DMusic.com | for indie musicians and fans | Free MP3 music downloads - Forums: Recording: bass guitar and kick tricks

Forums > Music: Recording

bass guitar and kick tricks

woodhead	Date: August 13, 2006 @ 8:19 PM Talking to my brother and mixing the kick and bass and it dawned on me how much I used to battle this element my self so the trick I use is Bass - Roll of the freq around 92 Hz with a low filter pass (lo cut) and boost the frequency @ Hz -Hz, this in my opinion is where the bass lives Kick - boost at around Hz, this gives the sound of drum, cut 250-300 and then give attack @ kHz ( metal kick add attack at kHz as well) When working on these two instruments remember to adjust your Q (band with) for each freq as desired. I try to keep the rest of the instruments out of the lower range if possible, try to cut off around 250 for every thing else and yes especially dist guitars, dist guitars are mean and nasty through the freq range and can cause a lot of problems in your mix. )
woodhead	Date: August 13, 2006 @ 8:20 PM Kick - boost at around Hz DOOOo that is supposed to be 65-80 HZ
WhyTheFuQ	Date: August 16, 2006 @ 2:45 PM thanks for the tips! i totally agree and will endeavour to impliment these leetnesses
leedsquietman	Date: August 16, 2006 @ 7:13 PM While this is good advice, you shouldn't think that you can do this for every song, there is no 'magic bass mix' button that fixes every track you make. It is very likely you will not be using the same kick sound and same bass sound recorded at the same level each time. Also there are some famous names such as Daniel Lanois (U2, Peter Gabriel, Bob Dylan) who like to boost 30 Khz for kick drum to produce harmonics at 60, 90, 120 Khz etc. and also remember ... cutting other frequencies also boosts frequencies the other frequencies, sometimes boosting all your frequencies causes mixes to be muddy, many engineers look at cutting freqs before boosting.
ndstgmoe	Date: March 5, 2007 @ 8:26 PM In school, I learned a great trick for getting the kick and bass guitar to cooperate with each other. Find the fundamental frequency of the bass for whatever key the song is in... you can find frequency charts for various instruments anywhere online. So if the song is in G, notch out 98 hz about 3-6 dB from the kick. This will carve out a space for the bass fundamental and they should both start to pop out in the mix... you can do this the other way around as well - cut the bass instead of the kick - just depends on what yer going for.
shadowself	Date: March 7, 2007 @ 9:40 AM On 16th Aug 2008, leedsquietman said: ... who like to boost 30 Khz for kick drum to produce harmonics at 60, 90, 120 Khz etc. I can't hear anything over about 20Khz.
leedsquietman	Date: March 7, 2007 @ 6:00 PM Yeah, it was a typo should have read 30 Hz my dog hears 20 and 30 Khz pretty good though !
05steve	Date: March 7, 2007 @ 6:47 PM Is there a "plug in" that will handle these particular tweeks? I'm running cubase sx. Or are you guys talking about hardware...if so what exactly would someone doing home recording use? hey someone has to be clued out:0
leedsquietman	Date: March 7, 2007 @ 7:52 PM just using EQ should do it, or notch filters etc.
hate9wicket	Date: March 7, 2007 @ 8:00 PM Wouldn't offsetting the pan help a bit too? Maybe have the kick at approx 11 O'clock and the bass at just shy of 1 O'clock, so they are a bit out of each other's way?
leedsquietman	Date: March 7, 2007 @ 8:31 PM I would personally never take kick from dead center, I always use it in mono dead center, it helps to stabilise the tracks. I've tried panning a bass guitar at 11:30 and doubling it with the shortest delay like 5 ms or so to 12:30 and that was OK (actually not a bad ploy for synth bass esp.), but mostly both of them go down the middle and I work out the difference with EQ and compression. Also, if you press vinyl, it works better to have all sub 120 Khz frequencies dead center as it can cause cutting problems if too much low end EQ moves off center and can cause jumpiness on the record needle for the consumer. Although to be fair, not too many people (especially outside of dance music and hip hop) are pressing vinyl these days, so it might be a moot point.
ndstgmoe	Date: March 8, 2007 @ 4:32 PM Yeah I'm with leedsquietman. Keep em in the center unless it's a way fucked up mix. We, the Pances Project, have been doing 4-track stuff with a casio beat panned at about 3:00 and a real drumbeat at 9:00, but that's a whole different animal. I know people like The Bad Plus use extremes like hardpanning bass and piano and having drums up in the middle. But that's jazz and they can do whatever they want. And I think there are a number of small town indie bands that still press 7-inch EPs here and there. But maybe they don't count...
LegoBreaks	Date: March 8, 2007 @ 7:22 PM Havn't attually applied this technique to live recordings but im sure it still applies. Anyway its called 'Ducking' this is where you control compression on the bass via the velocity of the kick. This means that every time the kick is played the bass is slightly 'ducked' leaving a small envelope for the kick to fit in. You could also try controlling a high pass on the bass as well controlled by the kick, I've personally never gotten that to work very well but im sure that worth a shot. But ducking the compression is very powerful its suttle but it cleans up the mix of your bass frequencies like magic. I stil think you can get away with a slight pan between the bass and kick very slight thou. bass frequencies are naturally omnidirectional so panning it to far is just going to lose the overall volumne, but a very very slight ammount will clean stuff up a little. If you can tune the kick drum to be root note of the key of the song thats very powerful as well that will phatten up the mix as you won't have to much interference around your bass frequencies.
ndstgmoe	Date: March 8, 2007 @ 8:12 PM I think ducking is also referred to as a sidechain. (I've never heard the term "ducking" before but it seems like they're the same thing). There are some compression plugins (Dynamics - comes with DP) that have inputs that you can send another track to, so whenever that track is playing, it activates the compression on another track. I've heard of people taking a cloned vocal track and using this technique as a de-esser - compressing sibilance ONLY when it occurs as opposed to cutting those frequencies for the entire length of the song. I think it is probably an incredibly useful tool, but I haven't really experimented with it much. And yes, panning a smidgen might clean up the drums/bass a bit, but you have to be careful not to lose the stereo image of the drums... if that kind of thing matters.