How to MIX BASS and KICK DRUM

today I'm gonna answer a question that someone asked me a few weeks ago about mixing bass and kick drum so I'm gonna show you how to mix bass and kick drum hey what's going on my friend the Chris here from mixdown online now Before we jump in the low-end if you're new here on the channel subscribe to the channel click that notification bell so you don't miss anything and of course for all of you share and like this video ok now let's talk about bass and kick drum this is something very confusing for a lot of people so like I was saying someone sent me a question a few weeks ago asking me how I mix my bass and kick drum so they can fit well together and I can end up with a tight low end so what I'm gonna do in this video is I'm gonna show you what I did on my last mix when it comes to you when it comes to bass and kick drum it's not very complicated the way I see things is very simple when it comes to kicking bass but first something very important and this is my number one tip if you want to know how to mix kick and bass you need to hear what's happening down there in the low end of this frequency spectrum and this is something very important and this is a problem that a lot of people have is a bad room to mix in or a bad monitoring system but I mainly bad acoustics to be honest with you I see that a lot so it is gonna be hard for you to listen to what's happening in the low frequency spectrum if you don't hear that low-end properly having a good pair of monitors that will translate well in the low-end is very important and of course a minimum of acoustic treatment in your room especially if you're mixing in a small room bass frequencies take a lot of space physically speaking so if you're mixing in a small room like a lot of people do you're gonna end up with some bass frequency problems if you don't have any room acoustic treatments ok so this is something to consider also something that can help ok that's another option that you have in front of you is to mix in headphones when it comes to mixing the low-end headphones they work pretty well like for example I have a pair of bear dynamic DT 770 which are very good very cheap you know they're not too expensive I think and get a pair for around 200 bucks u.s. I've been mixing with those headphones for the past 12 years you know and once you have a minimum of treatment in your room you can also work with a system like reference for from sonar works which is a very cool software that can be used to get a flatter response out of your speakers now when it comes to mix bass and kick I try to keep things very simple I don't overthink stuff okay we're also just gonna get crazy and there's no use anyways because they have two different rolls a kick drum is a bit more punchy it has a lot of transients opposed to a base that has way more sustain so it has a different role even if they dwell in the same frequency range okay so this is why I see them as working together without having to fight together all the time sometimes it will happen that you're gonna find a lot of energy in the same frequencies with the kick in the bass and there's some things you can do to correct that but most of the time I don't need to do much when it comes to mixing bass and kick together actually my good friend joel Gilder produced a video on the same topic a couple months ago and we kind of see things the same way so if you want to check that view it's a pretty good one actually I'm gonna leave the link on top or in the description down below so I'm gonna stop talking I'm gonna jump into my last mix into my session and I'm gonna show you what I did on this mix and one hat what happened with my kick and my bass okay so let's have a quick listen to start with of the mix we're gonna work on [Music] so before we look at the kick in the bass something that I also do okay before before anything else is I evaluate what needs to be high past as far as track goes I'm not gonna high-pass all the tracks except kick and bass but I will do so on some of the tracks that I think are going to be a problem for example if we listen to that guitar okay so what I did on this guitar I had a high-pass filter up to 120 Hertz okay so it doesn't change the tone of the guitar but I'm just getting rid of the low information the low-end information even if I don't hear it much it's gonna add up the further I go in the mix by adding compression on individual tracks and also on instrument buses and the mix bus at some point that low-end information is gonna add up and that can be problematic for my mix so I pass that that track for example I did the same on some pads also where I did added a high-pass filter to clear up the low-end um so again I don't do that on all the tracks but I do on on some tracks that I think might be a problem so that helps to clear up the low-end so my kick and bass can have more space to live in now high passing tracks can be a bit tricky so I'm gonna probably do a video on that in the near future to how to do properly high pass a track and the the problems that can occur when high passing too much okay so I'm this is gonna be for another video okay now let's look at the kick drum so if we look at the kick and the bass and K I'm just gonna have you listen to what I have as far as the kick goes to start with so this is a combination of my acoustic kick drum which is not very predominant in my mix and a sample which is more up front in K this is the sample now the only thing that I have on that sample is a knee cue but that's it you know I have a bit of high-mid that I added just to get a bit more snap and definition out of that kick drum and this is something that I like to do if aren't my kick drum to stand out in the mix so just adding some high mids is gonna do the trick and also I have a bit of a cut at 100 Hertz and then I have a high-pass filter very low with a 12 DB per octave slope which is not that high at 26 Hertz okay just to get a bit of control over the low low end of the spectrum and then I also have a sub kick and this is what my sub kick sounds like alright what I did on this sub kick it's actually a sample that I recorded myself years ago you can actually download it for free if you want to I'm gonna leave the link on top I have a our bass that I added on that sample that sub key example just to beef up these 60 Hertz frequency and then I also have a bit of an EQ just to filter out the top okay with a low pass filter and also a tiny high-pass filter up to 25 Hertz just to tighten up the low end and this is how it sounds like when I add that to my sample now I just beefed up my kick drum which is quite nice now if I look at the base now in this case for this part of the song the base is a synth bass it's actually a combination of three sin bases okay first I have the main one now this base is very rhythmic so what I did as far as the EQ goes is I focused more on the mids and the high mid engages to to have that base to stand out in the mix and to be able to to have a better translation on smaller speakers and this is something like that I do a lot with bass boosting the 1k region so uh so the bass is gonna translate better on small speakers and also I added a high-pass filter up to 80 Hertz okay which is a bit high for a bass but in this case it's gonna work well because you're gonna see why I added also this this arp bass which is a bit more stereo it's more of an effect than anything else and also i have a more sustained bass line now the role of this sustained baseline is to take care of the low end of the spectrum opposed to my rhythmic bass which is a bit more mid okay and when you blend both together you have like that complete bass sound that works very well on this mix and this is what it sounds like [Music] okay now we're gonna listen to that synth bass again okay that low note deep bass I call it and look at the spectrum analyzer okay now there's a lot of energy in the 60 Hertz region okay with that base and this is the same as my sub kick so my kick drum also has a lot of energy going on at around the same frequencies but still they work well together because the kick drum is way more punchy opposed to the bass that is and it's a sustained sound so they have different roles and they complement each other pretty well so I'm gonna have you listen to the bass and the kick at the same time [Music] all right so now let's listen in the context of the mix because this is what's important by themselves it doesn't sound super perfect to be honest but within the context of the mix it's something completely different so let's have a listen [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so there you go this is how I mixed my kick and my base on this mix now there's other techniques that I can use when it comes to you to mix bass and kick but I mainly start with this this is always my starting point just to keep things simple and by realizing that kick and bass are friends okay they work well together so they're not always fighting but again if they fight there's some techniques that you can use to fix that up for example side-chaining the bass and the kick that works well also I'm gonna actually do a video on that in the future I don't use side-chaining often okay but in EDM it's actually pretty useful so anyways that is gonna be for another video but for today's video this is how I mixed my kick and my bass on this song so I hope that was helpful if so share and like this video and again if you have any questions or comments you can leave everything down below and don't forget to subscribe if you're new here on the channel alright my friend I'm gonna see you next time have a nice one [Music]

Channel: Chris Selim - Mixdown Online

Views: 29,754

Rating: 4.8669949 out of 5

Keywords: audio, audio engineering, audio mixing, chris selim, cubase, cubase 9, cubase pro, home recording, home studio, home studio mixing, home studios, mixdown, mixdown online, mixing, mixing audio, mixing tip, mixing tutorials, music, recording audio, steinberg, the recording revolution, tips, tutorial

Id: yIXR7VnPqMM

Length: 13min 20sec (800 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 19 2019