Why your low end sounds amateur (maybe)

hey everyone this is oscar from underdog and today i want us to learn to listen to the low end of our track as you know all sounds have high frequencies mid frequencies and low frequencies and so today we're going to be listening specifically to this track and we're going to zoom in on the lowest frequencies and so now i'd like you to tell me which version of the low end do you like the most i'll give you three variations on the same idea here's variation one here's variation two and here's variation number three so which of these low ends do you think works best i'll give you my answer to the question in a moment but let's talk for a second about how we're listening to this sound you'll notice that i put a filter on the entire song specifically one called a low pass filter so i'm only hearing the lowest frequencies and i call this the cloak room check the cloak room check is what the music sounds like when you're in the club and you're on the other side of the wall you're queuing for the cloak room to put your jacket in in a french they call it the vestiae as well and while you're standing there what you hear is [Music] right you hear all the lowest frequencies of the music and so if you put a filter like this as the absolute last thing on your signal chain you get a little bit of an impression of what people are going to hear when you amplify your music through a big club system so you really get to zoom in on that low end energy otherwise it can be a bit tricky because you're getting distracted by the mid frequencies which can really influence your perception of what's going on in the mix so sometimes it's better to really just focus on the part that you're trying to listen to so when i'm listening to a mix like this in its entirety i can find it hard to really focus on the low end so instead i'll put a filter on it and then it suddenly sounds like this much clearer [Music] so let's take a look at those three low ends together low end number one what are we hearing well we're hearing a very strong kick drum with not much else in fact the bass line that's playing in the main song isn't really present in the low end it seems like there's almost just a kick drum i would argue that this low end sounds a little bit too simple maybe maybe a little bit on the amateur side because sometimes what people do when they just start making music is they put some kick drums in their timeline and then they don't think further about the groove in the low end or sculpting their low end they only just put the kick drums and that's kind of what this sounds like or you could maybe say that this has too much separation in the low end the elements are too separated there's no masking going on the elements simply don't blend together now let's listen next to low end number three i once made a track just like this and i tried playing this in the dj sets let me tell you it does not work what happens is that the low end the big subwoofers of the club they amplify this thing this thing we're hearing right now super loud and it's not a pleasant experience because there's no clear storytelling here everything is stepping on everything's tail so there's this enormous bass which is muffling the kick the kick is barely audible and so as an audience there's no rhythm in this part there's no way of really telling how you should be dancing because everything just feels like one big soup so there's no clear sense of prioritization and no clear groove in the low end because everything is stepping out everything too much masking not enough separation so now let's listen to base number two the golden medium the goldilocks bass what are we hearing here well we're hearing a clear prioritization of the kick the kick is obviously the thing that has the most attention right here but it is complemented by a base that is not too far off in terms of volume but still far enough that there's a clear separation of the two there's a little bit of overlap going on in the kick in the base but it's not problematic we don't need to be perfect or too neurotic about this if you take this musical shape and you amplify it on a club sound system probably you're going to end up with a pretty good result so the key ingredients here are clear priorities and that it grooves as a whole it's telling a clear story that people can follow when you take all of the elements into accounts together so next let's look at the tools that you need to achieve something like this and spoiler alert it's way simpler than you might think [Music] all right i'm not even a little bit in the frame all right all right so when we think of a bass sound let's play one like for instance or down here cool tasty juicy bass sound right a bass sound has both low frequencies and mid frequencies and sometimes even high frequencies so just the fact that it's a bass sound doesn't mean that it only has low frequencies so what does that really mean well that means that when we look on the spectrum analyzer let's go again on the spectrum analyzer we see that we have subs and mids and we can balance those individually we don't need to treat this entire thing as one sound necessarily what we can do is we can make sure that the mid frequencies of this sound are balanced compared to the other mid frequencies and that the low frequencies of the sound are balanced compared to the low frequencies of all the other sounds and so what are the tools that we have to do that well it's way simpler than you might think in fact the equalizer that's inside of your doll has something called shelf filters and if you program two shelf filters one for the low end and one for the mid of your sound you can set the volume of those parts individually to be better balanced with the other elements that are playing at that frequency so what you do is wait let me get into the doll so what you would do is quite simply you would put a cloak room check um your master channel play all the elements that are supposed to exist in your low end and then use shelving filters to make sure that they all have the right priority compared to each other that they all exist but that the right one is in charge at the right time for example in this example i would solo the kick leave it where it is because that's going to be my reference around which i built the other elements then i would solo in the base and with the cloakroom check enabled i would use a shelving filter to find the right balance compared to my kick for this bass sound once i'm pretty happy with where this is at i can also go to my mid elements and use a shelving filter to balance the base compared to my mid elements and there you have it it doesn't have to be more complicated than that you don't need to do complicated things like multiband processing or parallel processing or any of the more advanced nuance techniques that give you like maybe a one percent improvement because if you use this simple focused shelving technique you will get very close to a nicely balanced mix already remember that in an interesting and characterful mix masking is not your enemy there can be a little bit of masking just make sure that your elements are prioritized clearly if you can balance your low end with less processing rather than more processing the elegance and the simplicity of this is going to translate into a less forced mix down if what i said in this video feels a little bit stretched for you like it's a little bit too complicated check out my foundations of electronic music course where i take absolute beginners with zero knowledge through to the composition of their first electronic music tracks follow my personal music projects face the sun and torque on soundcloud here come show us what you did with this on the discord channel and if you're asking yourself why the bass line in this song seems like it's constantly moving and shifting compared to the kick check out this video right here that i did about poly meters because that's the secret that unlocks these kind of endlessly circulating bass lines like the video and leave a comment to show me some love and until next time stay producing be good to another and take care bye [Music]

Channel: Underdog Electronic Music School

Views: 371,878

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Id: MsT_yjp5kpI

Length: 8min 48sec (528 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 04 2022