I watched a video about 5 years ago on J Dilla and how he would make his kick and bass work and the guys advice was if you have a super low 808 style kick then your bass needs to sit primarily above it and if your kick is more of a low mid knocking sort of sound your bass should be more subby and sit below the kick. That simple tip made all my productions sound so much better, plus it helps to narrow down your near infinite choices during the production phase. So simple, but such a brilliant tip!

this was great man! thanks for sharing! and appreciate the humble approach...

Thanks a lot, your tips are always very useful!

Room treatment and monitoring is no.1. Our control room is very small, but there's almost a full meter of rockwool behind our speakers and due to the resonances in the small room, we have a tuned helmholtz resonator to compensate for that, and some skyline diffusers on the back wall. Now our room is flat within +-3db. After that we have Genelec's GLM system and on top of that Sonarworks to smooth out the rest. Everything is carefully calculated just so we have a single spot in the room where we can work on. It would be insane to put this much effort and money into all of this, unless it made a huge difference on how we mix and master.

That was so helpful. Especially the last couple of points.

Very good Video about the bass-struggle. Sometimes I still wish there were a magical trikc to it but its all hard work and listening...

Hey man, really enjoyed this video and your great tips! Thanks for sharing

loved this dude please keep doing these informative episodes! WE out here producing, mixing and mastering everyday. ALso keep the dance music tips coming. Your boi Strider

Excellent vid. Good timing for me also, just bought a Sub (after 10 years of producing) and some basstraps. Finally feeling confident

Thanks for this clear video, way better to me than your last reviews and snake oils. Good analyzers are span and manalyzer, both are free and very flexible. A comparison plugin like reference or mcompare are also very handy.

Thank you for making this video. I learn a lot from you.

Monitoring, Monintoring, Monitoring! Great video!I would like to mention that Sidechained compression tends to mess up with phase alignment. For ducking purposes there is a plugin called Duck from Devious Machine that has a built-in crossover filter that allows you to precisely duck down those overlapping bass freqs.

Sidechaining a multiband compressor rather than a normal/broadband compressor makes so much sense! Not sure why I’ve never thought of it. Great tip!

Great vid as always!

Thanks for this vid! found it really useful :D

i treated my room with rockwool, to the best of my knowledge and research, installed sonarworks software, tuned the room , i have 3 sets of monitors, one set with a subwoofer, yamaha hs8, mixcubes and headphones and check in the car, after several years of doing this im finally getting the bass right in the mix, getting used to my monitors helps

Buenísima tu explicación!! Gracias

Awesome tutorial, thanks a lot! I'm a bit surprised you didn't mention headphones though. They are really helpful to get the low end under control and even great ones are a lot cheaper than monitors

Excellent tips and tricks.

You nailed it!

Very nice indeed thanks. As for a reference track for bass. I like to use Kaskade - I remember

Using an analog sound source or a Simulation of that in production helpsss a lot achieving subby basslines. So number 1 tip is to get the tone right

Thanks a lot for your videos !

You are a born god of sound! Thank you!

go on with those videos! your experienced knowledge is massive, so keep up the good teaching! I used the "Bass Rider" from waves for a while, a nice automated bass leveler. but since I own FabFilter MB, its all not necessary anymore :-)

Thanks! Very useful!

I am glad you got down to basics!!!!

I find that everyone seems to have trouble with their low end. Yes monitoring has a lot to do with "What You Are Hearing" Yes A whole lot' But, what I find most often in sub frequencies that just don't cut it is "Phasing issues" So let's have a deep conversation about TIME ALIGHNMENT, PHASE, AND PHASE CORRELATION

"that's right"

This is why when people can't afford (time, money or space) to do the monitoring and sound treatments headphones and ear buds can "help." I had to buy sub-woofers for my Genelec monitors (It cost me $1600 20 years ago) because that was missing in my mix and got caught in a master shop. Also some visualization utility tools I started getting "old ears" and I have learned that I have to at the end look at my freq to make sure I didn't miss something or have someone else give a quick listening to.

For me there is some working rules : sub in mono , highpassing other instruments, bass layering, compression and monitoring on everything. Good content tho learned a lot. Thanks !

Ur just being honest i like that. And its true i been to many studio all differnt kind. I can tell by the min i walk in if the sounds gonna sound rite by the way the studio layed out.

I've been using multi-band send, side-chaining since I first learned about side-chaining. I wanted the kick and snare to be loud but, I didn't want the sub-bass to blow out the track. So I cut out as much of the sub-bass line as I could while the heavy kick and snare sounds played. It's extreme but, I'm greatful for dubstep, drumb and bass and, electro-house for making those concept so accessible.

Problem with low EQing is that everywhere in the room the responce differend, move your head 1 feet and things are differend, and there goes the room EQ measurement and correction.

I have a lot of respect for you!I'm a lot older then you but you know always where you are talking about!And make sure I know!Keep up the good work like always!

You mentioned EQ, sidechain and decay times for bass. In a whole video. Very awesome content. It is crucial in mixing to having an eye on metering but specially the dynamic range. For sound design to get a solid base is to mix in key, knowing the instrument well (as it becomes a diffrent character relative to the octave it is played on) and maybe playing not too low notes like avoiding low C anyway lol , changing it to mono, or panning just the high mids with a multiband tool, using transient designer to tame the room sound (the sustain part). Using pro q to look for masking frequency between kick and base. Looking at things from another perspective as for example kick is just a bass instrument. It should 'talk' to the bass or having that syncopation going on where the kick is the 'pick up' sound of the base. The bass is the response signal of the kick from the call and response cycle. It is not always desirable to play bass and drums together but when it is required that way i bet you need a proper glue compression that is because either one part is quiter or louder due to phase cancellation and a lot of similarity and correlation, even some EQ was applied. The masking stuff happens when kick and bass are played together but also when using aux effects like delays and reverbs because the tail of the sustained sound is going to collide with the next upcoming kick. Here sidechain compression is usually very obvious but may work we got automation also. For solid low end you shouldn't forget to take care for a filtered top end. The idea is to reserve headroom to other things, cutting bleed from high hats or overheads, other "leaky" Instrument parts which add up to a "boomy" or muddy mix. working on the sweetspot or in other terms the meat, the fundamentals. If the fundamentals of kick and bass are the same it adds up and becomes louder. The usual workflow is then either to cut out the lows of kick or bass, while saturating it at the same time so there are still more pleasing fundamentals in the upper register. Changing a bass to mono is maybe a very huge change but using mid side EQ cutting the lows on the side could make a better result. Some pros are using sound layering where they split lows and mids or even more complex, sinewaves are the simplest waveform and they are also the more stable ones, when it comes to low end. From the musical point of view some of the edits with EQ can change the tonality of the bass, here again it is important making only big changes to frequencies which are not affecting the final sound anyway like a broadband cut below 25 to 35 Hz. Knowing that at some point the speakers are not going to respond in that range Further optimizations could be to focus on key frequencies, looking for phase issues, width, splitting the sound to lows and mids, working on mids, leaving the lows as they are and so on. It is more like a compressor versus EQ kind of work. Just my few cents lol

I would recommend also to people checking the Subpac S2. You just add a subtle volume on it and it's no need to boost your bass in your mix super loud to hear it or feel it.

yeah multiband is fire, really low release times can sometimes cause really bad distortion on certain plugins so keep that in mind, love the vid

Thank you so much!

There is a very affordable plug-in by wavesfactory called ‘trackspacer’, and it can be an easy solution in a lot of cases. But more importantly, the multiband compression sidechain trick can be done with it as well, and I guess it’s a lot cheaper than fabfilter. So it’s a handy plugin ‘for dummies’ if you will, but also a very affordable option if you don’t want the plug-in to think for you and take control instead. I bought it years ago when I couldn’t figure out stuff, and now I use it in a controlled way. Oh and I’m absolutely not affiliated or anything, just a tip for musicians on a budget!

I don't have monitors or anything. I am planning to get them when I live on my own. Right now, I monitor everything through Senheizer earbuds. And their frequency response is very accurate everywhere except for the bass, which is caused by the bass not really having any room to resonate with or anything, it just straight up goes into my ears. They do produce frequencies up to 17hz. But I do have some tricks that I use for the low end. 1 of them is that I have a low pass filter set at 200hz on my monitoring fx. I enable that just to check what my low end sounds like, and I reference that with other tracks. I also like to use the VU trick: I open a VU meter on the mixbus as first plugin, then I solo the kick, and bring up the gain until it reaches halfway of the meter, then I solo the bass together with the kick, and increase the gain of the bass until the meter reaches 0. And that is going to be my starting point of the mix. Another monitoring trick I use, is I use a certain pair of Desktop speakers to monitor the amount of bass I have. It sounds crazy, but these desktop speakers are pretty shitty, and they do something very weird to the whole mix based on the bass. The more bass you have, the less you'll hear of the rest of your mix. And they also seem to distort very quickly when there's too much bass. Also I use the multiband compressor trick as well. But I set the band usually lower. I usually want to keep the fundamental of my bass intact, while I do want to make room for the kick. For example if my bass is around 80-100hz, and my kick is at 60-75hz, then I'll set the band in a way that it does reduce the 60-75 area (and below) when the kick hits, but it doesn't reduce the 80-100hz area.

15 years in music and finally building a studio and excited to finally manage lows

The hero we don't deserve!!! Love this channel

Freq analyzer is key, even in a good room...checking it at some point in the mix is like getting suggestions from a pair of golden ears. Just need to study what it looks like listening to a lot of reference tracks..then you'll have no surprises on any system you play it on.

for the sine wav low notes it's also a good idea to use volume automation

I struggled with getting a tight lowend in my mixes for years, always had a good ear on leveling the instruments and EQ'ing them to sit pretty well. The problem was usually the dynimacs jumping to an extent where it would either sound overwhelming or over compressed. Lately i've done staged Multiband compression on my master, and it solved all the problems i had in the past. Try it out!

Been producing music for over a decade and have watched and read a million things on how to deal with the low end. AND GUESS WHAT HAS WORKED THE BEST? buying a sub!

Thanks! Your absolutly correct! Monitors in a treated room! (Or you can spend the money on Kii or dutch&dutch speakers) , treating the room doesn’t have to be expensive, it’s possible to do it cheap. Search for ex: acoustic insider.

Great video. Another way to do it if you don't have a multi-band that you can side-chain, is to 1. Duplicate the bass track, 2. High pass one and low pass the other at the same frequency with a 6db octave filter, 3. Then you treat each separately. Side-chain compress just the low end of the bass to allow room for the kick while still maintaining the weight of the bass lows. 4. You can also eq the top end or add saturation to taste. This can work well in a sine wave situation as well, allowing the sine to do it's thing in the lows while adding definition via distortion in the mids and highs. I like it better with a slow release though around 400ms (song tempo dependent). I just find it to be smoother.

I thing for me its harder to deal with the low- mid/mid range, were things get muddy. If you could do a video on that

thank you!!

monitoring ( focal sm-9), measurement (span) and very important reference (to compare lowend energy)

Yes, a good question!

I have no option of doing any acoustic treatment arm so I'm mixing in headphones. I recently started taking mixing a lot more seriously than before, and what I gathered as most important for my low end is: reference tracks (a/b continuesly), spectrum analysis tools (I can recommend SPAN by Voxengo and The Seeker by Himiltungl Labs - both free. NuGen Visualizer by NuGen is awesome if you want to pay something), phase correlation meter (iZotope Imager, NuGen Visualizer again, Bx_meter) by brainworx. They all cost something I think). The thing that made the biggest difference for me was actually s(m)exoscope - a free oscilloscope from Smartelectronics. Makes you see how long your kicks sub is and how it interacts with you bassline.

Just SLAP you BASS Righ Now!

Thanks !!

I use Melda's MSpectralDynamics (side-chained to the kick) to duck the bass. Love it. Very frequency specific. Trackspacer is good too but not quite as frequency-specific as MSpectralDynamics.

Thanks man! Some people can learn everything, without taste they will do a good sound but not a great production, this is what's playing on the radios right now ;-)

Low end just mix with your eyes. Once you really know where the sub and kick sit on a frequency analyser and oscilloscope it’s a pretty easy job

Awesome!

thanks for them BLT's(bass line tips) homie!!

Thanks friend

Especially within the low frequencies super fast release (11:33) can introduce distortion, maybe it is better to be careful here and monitor that as well

tonal balance control izotope, you can use your eyes, its possible to make work a bass in a mix whit headphones. sorry my English.

Do you have any experience with the SubPac? Do you think this is a helpful tool for smaller or less treated rooms?

Good advice

Thanks!

For my sine bases I just put a limiter limiting like -0.1/-0.2 at the note that is the most quiet so the others are always at the same volume (and more limited). I don't know if it's the best solution but at least it stays at the same place instead of being moving front and back all the time

Sound advice (; Thank you!

I like a ducker rather than sidechain comp. Comp will be more when the kick is louder, but there may be more problems when it's in a quieter section. So, it's just more consistent, using ducker+blend in dry or some ducker allow to be a fixed amount of reduction each time. Omnipressor has a kind of 'range' knob which kind of gets that result when you set a ridiculous amount of ratio, then dial down to like max 2db then it always reduces 2db consistently.

8:50 Wavesfactory Trackspacer.....Its a 32 band Dynamic EQ....... You must simply check it out... As its simply brilliant.

Generally, compression to control dynamic range & sidechain , eq out extreme lows (below 25 hz) and saturate for additional harmonics. You probably have the wrong sample to begin with if you have to do much more than this.

Regarding room treatment etc, I think it's a good idea to use good headphones for that if you're on a budget or that stuff is out of reach otherwise. Sure, you won't get the full experience (that thump in your gut etc) but at least you have a better chance of hearing of what's going on. Listen to your fav music a lot on them. And then reference your fav music while mixing on your headphones.

The question of all questions .. seriously. People always complain about their Lowend because their room is untreated. And then they start to fiddle with EQ's and Compressor until they're desperate enough to lookup a KZfaq tutorial.

I agree completely. As a great mix engineer once said “you can’t mix what you can’t hear.”

Darude nailed it this time. And our host to !

Great video!!! But I have a question... Is a dynamic EQ used with sidechain not possibly more effective for that kind of dynamic bass reduction? With an EQ you have much more options to define the range of "intrusion" (e.g. Q-Factor, Filter type and more)...

Really like listening

There is no substitute for practice, experimentations, and experience. Strictly talking about Bass only....the best advice for gear, is to have several monitoring speakers and a good sub that can hit at least 25Hz. Use reference tracks. For plugins...I use Metric AB and MCompare religiously. I mentioned this before but Bassroom plus Metric AB is a great combination.

take care thank you

Thank you for sharing your wisdom with us. If you aren’t using an MB compressor in your mixes, are you animating the timeline? It sounds crazy, but I could see using something like a bass rider to record the amplitude, copy pasting to a track envelope and reversing the settings.

So for EQing out the extra loud frequencies of a sine wave sub, does the EQ need to be linear? Or is it fine just using a standard EQ?

One solution i have as my room isn't perfect, is using a decent set of studio headphones for the bass. I have a set of Beyerdynamics dt 990's as an extra monitoring solution. Hasn't let me down so far.

Very arrogant that you’re completely right!

one great way to create awesome grade sound absorbers is get a canvas or a large frame and layer towels,in a giant expiriment layered towels are one of the most sound asborbing materials there is,. egg crates, Oillows, Bedding, sound proofing etc. Towels do Magic! serious In a normal frame you can fit like 8 layers 6, at least, and then you cancolor to your desire and they look pretty cool too

Man , you always have these funny coincidents in the track you're working on. The track thinks you're right @9:18 Hahah

Great Video. Why don't you usw the dynamic eq from the fabfilter eq with the sidechain instand of the multiband? I think you can Grab the fq more easier?

tell em what its all about Van Der Shmoot....haha. Love your channel! Thanks for all you do.

used to do it live with ducking gate on bass side-chained to kick

Hey man, how do you feel about plugins like volumeshaper (cableguys) for the use of side chaining, any good in your opinion? Thanks for the content!

Huh. Interesting. I'll definitely be trying the demo! It appears they offer 20 minutes before restarting the plugin. I think that's a fair amount of time to tinker with some sounds to see if it's right for me. Kudos to them for that!

Good advice, it's quite genre specific though. I work on a lot of more ambient music mainly with analogue hardware, sometimes with no drums at all which presents slightly different issues for the bass. If I had to give advice to people working with less than optimal monitoring it would be never boost the bass below about 200 hz. Cut anything below about 25 hz. Unless you are mixing for a massive club system that can reproduce really low bass then most domestic systems can not reproduce bass below about 35hz accurately anyway (or at all!).

Perfect

Teach me senpai. All your teachings!

For me, tonal balance control is the way to go. Ever since I started analyzing through this VST, my production sounds a lot better throughout all the devices.

Surfer Eq is really useful for those sine wave basses.

nice video man . monitoring is #1 priority , not just for bass freqs. as far as low end it's all about the feel for me. my stomach and chest tell me all i need to know much more than the eyes. p.s this particular track needs no s/c it makes the track edm'ish . my 2c :D

should i use the MB compressor in mono or stereo for the kickbass group? been using in mono, thanks for the info, amazing channel!

Great vid! imvho Below 40hz...in a bad room...use SPAN....and Trackspacer does all the above in seconds. Like the WSS review :-) I have a farily flat shaker bolted into my chair...feeling it is very clear esp transients. Dan Worral has a great SPAN tut as well.

What about trackspacer in sideshin trick is the same,???!! ...thanks