Hi all! I'm still just learning various skills in working with music and don't have much experience. Please give me some advice on the correct approach to bass mixing? I would like to find some solution to improve the sound. Guys, who knows how to layer bass for EDM?

 

I would recommend you check out the Protoculture video on the topic. He uses Cubase in it, but very little of it is really Cubase specific. The title is Sonic Academy - Mixing Kick and Bass with Protoculture - Cubase. It is a well put together tutorial, even if it is a few years old. There are tons of them, but it is one of the more focused on just edm kick drum and bassline mixing.

He uses Vengeance Scope plugin quite a bit in that video. Here is the free version from Computer Music Magazine, both PC and Mac. It's the same thing. They just took it off the VPS website.
https://s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/...001/CMU216/Studio/Vengeance_-_Sound_Scope.zip

 

Last edited: May 4, 2024

I'll try to study this tutorial. Many thanks!

 

just kidding, don't do it.

 

Bass instruments occupy the low-frequency range (below 250 Hz). Our ears are less sensitive to these frequencies, so boosting too much can lead to a muddy mix. Be mindful of this area and focus on carving space for the bass rather than just adding volume. Use EQ (equalization) to shape the bass tone. A high-pass filter can be used to remove unwanted rumble below a certain frequency (typically around 30-35 Hz). And you need to scoop out some low mids (around 200-400 Hz) to avoid clashing with the kick drum. You can use plugins such as Wavesfactory Trackspacer, Soothe, etc.

 

you can cut below 30 if you want. So people will cut below 25. Every track. You can even save that setting as part of your default EQ. If you are using a natural acoustic style bass and kick, you do not need as steep a rolloff. -24dB is ok. For synthetic kick/basses, you should use a higher rolloff if your eq will do it. Doesn't need to be a brickwall but can be very close to that. -48dB is common. Mono everything under 100hz. You can use something like Sonalksis Stereo Tool to do that, as an example. You want to use a correlation meter to check. The trick in the Protoculture tutorial using Kick2 phase alignment is a good one. He suggests using the Voxengo PHA-979 for easy phase alignment. It also has a correlation meter in it.

Learn how to use the test oscillator as a plugin in your DAW. You can sidechain a noise gate with it so that it reacts automatically to your kick drum if you need to fill bottom end. The 200-400hz cut is to deal with mud, and boxy-ness of your kick. But invariably, you will end up cutting at 300hz for mud almost every time.

For kick drum "synth" plugins, you want Sonic Academy Kick2, D16 Punchbox, Sonic Charge Microtonic, ISM Kikzilla and Bassizm, Roland 808 and 909, and some clones and impostors. Falcon Drum Designer is nice for sampled kicks, and so is Tal Drum. Battery can be more trouble than it is worth.

You want a nice clipper plugin so compressors are not your only options. You want an enveloper plugin like Devious Machines Duck, or Nicky Romero/Cableguys Kickstart2. You want to be able to duck your bass underneath your kick sometimes, without using a compressor. Fabfilter Pro-C2 is a very easy compressor to use to get the same ducking effect, but with compression. Learn Parallel Compression. You also want a multi-band compressor, start learning that with Fabfilter Pro-MB. You will want a saturation plugin or 10, a good starter is Soundtoys Decapitator.

The number 1 thing you can do, is practice. Eventually you will be able to really hear the differences in the things you are learning.

 

give the kick drum space in the lower frequency range and trust your ears

 

Proper bass mixing needs, proper space, if that's not plausible then use headphones with these calibration softwares is a one way to go. Use reference tracks for practicing mixing and a/b them from time to time tweaking at the same time. Other ones already explained a lot for the starting parameters...
And last but not least, use different outputs for testing, ie. car, P.A system, earbuds, speakers..
The all magic about music is about experiencing and sometimes even breaking the rules.
If it sounds good for you, then it sounds good

 

add a flanger and 3 delays and then use a limiter and then send that to a pitch correction VST

 

Julia you are ugly.

 

A pro engineer taught me this trick. Use 2 channels for bass. One channel for the low end and the 2nd channel for harmonics. Then blend them according to taste.
There are tons of harmonic or saturation software out there.

 

It sounds so simple and cool at the same time! Thank you!

 

I agree, only practice and constant search for solutions is the key to success in music. The Soundtoys Decapitator is really affordable and a great solution, I've already looked into it. Yesterday I found an interesting forum Faqaudio https://faqaudio.com/ with a section on music production with videos and discussions about bass mixing and I also found this video helpful. I certainly understand that almost everyone here is a cool music production professional who is well versed in audio effects, but maybe this will also be useful to someone. For example, a beginner like me who came to the forum with the goal of learning.

 

Last edited: May 7, 2024

I decided to observe this thread because there are a lot of basses being mainly electronic/sampled, electric and acoustic, and the tone and EQ serves completely different purposes depending on the style/genre, and a specific type of bass sound if electric and/or acoustic for different genres, as well as how well it was recorded.... If someone says there is only one way then they need to go back to the drawing board.

EDM (style) is a different beast again ...subs seem to be king in many cases. The people above seem to have the right leaning.

 

Last edited: May 6, 2024

really simple,
1) change your mindset to "hear" bass in higher frequency spectrum
2) don't be afraid to split bass tracks into lower and higher frequencies, and treat them differently
3) make a decision on relation of bass and kick and stick to it in a consistent mix
4) only after all above is perfect, start making low end of the bass beefier and deeper

 

The way I like to do it is just depend 50% on the monitors/speakers (or headphones if that's your thing) that I understand its full ability, well, its weaknesses and another 50% is metering on the DAW. Learn that tools inside out, listen to all the good music out there and listen/focus and try to remember how the speaker reproduced the bass sound and how those meters and hitting almost similar spot. After a while you'll find a common ground between all them songs and you'll start to understand whether your monitoring environment is lack or bass (most of the time this is the case) or too much bass and try to remember the metering. That's usually my first step. Then I'll try to mix and create some reference tracks.

The results of those mixes, among them there are tracks with not enough bass, or too big bass etc. Keep that tracks for benchmark reference so everytime you're producing or mixing, you can check what's happening on the bass of the song compared to the those track (with plugin like Metric AB) since now you have tracks with not enough bass and over the top bass and try your best to stay in between those everytime you are referencing. Make sure to 100% confirm this by playing those reference tracks on another system like commercial home HI-Fi, car or maybe you friend's studio first.

I use the same method for sibilances and high-end frequency management. You can learn all those tips and tricks and most of them will work but if you don't understand your monitoring environment, it will only work in your room and sounds funky on other listening environment. Learn metering, phase relations, low end dynamics, frequency distribution and masking, low frequency fundamental and harmonics and how to manipulate them (there's this thing called "missing fundamental" which is really cool, also try to understand how Waves RBass works), how human ears perceive low end and the psycho-acoustic science behind it, loudness curve and sound pressure level, how to create space for bass elements (kick, sub, 808, mid bass, low bass etc) so they'll work together. It will take some time. Once you understand the concept, you'll just need a sine wave and maybe some distortion plugin to make a kick ass bass sound for EDM that will sound good on every listening environment.

IMO 70% of getting a good bass sound that will bang on every listening environment is all about getting the technical/science part of it right. The other 30% is a good mastering engineer.

https://www.youtube.com/@BigZMusic <-- he's got all sort of cool creative stuff for EDM bass layering. Search for it on his channel.

 

I am very grateful to you guys for such active help!

 

I think you are 100% right!

 

This is a also a common method when mixing bass guitars.
People usually split it into 2-3 Channels ( Sub bass, Harmonics , Mid range sound ).
When it comes to controlling bass you probably can make use of EQ and Compression (Especially MB Compression).
Often people tend to cut the mid range between 300-800 Hz out.
But this also depends heavily on the style and genre of your bass sound

 

Now I choose simpler paths in mixing because I am learning this art. Thank you for your support!