filling out the higher end of our frequency spectrum while the mid bass that we have here obviously filling out the mids and then we have our low end sub that's just filling out all the meat and all adding a lot of that weight to here there's a little bit of embolumment balance here so far so what we're going to have to do is try and get everything sitting a little better so let's get our lead this needs to come down a bit I think that's a little better maybe we will bring this up Ted there we go let's turn the sub off I think the sub sitting exactly where it should be right now and that's perfect so without these two nice and fat alright step three you already know what it is EQ so now that we have our layers balanced we need to EQ them to make sure that they fit in the mix so you want to make sure that each layer has its own space in the frequency spectrum and this means cutting out any unnecessary frequencies and boosting the ones that complement each other so now we have our sub base our mid layer and our lead and these are all sitting nicely volume wise but they aren't necessarily fitting nicely in terms of their frequencies because there is some overlap and so what we're going to need to do is take some EQ in order to make them fit nicely together and make them sound like they are one whole instrument playing together and so I've got an EQ on our mid layer if we look at our sub base we're occupying up to about 120 hertz and so I'm going to bring this to about 120 hertz and that way that everything below that is being cut off and there's there's a little bit of overlap still but that is completely fine we want that to add to a little bit of the body and make it still be able to fill everything out instead of cutting a little bit too much and then having this one pocket that it needs to be filled later on and so we have that and let's take a look at our lead this is a little ugly because it's occupying the entire frequency spectrum and that's not what we need we only want to really occupy a little bit of the high mids and above and so we're going to grab an EQ here and we'll bring it behind the frequency spectrum and we're going to start cutting and we're going to cut so that we're just getting a little bit of that body and a little bit of texture 400 seems to be a little bit of a sweet spot for me and so now let's play our mid layer and our lead together they seem to be working but there's a little bit too much in the body that's still clashing [Music] and I noticed that as I had it and it's somewhere in between 600 and 800 Hertz that the throatiness of the lead just seemed to pop out and so since I've cut that in the mid layer I'm actually going to boost that here a little bit in the lead layer and really let that shine through [Music] up a little bit [Music] and I think that's that's sounding pretty nice and I actually want to get a little more of the air and the grittiness of this texture as well [Music] now that sounded really gritty really nasty let's play it all together foreign is filling out a specific part of the frequency spectrum and not clashing with each other sounding really nice and full and gritty and fat alright so that's it for part two let's move on to part three of mastering your low end and I'm going to show you guys how to mix your sub for a nice tight low end so we have a big consistent sub right now we have a nice layer for fullness character and energy and now we're going to need to find a place for that sub bass to sit in the mix which I like to call finding the pocket so let's Dive Right In so the first step to getting a tight low end is balancing its volume with the rest of your mix you want to make sure that your sub bass is audible but not overpowering so a good way to do that is to use a reference track and compare it to your mix so you want to bring your reference track down in volume to about the same relative loudness as your own track and then take a low pass filter and bring that down from anywhere between 100 Hertz to 150 Hertz and then see how yours Compares in terms of perceived loudness and that way you'll be able to have a nice Benchmark as you continue missing the other elements in your track also using a spectrum analyzer can be a nice visual aid alright so I finished off this Loop here I've just added a kick some top blue percussion and some effects just to make it seem like it's a more fully fleshed out track I've added in my own reference track here and I've balanced them roughly at the same perceived loudness and that way it's going to give us a good indication of how much sub we are lacking or maybe if we have too much what I'm going to do here is I put an EQ on this and I have low pass to 100 Hertz and I'm going to do the same thing on my master but I'll show you the track here first and then we're going to take a look at on our Spectrum analyzer roughly where we're sitting and we're going to use our ears as well [Music] nice and groovy I like the housing stuff and now let's take a look at our Mass our reference track and I'm going to apply this filter now to our track as well and so we can see on our Spectrum analyzer that we're sitting roughly around negative 12 just peaking a little bit above and let's take a look at our own track here with that solo off and so you can see realistically these are the notes that are hitting the ones that are peaking above are because of the kick being played on top of the sub bass right now and so we got a little bit of room to go we can bring up the sub bass just a little bit so let's go into our sub Channel and just increase the volume a little bit and see what that gets us I want to be trying to hit roughly before negative 12 as well and it seems that we can get just there maybe minus 0.5 minus one we'll keep that minus one and let's listen back to our reference [Music] yeah roughly the same balance level now and that is a great way to start because if you have too much Sub in your track before you even start getting into the mixing and mastering process you're going to be making a lot of decisions based off of that imbalance and that's just going to lead you down a rabbit hole and a ripple effect of not making the right balance choices or EQ moves in your mix step two side chaining so to ensure that your sub bass and your Kick Drum don't clash in the mix you're going to want to use sidechain compression so this technique involves triggering a compressor on the sub Bass with the kick drum and what this does is it creates a pumping effect which allows the kick drum to cut through the mix without being overpowered by the sub bass you can do this with Ableton stock compressor but I also like to use either shaper box 3 or Kickstart 2. alright so now that we have a relative volume balance in our mix in terms of our sub and everything else we need to get our kick punching through and playing really nicely with our kick because a kicking base relationship is so important in music and if you don't have that then there's nothing really driving the track so let's get a side chain compressor on our groups so that we can let that kick punch through and not have it fight with the bass so the way I like to do that in Ableton is by using a separate channel to as our side chain trigger and I use a short sample and this is what that sample sounds like foreign and so now that I have that that's what's going to be triggering our sidechain compression so I'm going to grab ableton's stock compressor here and this Arrow will open up the sidechain tab for you and you turn that on I have selected my side chain trigger as the Channel and nothing is happening right now but as I bring down the threshold that kick starts to come through and we start to get a pumping effect this is too much of course and you want to get a decent Rhythm pump going but you don't want it to just overpower everything so you want to be somewhat transparent but you really still want that kick to punch through and so now that I have that set to a relative level that I like I'm actually going to copy this over to my effects as well because I like to let my kick punch through on everything and I just want it to duck everything else and not have anything else fight with it so [Music] it can be a little more heavy-handed with that and now that we have our kick in our sub playing together let's take a look back at our Master Channel and see what our levels are looking like because before we were peaking over negative 12 and so let's take a look here as you can see now that bump that we had there originally is gone and we have a little bit of room to push the sub so I'm gonna give us an extra little DB here and that's starting to really feel like it's nice and full the kick and bass are playing well together and that is a great way to be able to lock in that kick and base relationship as a pro tip if you want to have more individual control over your side chain you can have a multi-band side chain and I've actually created one in Ableton already and the way I like to set this one is with using multi-band Dynamics and so I've soloed the high end by creating multiple bands I've grouped these together and so here as well I have soloed the mid band and on the low band I've solo the low band and I've created some crossover points that I can use a macro knob and just delegate where I want each frequency crossover to B and then I've macroed the dry wet so I'm going to close that out so that we can forget about it and then I set my side chain trigger on each band and now I can solo each band and I have individual control over a certain Whatever frequency I set the cut off to so for myself I do like to keep it at 150 and then I can see the mid band and I'm actually going a little easier on the mid band and then on the high band we can go a little bit later and so what this does is allows your side chain to be really transparent that kick is cutting through the other elements the body of the mix and the high end isn't really getting pumped too hard it'll help you achieve something really nice and clean within the other elements in your mix without having your kick just overpower everything okay step three mono versus stereo so in most cases we want to keep our sub bass in mono and this is because the low frequencies can create phase issues when in Stereo so that can result in a really weak and inconsistent low end and we obviously don't want that so you can use a stereo Winder on the higher frequencies of your bass line but keep the sub bass in mono alright finally step four eq'ing the last little bit of EQ that I would like to do is going to be on the master Channel and that's because I still feel like there is a little bit of low mud on the sides that I would like to clean up and what that's going to do is it's going to make our base feel a little more tight a little more defined and it's going to let our high end on the sides shine a little brighter and and Sparkle a little bit because now we don't have that low end eating up all that Headroom and muffling things so the way that we do that is by utilizing mid-side EQ and so I have Ableton stock EQ here and if you click this tab you can select Ms which is stands for mid-side mode and so now I have individual control over the mono signal and individual control over the side signal or the side Channel and what I want to do is I want to grab this high pass filter and I'm going to start to bring it up until I feel like that mud is gone so let's play the track [Applause] [Music] that's a little too much and I find that the sweet spot for myself is anywhere between 90 and 200 Hertz because you get to decide ultimately how warm something sounds on the sides but I usually end up finding my own Sweet Spot somewhere in between 150 and 120 hertz so I think 135 is great and we're gonna leave it there if there's one last added little bit of Sparkle that we can do is maybe adding a bit of a shelf here to the high end so I'll tell you that oh there we go bass is sounding nice and tight and focused while our high end is nice and bright and I'm going to open up ozone just to grab the imager here and solo our low end so that we can see the difference that we are making and so you see this is our low end currently we're sitting at 135 Hertz and it's nice and focused in the middle if I take the EQ off you can see it's a little more Bassy a little more Dancy if you want to call it that and this just tightens it up nicely so that now we have a really nice and defined low end in the Middle where all the punch and all the power is and we can let our side information just sparkle and shine bright and sound really nice and big and that's it all right so that's it for mastering your low end so we've covered how to mix your sub bass using volume balancing mono versus stereo saturation and Distortion using sidechain compression and doing some final EQ moves and by following these tips you'll be able to create a really solid low end for your track every time so thank you so much for watching and I'll see you guys again in the next video a massive thanks and welcome again to Nick for putting together such an awesome video and let us know did you find this useful if so which part of it was particularly new to you this is the kind of detail we go into in the accelerator program each and every week where we help our students get signed to some of the world's biggest labels and make truly professional sounding dance music if you want to work with us you can check out the details below now getting your sub bass dialed in is really important how do you pick the right bass sound in the first place well I put together the ultimate guide on that in this video here it's going to help you pick just the right base for your track and genre and then I'm going to show you how to pick the perfect kick drum to work with it thank you so much for watching and I'll catch you over at that next video

Channel: EDM Tips

Views: 34,038

Keywords: how to mix kick and bass, mixing low end, kick and bass mixing, how to mix bass, mixdown tutorial, mixing kick and bass, low end mix tutorial, punchy bass, mixing bass, mixing bass tutorial, clarity for kick and bass, kick and bass mixing trick, professional mixdown, low end mixing, low end mixing hack, mixing bass and kick, bass mixing, mixing low end trick, tonal balance control, kick and bass relationship, secret to a perfect low end, mixing tutorial, EDM Tips

Id: GG8_E3x2pqo

Length: 26min 39sec (1599 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 09 2023