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Cutting the subs while mixing...
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RenderingRebel
IsraTrance Junior Member
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293
Posted : Apr 17, 2007 20:42
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Hey
I have some questions about cutting the sub on the kick and bass while mixing
I dont want to lose too much power but i also dont want to have a too muddy sound
Can somebody with some experience on this subject enlight me?
I make pretty heavy progressive with powerfull sub bass lines but lately ive been comparing my production with vibrasphere wich is kinda the same style
I notice that they have a lot of sub on the kick but less on the bass
What would be your advise, is too much bass easy to fix later on the master?
I figured that cutting too much will be a bigger problem to fix afterwards
Am i wrong?
Thanx in advance 
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Get-a-fix
Getafix
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Posted : Apr 17, 2007 20:58
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I think its best to get a balanced low end before you send it to the ME..
Usually i roll off my bass below 30hz. I try not to use too subby kicks from the beginning so i never highpass them..I think its possible to have a fat kick & bass as long as your kicks are not too long and overlap with the bass (side-chaining helps)
I guess it also depends a lot on how good your monitoring is.. http://www.soundcloud.com/getafixmusic |
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Boobytrip
IsraTrance Junior Member
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Posted : Apr 17, 2007 21:47
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Maybe it's a good idea to ask if you may be present during the mastering session. That way you'll have an opportunity to translate the sound you hear coming from your own monitors to the "real world" and you'll know exactly whether your own rig is bass shy or bass heavy.
Another trick is to compare the frequency spectrum of your track with a mastered track using a frequency analyzer and see if you are in the same ballpark. I use Voxengo Gliss Eq for this sometimes.
But spending lots of time producing and loads of money on monitors and accoustic treatment is the best way i think.
Good luck!
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kajola
Kajola
Started Topics :
74
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498
Posted : Apr 18, 2007 00:06
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hey check out the waves x-hum for cutting the low frequencies..
i put i on the groupe channel with bass and kick... works fine for me.
http://www.facebook.com/djkajola |
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RenderingRebel
IsraTrance Junior Member
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Posted : Apr 18, 2007 00:29
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Yeah, gotta hang with some people now
We're here with 3 people and we kinda learned everything from eachother but we're now to a point that we just miss some small detail on our mixes..
Guess the best way is to invite someone with some experience 
Thanx for the tip on the x-hum, gonna try that
If anyone has more thoughts on this please shoot
Ciao! |
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Freeflow
IsraTrance Full Member
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Posted : Apr 18, 2007 14:00
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Its just hard work with trying different lenghts of the kick and bass.. and different amplitudes, sometimes you need to fade the bass and kick to get a smooth transition between them, mould and shape the sounds.
if you want lots of subbass on the bass but still want the kick to be heard you might have to make the kick a little higher in pitch and give it a snappy attack or put a percussive sound on top of it. Everything need to be very precise. So work in audio so you can see the tail of the sounds.
This is not something you can fix by cutting or boosting in the mastering stage. But if you are happy with the lenght of the bass and kick and they sound well balanced then dont cut too much cause its better to balance in mastering.
thats my opinion
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RenderingRebel
IsraTrance Junior Member
Started Topics :
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Posted : Apr 18, 2007 14:27
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Very good tip, just gonna bounce all my basses and kick from the battery.
So the basic idea is too give em both enough room.
If that is good the master engineer can always decide how bassy the whole track has to be right? i mean with multiband compressing
Cause all masters sound different offcourse
Anyway, any of you also compress kick and bass together to give it a more tight feeling?
Dont really think i need it but just curious
Ciao, thanx for the tips! |
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PoM
IsraTrance Full Member
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Posted : Apr 18, 2007 18:57
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Quote:
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Anyway, any of you also compress kick and bass together to give it a more tight
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me never but i m sure you can,corect me if i m wrong but at the end the kick bass is compressed again a lot as beeing the louder sounds in the mix.
for the sub i think it s not a good idea to cut, it bring back some bad frequency, it s not as natural as just using -3 or - 4 db neer 30 or 40hz ,but if it s sound muddy most of the time it s cause of the speaker than can t handle low frequency, so never a good idea to cut too much i think. |
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Meta
Meta/Boomslang
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Posted : Apr 18, 2007 19:45
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Quote:
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On 2007-04-17 20:58, Get-a-fix wrote:
I think its best to get a balanced low end before you send it to the ME..
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It should definitely sound good, but as far as rolling off the low end yourself, most mastering engineers will do it themselves.
Mine told me to leave the low end alone since cutting sub-bass with a regular EQ adds phase distortion. To avoid this, doing a really low cut should only be done with a Linear Phase EQ, which you generally don't use in a regular instrument plugin chain since they add latency, they are often only in a Master Channel plug chain where latency doesn't matter.
http://soundcloud.com/aeon604
http://www.metaekstasis.com/
http://the1134.com/ |
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ess765
IsraTrance Junior Member
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Posted : Apr 18, 2007 21:24
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RenderingRebel,
Your question is often posted and I d tell you that a lot have being said here about bass and kick "understanding" each other and getting along nicely.
My first point is that making bassline to fit with kick can really be much more simple than people sometimes post or describe here. Some complex posts even scare people by also adding math’s or weird formulas to this subject. So I ll try to make my point here in a very simple way.
We can think of some possible tools to make the bass to come through the kick and vice versa by giving them different but combining elements:
1 – frequencies – kick is usually lower around 50 to 100Hz while bass goes between 100Hz and 200Hz in most of cases. That s not a universal law, but once the kick is tuned low, the bass should have a little higher pitch. It s also nice to mix a low notes bassline with a little higher tuned kick.
2 – distortion for the bass – adding distortion to the bass will make it more crispy, and its texture would be pretty much more noticeable than if it was as smooth as kick s texture (although some people add distortion to the kick as well, which I personally don t think it s needed). My favorites distortions plugins are Cubases Quadrafuzz and Izotope Trash
3 – ADSR – that’s one of the most important elements to be worked on basslines. I usually keep the bassline length at 1/16 or 1/32, keep the attack at 0, the release between 0 and a very low number, the sustain at 0 and then tweak for my favorite decay setting. Lowering decay settings will bring the pluck/attack of the bass each time more noticeable. That’s a matter of trusting your ears.
4 – Filter Cutoff – that’s when we can decide how smooth or harsh will be the texture of the original bass identity. Open it all, close it all, tweak to taste to match the kick s pump.
5 – Choosing the right and fat vsti for the bass - Albino, vb1, zta3, Cronox, are nice examples.
6 - Compression – I personally don t use compression at individual tracks such as bass and kick. I d rather group both in a group track and than apply some subtle compression. This would make them tighter. The peaks gain reduction should be really subtle.
7 - Eq – I d cut everything lower than 30 to 35 Hz from the bass. I d also cut below 20 Hz from the kick. Probably you won t be able to notice the difference on near field cheaper monitors but at professional mastering monitors it d make sense.
I use spectral analysis to be 100% sure of the kick and bass freqs. So if the main kick freqs are around 50 to 100Hz and the bass around 80 to 200Hz, I d cut very little from each other. Let s say I d cut the bass around 50 to 80Hz, -1db or –2db (all depending on the situation). Then I go to the kick and cut around 110Hz up to 200Hz (depending on the situation) with narrow enough Q settings for both.
8 - Side chain – I d tell you that my favorite way to put kick together with bass is the classic Kbbb (K=kick, b=bass) pattern. Basically you can use side chain just to be sure that the end of the bass note(4/4) won t reach the begin of the kick note(1/4). You can monitor the gain reduction through the plugin s meter.
This is a very simplist kind of vision, but I garantee that by at least considering the 8 concepts here you d reach pro results. Don t pay too much attention to setting values and examples altough they re quite realistic.
Peace.
Ess765 (aka Physical Absence)
Visit me at my project s page at:
www.myspace.com/physicalabsence
"when you think you know all the answers, life suddenly changes all the questions" |
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vipal
IsraTrance Full Member
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Posted : Apr 18, 2007 23:14
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hello ess,
could you tell a little bit more abt this?
'I use spectral analysis to be 100% sure of the kick and bass freqs'.
what you consider a good tool for this? |
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ess765
IsraTrance Junior Member
Started Topics :
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Posted : Apr 19, 2007 05:51
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Vipal,
although ears are the main tool, the frequency analisys plugins can help a lot for us to be sure exactly which freqs are fighting against each others, making the mix muddy.
There are a few plugins that could do the job, my favorite is the Voxengo s span.
I use Nuendo, and at each of the channels last insert slot, I introduce the Span plugin for the bass and for the kick. So I have details of the subs which most of the small reference monitors can t tell us once they usually begin around 45Hz for lower freqs reproduction.
A lot of people will tell you to trust only your ears, but ask them which monitors do they mix with. I d say that 9 out of ten (not to say them all) use monitors that can t reproduce real low end, and very few should have a suboofer.
So once you check the kick and the bass freqs, you ll be able to be sure if the freqs are sitting on top of each other . This way you ll find out if you re loosing definition or not. Once you have the spectrum, you can cut some freqs you don t want to repeat for the bass and for the kick as I told in the example above.
The idea is to cut from each of them the most important freqs of the other instrument once they re matching. So if your kick is around 50 to 100Hz and your bass is around 70 to 200Hz, you might cut the bass somewhere next 70 to 100Hz, cause you need to let the kick to be dominant at that region. The reverse method can be done to the kick.
This way I eq each instrument and then send them to a group channel and add a light compression to them so they get tight together.
Once you follow some of the filter/distortion settings to the bass and eq it right to the kick, you ll have a real bass coming out of the kick once the distorion brings some real important transients.
For my examples I m assuming you have chosen apropriated bass and kick samples. If you choose them wrongly since the biggining, there s nothing you can do to make it to a perfect bass and kick relationship. That means details about the tunning relationships for instance.
But keep in mind to tweak the asdr is really important as well to find the correct filter cutoff setting.
Ess765 (aka Physical Absence)
Visit me at my project s page at:
www.myspace.com/physicalabsence
"when you think you know all the answers, life suddenly changes all the questions" |
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Upavas
Upavas
Started Topics :
150
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3315
Posted : Apr 19, 2007 08:51
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Yes the bass is usually a bit higher than the kick. Make sure you don't distort it too much as that will take a lot away from the higher frequencies and that causes some fx to sound flat. Take a sidechain compressor and lean the (lightly distorted) bass against the kick over a send channel, then eq the wild frequencies out of the bass and cut it off with a one pole highpass filter ( -6db per octave...) or depending on the bass line maybe also 2 pole...around 30 to 50 hz and then apply a multiband compressor. this way your bass will sound strong throughout the mix with an audible kick (provided you have overcompressed the kick enough and don't go over the top there or it will get screwed up...) and at the same time you have dynamics free in your highmid and your highrange for your mix to sound more crisp and tight. Your envelope should have a relatively high attack, sustain around the middle and decay pretty high, your release should be very short at least that is what I found for most bass lines, not all of them though...
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Elad
Tsabeat/Sattel Battle
Started Topics :
158
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5306
Posted : Apr 19, 2007 12:07
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eq - equlaizer.
so it meens from the begining its all about your original sounds...
u should have as much sub u want , compare to realesed music. if u hear u have heaps more , know in club ur sound will be "booooo"
if u hav less , it might be "thin"
make it equal to track u like , should work just fine!
www.sattelbattle.com
http://yoavweinberg.weebly.com/ |
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RenderingRebel
IsraTrance Junior Member
Started Topics :
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Posted : Apr 19, 2007 13:06
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thanks alot for these answers!
I will get my freq analyser to see whats up I think i should let the tail of the kick there because its real sub low and cut some more sub on the bass but leave the skin.
The sound etc from my bass is just how i like it, only this is the last part of tuning it a bit more.
Also i find it hard to compare my music with other music cause its already mastered and im still mixing
Anyways, thanks for the tips all !
This gave me some more insight
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