The biggest Kick and Bass SECRET I ever learned

So today I want to give you the key to a banging  track regardless of genre and it's all about   balancing your low end that is your kick and your  bass. If you get your kick and bass relationship   wrong it's almost impossible to create a really  good, solid well-balanced, track. Listen to these   three different examples of an idea with  different low end treatment. I'm also going   to filter out the high end, so we can really  hear the difference in that low end Okay, so the first one is a common mistake that  music producers make, which is just boosting the   low frequencies, hoping it's going to make their  track more Bassy; but as we can hear it's actually   too boomy and it's overbearing and when we try  and get the rest of our track up to that loudness   we're going to run out of Headroom and our tracks  just gonna sound muddy quiet and horrible. So, the second one is balance better in terms of  frequency but we can hear it's just like this   big long bass sound now that might sound okay  on your headphones, your studio monitors but if   you're in a big club or a festival, those giant  cones those bass speakers are just going to be   going and that's going to sound horrible because  everyone's going to lose the Groove On The Dance   Floor. There's no definition between the kick and  the bass, there's no Groove so that's another No-No. so in this one we can hear we've got a nice  balance between the kick and the bass in terms   of volumes and we've got some nice definition in  terms of the low end Groove and that's exactly   what I'm going to show you how to do today now  before we start most low end videos on YouTube   my own included make two main mistakes one  they assume people's ears know what to listen   out for which is about as useful as saying  trust your ears spoiler alert if you can't   make music that you like it means that your ears  alone can't be trusted otherwise you wouldn't be   watching this video right now so I'm going to  show you a hack to get around that problem and   the second problem one again that I'm guilty of  is trying to give one size fits all in terms of   levels and settings but again depending on which  genre you're creating what key your track is in   and a bunch of other things there isn't just a  one-size-fits-all settings or levels so with that   in mind today I do want to give you a one size  fits-all approach despite what I just said but   you'll see the difference in a couple of minutes  because this approach relies on other people's   ears okay step number one is decide what kind  of track you're writing and what kind of bass   you're using so will there be a very short sharp  staccato 16th base like in melodic techno track   will there be a long sustained re-space like in  track that's got a respace and this is really   important because you need to select a reference  track that has got a similar kind of bass and a   similar kind of vibe this means that if you're  writing a DubStep track you're measuring your   low end balance against another dubstep track  similarly if you're writing a melodic techno   track with a 16th repeating bass you want to  be measuring your low end balance against a   melodic techno reference track that's also got  a 16th repeating bass this is going to give you   the surest far away to hack using other people's  ears and getting a balance that works for your   genre of music and if you can get it in the same  key as your track that's going to make this even   easier so no more blabbing let's find out how  to do it let's hop into the door and get it done   okay so the first thing we want to do once we've  selected our reference track is to drag it into   a blank audio Channel within our DAW and there are  a few tools here that you can see we've got Sesame   and they're going to be really important in what  we're doing today so let's go through those tools   but we're just going to make sure that this is in  sync so we'll turn on our metronome and press play so we can hear it's in sync and the easiest way to  find out how to get it in sync is to just look up   the tempo of your reference track on the internet  go into the clip make sure that you warp it to the   correct Tempo and that the start marker is set  to the first transient of the track and then it   should be nicely in sync and you can actually see  it visually as well we can see here the drops are   happening on the grid there and there so we know  that's in sync fantastic now let's look at how we   set up our door to reference and get this low  end balanced so first let's look at our ghost   track or our reference track Channel you can see  here we've got two utility plugins we've got an   eq8 and then we've got this plugin called span  which is basically just a free Spectrum analyzer   and I'll link to that below this video next we  want to look at the routing so I've set this to   external out now you'll see why very shortly but  by default this would have been set to master so   it's going to go to our Master Channel but as I  say I'm going to set this to external out for now   and that's because we've got our own plugins on  our Master channel that will just be for balancing   our low end okay let's go through these plugins  one by one so first we've got a utility that's   just taking down our reference Trap by 12 decibels  and this is so we can account for the fact it's   already been mastered because if we try and use  this as a reference track against our track it's   going to sound much fatter and much louder because  it's already gone through the mastering process so   -12 is going to take this usually down to about  minus 18 luft's average volume which is roughly   what we need so it's not an exact science but  we can check that so if we load in this Julian   loudness meter again another free plug-in this  is going to measure the average volume so let's   just hit this and let's have a look we'll turn  off the metronome now it's in sync so we'll go   to the busiest part of the track and check the  average volume okay so it's a bit quieter than   that so let's put that to minus 10. and look  at this integrated excellent so it's roughly   minus 18 so that's perfect for what we're doing  today okay next one of the plugins we have here   is another utility and this is just switching  our track from stereos to Mono now the reason   that that we are doing this is because our ears  get very easily distracted especially by the   stereo field so if your ears are as stupid as  mine you basically want to make it as easy as   possible to focus on what it is that you should  be focusing on so what we're going to be doing is   we're going to be taking out the stereo field by  having said mono we're also going to be taking out   the high end because we're going to be focusing  on the low end balance and that's what these two   plugins do so we've got an eq8 after this utility  which is cutting off everything above about 110   Hertz and we basically want it to be so we can  just hear the rumble of the kick and the bass and that's usually anywhere between 110  and 130 Hertz okay and now we've got the   span which we've already touched upon  just a spectrum analyzer and then the   Uli and loudness meter which we don't  really need anymore but we'll leave   it there for shits and giggles okay so now  let's look at our track we've got our kick we've got our EQ which is kind of separate from  this this is just getting the right kick and   remember to check out that tutorial on getting  the right kick and then we've got an LFO tool   which we're going to touch upon shortly and then  we've got our bass sound which is broken into two   we've got our mid bass like this and we can just  filter out everything under about 122 Hertz and   then we've got our sub bass which is separate  from that mid bass and we've just done an EQ   the opposite way so we've got control separately  over the mid frequencies of our bass and the sub   frequencies and that's going to be very important  when it comes to balancing the bass it also allows   us to have a different degree of side chain  bounce with sidechain compression like this   a different amount for the mid and  the sub bass if we so choose [Music]   which is going to allow us to gel it with the  kick even better and then on our Master Channel   we've got this utility here which we can set  to Mono using a little keyboard shortcut and   you can set that by pressing command and  K or control and K if you're using Windows   clicking on that mono button and I set it to  be option and M because nothing else in Ableton   uses that shortcut and then we can quickly  switch our mix to be mono or stereo like so   very very handy because again we're going to be  taking out the stereo field so we can balance   the low end much more easily then we've got an  eq8 much like we do on the reference track and   then another one of the span Spectrum analyzers so  let's start balancing this kick and bass together   and get that perfect low end first thing you want  to do is make sure that your kick is peaking at   -12 DB so let's just play this on its own and we  can see it's peaky at about minus 13 and a half   so we're going to pump this up a little bit okay  there we go so it's not in the exact science but   roughly -12 is great now this is where we start  comparing it to our reference track so we've got   our reference track here I'm going to switch on  this eq8 so we're taking out everything above   108 I'm going to make sure that our roll-off is  happening in exactly the same place so that's 108   and now we can switch between the two and listen  how closely the kind of peak of that kick matches so we're listening out for the low end energy so yes this has got the bass playing as well and  ideally if your reference track has a part of it   that just has the kick playing without the bass  that's going to be easier to match your kick in   terms of levels but if you set it to -12 Peak it's  almost guaranteed to be a similar level and you   can switch between that and just listen does the  energy level of that Main bump sound comparable   that's ultimately what we're going for but as I  said our ears can't always be trusted especially   if they're not used to this kind of work yet so  what we can do is open up the span on our channel   for our reference track we can also open up the  second span that we have on our Master Channel   and now we can play our kick whilst we're  seeing what the reference track is doing   so this is the reference track kick here and  what I've done is I've set the mode of these   spans to high resolution so we can really see  the fundamental frequency of the kick which is   this one here which we can see kind of going boom  boom boom so if we compare ours our boom boom boom   is here and they're both hitting about -36 on this  scale when you open them side by side so it sounds   good and it looks kind of comparable so that is  already a great place to start our kick is kind of   in the right place and remember we're looking to  get this about 90 similar 85 90 because we haven't   done any mixing yet we haven't done any mastering  yet so it's not going to be able to sound exactly   the same as our reference track so now it's a case  of balancing the levels of the bass now what we   can do for that is with our filter still on like  so we can play our reference track with the bass switch to hours and just bring up that base like  so I'd leave the base bus at 0 DB   actually and I bring up first  the sub bass which is this one so it's kind of sounds similar so let's just have a quick check on  the span so we'll open up both spans okay I mean it looks like it's a similar shape  it's kind of and that's why it's important   that the tracks be in the same key because then  these frequencies are going to be very similar   we can see in our track here we have got more  stuff going on down here and that's because they   would have rolled off everything under about  30 Hertz more or less when they mastered this   track so we can kind of mimic that on our Master  Channel we're just going to roll off everything   under 30 Hertz as well and we can see here  now it's even closer to the reference track   and now it's a case of getting the  upper harmonics or using our mid bass   so if we listen to the reference  track even with the filter on there's a bit more energy in the low mids so we'll bring up our mid Bass it's subtle but that's off  and that's on we can hear   it kind of sounds almost the same and all we're  done in terms of mixing is adjust the levels the   comparative levels so let's turn off the EQ or at  least this upper one and we'll turn off the EQ of   our reference track and now let's see how our base  and kick is balanced so that's the reference track foreign so that's sounded pretty good already to me  and we've got some side chain compression so   the bass can bounce against the kick and kind  of slot in nicely and if we do need to adjust   the difference between the sub and the bass we can  use this reference thing technique and then we can   just adjust the volume of these separate mixer  channels now the last really important factor   I want to touch upon when it comes to balancing  the low end in your mix is the transient energy of   your kick and your bass now this is what we heard  in example two at the beginning of this video it's   when we have a very flabby bass line that's not  going to give the bass speakers any time to relax   in between each hit so if we listen to our kick  drum on its own let's just turn off our filter   we've got this LFO tool and what  I've done here is I've just made   this a shorter Kick Drum so this  is when the LFO tool is turned off and this is when it's turned on so it doesn't sound like much of a big difference   but if we look at our sub bass  as well and have a listen to it that's actually quite short and  sharp whereas if it's like this yes the side chain compression  helps when it's bouncing But   ultimately the low end is going to  end up flabby and out of control so   we'll put our filter back on and our  Master Channel and just have a listen and then we've got that effect where it's just  like one long now if you have got a sustained   base like a re-space yes your Baseline is going  to be sustained but then your Kick's gonna have   to be really short and Punchy so it doesn't  end up clashing with your bass line and again   this is where comparing to a reference track  is so important because if we listen to this   reference track we can hear the kick but we  can hear each separate 16th bass note going do where is an owls [Music]   it's a bit flabbier and that's exactly why I  put this LFO tool on the kick drum to make it   shorter and it's also why I dial in the Decay  on the sub bass to be really short and punchy and just imagine the big speakers in the club  they've got time to release in between each   pulse which is going to translate the groove of  your track to the dance floor on the big speakers   and help you avoid a horrible flabby low end and  that really is a solid foundation for a track now   like I can now go on to add the Beats I can now  go on to add whichever other sounds I want in   that track and the kick in the bass the levels  of balance they're comparable to our reference   track so I know that this is a solid foundation  for a great track so we've touched on some very   powerful techniques today for balancing your kick  and bass in the fastest possible way but if that   kick isn't the right sound or if that bass  isn't the right sound any amount of balancing   isn't going to make it into a good track now  which of those two things do you think is the   most important in fact don't bother letting me  know in the comments below I'll just tell you   the bass is the most important out of the kick in  the bass because the bass is what's going to give   the track the character and the vibe and the  tombra and then we can find a kick to match in   with that bass so I put together how to find the  perfect base for your track regardless of genre in   this video here but before you watch that if you  enjoyed this you found it useful please give it   a like and consider subscribing to my channel  for music production tips like this each and   every week thank you so much for watching  and I'll catch you over at that next video

Channel: EDM Tips

Views: 219,027

Keywords: Mixing kick and bass, kick and bass mixing, low end mixing, bass mixing, kick drum mixing, mixing low end, mixing bass and kick, how to mix bass, how to mix low end, how to mix kick and bass, low end mix tutorial, mixing low end trick, mix down tutorial, clarify for kick and bass, low end mixing hack, how to mix kick and bass house music, how to mix kick and bass properly, how to mix kick and bass frequencies, how to mix low end electronic music, low end kick mix, EDM Tips

Id: 7LvO-8lzog4

Length: 16min 50sec (1010 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 17 2023