Kick - Bass - Snare their EQ , Compression etc

[netwarrior]

Hi

there are 3 components

kick

snare

bass

kick and snare - breakbeat style

bass - full on trance (rolling style)

and the question is : which effects chains you would put on them to sound right and massive, i mean where to put compression, which components to route on single effect bus , how to eq and compress them etc.
only in terms on breakbeat production but with psy bass
i know that snare drum shoud be peacking at around 200 HZ, so i guess i should roll off everything below 200 HZ ?
and should i eleminate matching KICK frequencies from bass or vice versa?

please suggest!

[leedsquietman]

Without hearing the audio, how could anyone answer this question correctly ?

There are no magical EQ and compressor settings, everything is dependent on the programme material which will vary from track to track and audio file/sample to audio file/sample.

Maybe if you post some samples of the audio files you're using, anyone who's interested in helping can at least give you some ballpark information ...

[netwarrior]

yes i understand that, ill put some later but:

which are the common effects chains (i do not need settings) - on kick , bass and snare?

i mean - what is usually put - compressor on kick, eq on kick, then compressor and eq on bass, and then they go to bus where also compressor is? and some distortion on snare to make it punch, as well as some eq and compression to make that TICKY click at start?

[4.33]

never use fx for the sake of using them.
compressor and eq can be used to either fix problems or creatively destructing the source material, so you have to have an idea of what you are trying to achieve.

[netwarrior]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZtNNo1cqRVs

this type of sound on kick / bass / snare

im into such kind of music...

rolling psy bassline , and standart breakbeat kick and snare patterns

[oddstep]

Everything is seriously compressed... like a limiter on plus 6. eqing is totally dependant on what sounds you are using. Frinstance, if you were to sample the kick and snare off this track you wouldn't need any processing to get them to sound like the kick and snare on this track. If you like it,steal it.
the snare is pretty bright with a lot of sound between 300 - 800 hertz i'd guess.
my general rule is that you don't want two sounds at equal volume in the same place in the stereo field using the same frequency range at the same time.. because its a mess. all eq decisions follow from this.

[oddstep]

with regards to the roll off question... get rid of the frequencies that are less important to function of that sound... if you want to have a snare that is bassier than a kick then you should cut the frequencies in the kick to ensure that the speaker cones can dedicate all of their energy to playing a really loud snare that peaks at 110hz.I'd expect to have a really thin 'clicky' kick drum if I did that though... more like an 808 rimshot. To learn more about eq in live, get a sound you like and loop it. then put an eq 8 on the track and pull down the gain on 1.. so you have a v shaped eq curve, move this about and find out what happens to the sound, do the opposite, where you have a peak... eq is just about
1) getting rid of frequencies that are cluttering a mix.. by using up speaker power without adding to a track
2) boosting stuff to make certain frequencies louder.
i try to cut rather than boost and then increase the gain for that track. i use boosting to create ringing resonance like effects, rather than just to make amen snares more BLAT!

[Da hand]

Just to add, it is also a question of balance. For instance, you can't make all the sounds sound massive on their own and then expect the track to sound massive - it will be a mess. You have to make decisions of what you want where in the frequency range and then choose sounds, eq, compression depending on this. For example, if you have a kick and bass playing at the same time often, and you want a bassline that is very bottom heavy, then the kick has to be in a higher frequency range (or vise-versa - kick on bottom, bass on top). Otherwise the combination will sound weak.

It will be the same for all other sounds. For example, for a snare sound - if your kick and snare are playing at the same time and the kick is already supplying the bottom end, then you can cut the bottom end out of the snare (play them together and see how it sounds good) and focus on the mid-high end of the snare sound.

I usually find that for things to sound big, less is more. Leave room for all your elements by not overlapping too many frequencies and they will begin to sound more defined and settle better into the mix.

[oddstep]

that's totally on. Loefah's dubstep is a really strong example of this idea.

[netwarrior]

thank you, now things are getting to be more or less clear to me...

personally - i do not like to steal somebodys ready elements from tracks, as it wont help to learn for me to sound this way:) but a great tip btw:)

so i guess i have to put limiter on bus channel where my kick and bass are, so they will be heavily limited (compressed)?

[netwarrior]

[Khazul]

In the youtube sample - they probably just used right sounding samples in the first place.

[ze2be]

thank you, now things are getting to be more or less clear to me...

personally - i do not like to steal somebodys ready elements from tracks, as it wont help to learn for me to sound this way:) but a great tip btw:)

so i guess i have to put limiter on bus channel where my kick and bass are, so they will be heavily limited (compressed)?

No need to use a limiter if your sounds are fit to shape to begin with. Limiters are generaly only used to cut unwanted spikes. First, it helps a lot to have good sounds to begin with. Try to find the best sounding kick, snare and bass towards where you want to go. Makes it a lot easier to eq. With psy, its typicaly a good idea to eq the kick and bass as similare as possible. The better they melt together, like twins, the tighter the rolling groove. Also, if you want traditional 16th groove, keep the kick at exactly 1/4 beat long. If longer, it will overlap the bass. Regarding the snare, its already been covered. Might add that having these 3 elements in mono makes the mix tighter.

Duck the bass with sidechain compression from the kick. This will make shore the kick and bass are not overlaping. If it still does not sound tight, you can try to compress the bass and kick together. But you can also create kick samples that are already mixed and compressed in the first place. Saves time on you next project. Same goes with snare.

[leedsquietman]

Good tips.

Bear in mind that if you're working with sampled loops and one shots, that they have often already been compressed and processed (Eqed and the rest), so don't require much additional tailoring, this is one of the attractions of using such sound content. Just minor tweaking to fit inside your other tracks.

For unprocessed / synthesized drums, you will probably need to compress (or sometimes limit, I tend to limit the drum group/submix a tad to prevent fast transients and protect overall headroom, although I stress it's only cutting the odd peak or two, unless I'm going for a crazy sound design type effect). Sidechaining is a useful thing but just be aware that you cannot freeze/flatten any tracks sidechained in Live and if you export to mix another DAW that it's probably best to leave the sidechaining for the mixing in the 2nd DAW, otherwise you have to maintain the exact mix level relationship between kick and bass or it will sound weird, meaning any level changes have to be applied equally to both tracks.

There's a lot to be said for choosing the right sounds in the first place. It's better to just audition a kick until it fits, rather than choose one and spend hours buggering around with processing trying to force it to fit.