Bass/kick relationship

[ChrisMack99]

This is one thing I've been continuously struggling with. How exactly does one keep the kick frequencies away from the bass frequencies? It seems to my, from a beginners perspective, that the bass frequency is constantly changing with the note is play, and therefore can take up anywhere from 50-300+ Hz at different times.

I've tried using EQ8 to cut the frequency that the kick peaks at out of the bass, but that never seems to work right.

Advice?

[JuanSOLO]

I prefer ducking the kick with sidechain compression. Try looking up sidechain compression in Ableton tutorials.

[Laurens48711]

It's hard, true because they are but there are a lot of possibilities:

You can use the kick in a sidechain to a compressor on the bass channel, it temporarily tempers the volume of the bass when you hit a kick but you might fiddle a lot with the controls to keep it from pumping and to be very intrusive.

When you don't want that or not at all just keep an eye on overtones or harmonics since they determine the audibility of an instrument more then the bass tones so fiddle with an eq in that region let's say mid to upper mid.

If you want a steady basstone like from a keyboard or synth, make it a different shape then the tones in your kick, the ground frequency will be the same but the overtones or harmonics make it identifiable.

And there are more.

[mp3]

You'll probably have to cut frequencies from both sounds. Try cutting one at 240hz and the other at 360hz (or 160 and 320). Or try a hi pass filter on one or the other. Its gonna vary depending on your exact kick and bass sound choices and sometimes you won't be able to get them to work and you'll need to swap out sounds, but those are good starting point for experimentation. Also consider flamming bass and kick notes (in other words don't lock them to the same grid so they won't trigger at the exact same instant) even a slight shift forward or backwards can sometimes work wonders for clarity.

[evon]

My favorite method is to offset them by milliseconds and this can be done quite easily in Live. However, this works well for reggae music, never tried it on other types.

This, along with the usual EQ sculpting, and of course, ducking with a side chain. I sometimes try to use all there together creatively.

[JuanSOLO]

flamming is a great tip, thanks!

[ChrisMack99]

What do you use to cut a frequency out of a sound? EQ8 doesn't seem to work...

[!STiTCH!]

I tend to shelve off low end below 60hz on my kicks and high end above 250hz on my bass tracks with eq8, this has worked for me for making room for both to be heard. Sidechaining is another option, a lil tricky if you're unfamiliar with it, but there are plenty of tutorials about that show you how its done.

[Laurens48711]

I use an analogue mixingdesk.

[simpli.cissimus]

Offset and side-chain-ducking are the best techniques !!!
Fast and effective...!

EQ is not satisfying and works mostly not 100% good.
If you boost some frequencies, you change the sounds and end up with
something that might work together, but isn't what you had in mind.

It can be very helpful to avoid kick and bass playing together.
Trance and many Dance tracks are based on this simple solution.

Separate kick then bass has made more tracks then any other combination...
Just because it's simple doesn't mean your not an artist!

If I can't avoid playing the bass with the kick, I love offsetting the bass for a few ticks.
This gives both sounds space to breathe and works for me more musically then side-chain-ducking.

If you think you need ducking, then I'll suggest you to try DynEQ from Brainworx.
This plug-in can duck specified frequencies instead of the whole sound.
Also a better solution then pure full-on ducking, when you try to keep it musically natural
and it leaves the sound like it was when not in action.

I like side-chain-ducking for techno sounds, because there it has not to be naturally
and I like it more pumping then.

[Khazul]

Instead fo a dynEQ is is actually possible to construct a fairly decent fx rack to do frequency specific sidechain compression (combination of single channel EQ8 notch filter, utilty plugin for for phase reversal summing to create the internal selected frequency and other frequencies signal paths then just stick the compressor on the selected frequency path.

[BlackMath]

http://www.youtube.com/user/thesoundtut ... 52A69F2222

[docprosper]

Instead fo a dynEQ is is actually possible to construct a fairly decent fx rack to do frequency specific sidechain compression (combination of single channel EQ8 notch filter, utilty plugin for for phase reversal summing to create the internal selected frequency and other frequencies signal paths then just stick the compressor on the selected frequency path.

...and if you don't mind EQ3 coloration this can be really simple. Feed your bass into two tracks, throw EQ3 on both of them, cut the low on one and the mid/hi on the other, then duck the low track to the kick with sidechain compression. I'd actually never considered doing this (I normally duck the entire bass) but now I'm tempted to try, either by this method or Khazul's (which, although more complex, will certainly sound better). Thanks for the idea, simpli.cissimus!
-Hamish

[JuanSOLO]

Dont forget you can Right Click on EQ3 and set it to a better quality. I think the default is not high quality. Not sure if that changes it much, I never use the EQ3.

[docprosper]

did not know that... which explains all my crappy tunes