Face the Sun - The Maze (ft. Gui Perdrix) ► open.spotify.com/track/7DgD9nNa9WX9rhDdA2cCFu Remy (mastering) ► instagram.com/remylebbos Oscar's courses ► courses.underdog.brussels

Precisely this. Not only an admission that you were wrong in both your video title and the video itself. But a demonstration of what was wrong, why we might fall into the same trap you did, and how to go about fixing it. There are great teachers. But few are ever big enough to admit their own mistakes. The few that do create trust in their students, as they're prepared to have their own beliefs and practices questioned, and admit they get it wrong themselves from time to time, and have the skills to analyse and pass on why. Great work Oscar, respect. 😀

I got more tracks signed and played when I didn’t follow technical advice and just went with with artistic vision - glad you mentioned that

gold advice as usual and the courage to practice what you preach (and come clean when you don't)!

I love this channel so much. Just drops simple things that I needed to be reminded of every now and then, other times turns me onto something completely new, and when Oscar doesn't do what he tells us to do he comes clean haha

We sometimes have to listen to what we teach , when we don't it simply comes back as a boomerang , Thanks for this reminder we all need from time to time

This video came out right on time! i was just having trouble with a project i'm working on today and i felt something wrong with it, i said let's go to youtube to rest a bit, watched this and then i figured out that the kick tail on my song was insanely long, fixed it and everything is better now, thanks a lot!

Great content. The most chilled/zen personality. Tutorials that are easy to digest. Love your stuff man, by far my favourite music production school on this thing !

I am always looking for what you have to post next on KZfaq and I am glad that I heard this. Thank you.

"Without silence, no music."

Didn’t know about this concept before now. Thanks! also “Flabby and uncontrolled” instantly reminded me of my aging body.

"Level 9000 Hearing" 😅. Always love DBZ references😁 Anyway, again fantastic tutorial Oscar! Great advice on the sub. I think keeping 'breathing room' for instruments, especially in the low ends is one of the most important lessons every music producer should know. And as always, keep up the great work!

I've always wondered how your videos always falls straight on point when I'm looking for some info on mixing tips that may help me get a better sound. You're some kind of savior for many producers out there man

Excellent, as usual. I really love the way you explain. Failing is a good part of learning well!

Man you're a genius... I have watched few videos of you and I'm fascinated how logical and coherent your videos are. I'm almost subscribing to your channel!!!

Oscar! Great stuff, (Great track also BTW). I ran in to the similar situation with a track I was working on. I was able to fix it with shorting the decay tails and used some stock plugins for perceived loudness. Perceived loudness, and Bass control is a huge thing. Training the ear is the best way to understand these situations. No samples or sounds are created equal, always EQ and the mix is everything. Cheers! Great content, as always.

Another great video. I'm improving every day with your classes. Thanks.

So much to love about this video, great job on all of it! Yes, I find myself in this situation often, just as often as I obsess over taming my decay tails on the lower end, so it's nice to get confirmation in videos like this to remind us to maintain good mixing habits. I also really love that side note about art first, tech second, especially when finding the right balance of that can often be challenging. And kudos to going "old school" for the solution. Nothing wrong with that! 🤓 Thank you!

But so important! Decay time, and also important, balance the artistic vision with the technical vision. This is what I found as a noob, even let´s say a beautiful designed arpreggio on an synthesizer, sounds great, sometimes long decay time, great, only to find it´s exactly that that cause huge problems when mixing (note, for me songs are a kind musical story). My solution now..... is keep making happy accidents with sound design....but artistic vision of a song and sound design are different.... even when creating patches, and certain sounds bring up ideas for songs! Thx for this video! Good solution is indeed to cut away in your recordings....goes against the feeling sometimes, but smart...

wow man... this is such golden info! can't believe i just learned this for free 🙏🏽🙏🏽 Thanks Oscar!

Really great video Oscar, it just shows how immense of an impact 'the devil in the details' has in your overall mix.

You could use cable guys side chain and invert it to have more control if you don’t want to do it manually like Oscar did. I do this a lot to cut the decay on the bass and kick

Wow! Huge difference there! Thanks for the tips!

The bass with short Decay tail gives more punch energy on both, the bass and the kick. With the long decay tail it lose the punch energy, sure for the woofer. Its like it want the woofer pull out from the magnet. In my opinion.

Thank you for nice advice! I will clean up my decay tails of bass

Thank you! Bass processing is such a struggle for me. And while technically I know you should keep low end tight, Im still usually not doing it enough. Then cry over very muddy mix.. Thank you, love your channel it helped me a lot in the past and present :)

Oscar, your videos are awesome! 💯

great video thanks I will do this, really appreciate you honesty so refreshing. subscribed.

So valuable Detail by editing/mixing basses/subs💯👍🏽

woooo this is a veeeery useful advice!!! I think I'll go through all my tracks with this magnifying glass. thxs for shariiiing oscar!!! youre a badass ♥

Always look forward to your videos! Thank you Oscar 🤙🏽🤙🏽

I really appreciated this video. I realised this problem about my bass and decay tails a few years ago. BUT.. I never really considered that the much snappier tails I then ended up with might still not be as snappy on larger sound systems. For this reason I’ll bear them in mind much more when creating the pre master. Great video thanks so much!!!

Such a big fan of your videos mate keep it coming!

Great stuff as always , thank you 🙏

This was so eye opening, thanks for sharing such knowledge!

J adore ce track Il est vraiment sympa Merci pour tout ces petits trucs qui nous font tous progresser

Love your videos. So good every time.

deadmau5: "Kicks don't make bass!" Me: *laughs in gabber*

what you say in the end is true. it is important to let others have a word about the music too sometimes, especially when they also work with it. that leads to better decisions in the entire production

Cool advice about making space. Interesting if you could leave this bass only for a initial drop, sacrifice some other elements, but clean it for the rest. Anyway great stuff as always!

That actually made a huge difference if one is to consider the amount of dynamic control it enabled. Also the fact that a sound might not always go totally quiet even though the applied processing is thought to do so and thus not doing its job is something I hadn't realised (always a student). I will definetly start cutting up bass manually from now on!

Good onya Oscar, great follow up lesson. Cheers mate.

The philosophy / discussion about decay tales is very interesting. I will think about it in the future :)

Great tutorial Oscar! I was curious - what about just kicks with a long decay and no bassline? I thought that is also pretty common, however then there is no separation between initial kick hit and follow-up bass part.

I've learned so much from your video's, always super informative - Thanks

Thanks - and very nice track

nice vid. Me as a harder tehcno/hc/dnb bedroom producer always struggle with this topic

just wanna say it's amazing what a nice gentle high shelf boost did for that premaster

On the example track you provide, I'd even go a step further and ensure there is zero sound coming from that bass track when the snare hits, and keep the bass silent until the following kick. Even if it's a hard mute on the 2 and 4, cutting off any decay that might still be ringing through. I think it would give the groove a bit more space. With bass frequencies like that, I operate on the philosophy that bass notes don't need much of a release tail, if any. The bass will always reverberate in the space it's played in, so abruptly cutting it off is cool. Mind you my stuff tends to have a bouncy, almost "too tight" feel. But I like it - it has become my sound.

The change sounds good...👍👍👍 ❤☮☯❤☮☯❤☮☯

This is great info. Thank you bro!

Great video, as allways! Thx for sharing this with us. Your videos really encouraged me trying to create more space in my mixes. Still trying to figure out how I can get my triplets as clean but at the same time distorted, to get my signature sound without ruining my mix

Great video and showcase. Thank you very much 🌻🌻🌻🌻

1000 mercis

You can use a transient shaper to shape the decay instead of cutting everything by hand with audio. A shape a lot my pizzicatos with a transient shaper and it’s crazy!

nice video, good advice. thanks oscar!

thanks

Thank you. Perfect. will check that closely from here. Nice one.

Hello Oscar from Underdog

Automating envelopes is very fun with decay

At least you keep your humour on the issue 😅 great video Oscar

In the absence of a good monitoring setup, do you think using an oscilloscope to check the groove at the sub range and compare it against club-established references might be good enough?

Fantastic mate, what a difference!

Yes... it's making sense...even Virtual Riot on one of his video told he made a track with the bass is uncontrolled in a huge sound system it was the mistake is enlarged which is awful so yes with you and your engineer along thank you... it's clear that everything needs in control !! Thank you Oscar sir !!!

Very cool! and honest! I'm taking this into account definitely And BTW the song is awesome!

A great illustration of real-life lessons learned!

I still don't agree with deadmau5 on kicks because it's really genre dependant

Nice tips! I would say though, that if you say: added a slightly more crispy transient on the kick (so it's clear when it hits) then rather than decaying the bass all the way out, just drop it to a smaller amount by the end of the beat that you want it to extend to. (even if it never FULLY decays) It does breathe a bit more in your "after" version, but I do feel like you can deliberately have more sustain AND have it work. (depends on the track though I guess)

Great video.

I need to say some things: 1. This master engeneer is pretty good! The master version is so much clean! 2. The song is great!! Congrats! 2. I don't know why but this song reminds me Goldeneye 007! James Bond vibes babe 😎

Great Advice very helpful

Very good advice, helps a lot 👍 Thanks

huge thanks to split technical vision and artistic one , never know what could happen when experiencing sounds just keeping the golden rules in mind and that will do

Thank you Oscar

I always edit my sub & drums in audio before mastering, its more controlable.

Kicks can be any thing :) , thanks for the video dude

nice one OZ

hey oscar , i was used to never make the bass ending (like u ) good to know , i ll gonna practice , u re definitly my kelt ableton hero ,thx

@underdog A quick fix for this could also be programming the MIDI notes shorter so that they don't ring and sustain longer than required ) or using a transient shaper to decrease the sustain on the long notes or even a volume automation at the end of the tail. What are your thoughts on this?)

Absolutely right, but what about songs with side chained legato bass sounds, where one note holds until the next one comes in, even with glide effects. There are many songs like this in melodic Techno styles. Just wondering how the bass speaker can swing back to zero in these cases.

There are heaps and heaps of tunes which have a constant sub bass and they work in a club on a loud sound system, loads of jungle and drum & bass tunes with reese basslines or sine sub bass that is constant. Maybe do a video on how to do this instead of saying not to do it?

thx , help a lot! as alwalys!

That‘s why I alway record the MIDI with the Audio. Then I can fix the sound on the synth

In the end its about what you prefer

Great video what about the decay of techno rumbles of the hardcore persuasion?

If the bass' decay is too long it also could affect the dynamic range of a track.

Quick question, why not use a stock ableton gate tweaking the attack/thresholds? Is there any particular technical reason or is doing it this way just your personal preference? Wonderful video ❤❤

Hi Oscar, great video. Did Remy have any opinions on crest factors of the different bass regions? What is considered technically good for the first three octaves? I imagine this is especially important in the first octave. Also, for your problem, instead of chopping by hand, why not use downwards expansion on the low frequencies of the bass to shorten decay times? Cheers!

Great explanation, I have a question though: I was thinking that a gate could be used on the bass to shorten/crop the tails, rather than manually chopping up the waveform, would that work instead? 🙏

Same just happened to me last week. Got that same call 😂

Great video, really love your content! But a little question here: What about techno rumbles? They normally only get sidechained. Or is there something big artists do, that I don't know about?

I see a roll off added in Ableton to your cut chunks of bass. However, I also see a little fade-in on each chunk, too. Does it hurt the sound and attack in particular? I once decided to sample drums from my synth, that was the most annoying part. Ableton added fade-ins on these samples automatically, they started to sound really weak. I think I remember, I've eventually disabled that behavior in the settings.

Hi underdog! Thanks a lot for this insight At the moment i have a track in production for a client, where i putted some moog sub 37 layers as a deep warm baseline, which actually never stops. On top there is a base drum off course sidechained. You think its a problem to arrange it like this? My subs can never rest…

A carefully applied noise gate might achieve the same, without having to manually trim each bass hit?

oscar you talk about not compromising your vision, but thats exactly what you did in this vid. in v2, the overwhelming feeling is indeed replaced by punchy club sound. but i feel like the kick needed that tiny layer from the bass to be "itself". and contradicting your engineer, i think the problem was that the v1 bass was just a tiny bit too loud overall. take 1-2 db off or maybe just raise the ratio of the side chain compression, and the kick might punch through sufficiently without losing the bass layer. or leave v2 bass as is, sample a tiny bit of the bass tail and layer it over the kick in a way that doesnt introduce phasing.

Love your videos, sad part is hiring a mastering engineer when you're not making money from your tracks (YET!) is not feasible when, on the low end, guys are charging $80 - $100 per track to be mastered. Not saying they don't deserve the money for their time and knowledge, but if I want to consistently (once a month) drop tracks I'm gonna have to master them myself until the big bucks start rolling in.

Solid advice on the bass, but how would you go about giving rest to the speaker when you have reese or rolling bass?

I love The Maze

Is it possible to achive the same result using one transient shaper? And thanks for the channel, your videos are incredible useful!

What about rumble kicks in techno? Would you maybe recommend automating the low end and cutting it just before the next kick ?