Making Drums and Bass Blend

[tone4407]

What are some tips/tricks on making your drum tracks blend with your bass?

I like to use some EQ techniques, like cutting out unneccesary frequencies and making room for each instrument.

But how about compression techniques? I've heard such things as compressing all the drums and bass together to make them sound more as one. Anyone here do this?

Any other tricks?

[stealthbalance]

[QUOTE=tone4407]
But how about compression techniques? I've heard such things as compressing all the drums and bass together to make them sound more as one. Anyone here do this?
------------------------------------------------------

ive many times sent all my drums and the bass to the same subgroup together - and had great results , sometimes not so good though.
give it a whirl.

s

[Jason Poulin]

I usually send the bass along with the kick, snare and toms to a parallel subgroup mix where I compress the living daylights out of.


And, the mixbuss comps glues it together as well.


good luck


Jason

[Smitty Boy]

1) Bass frequencies are omnidirectional. This means the lows within bass instruments contain alot of power and energy, so powerful they can control the overall output of the master mix level. Plus, your bass track should almost always be panned in the center. Panning your bass other than to the center is senseless as it will only generate a mix that is lopsided and artificially hot on one side.

2) Don't EQ your bass with the same frequencies as you used on your kicks. For example, if you boosted 40-80hz in your kick tracks, then boost around 120hz for your bass, or vice versa. It's very important to avoid accumulation of the same frequencies when dealing with lows as these tracks control the overall output level of your mix. By assigning different frequency settings to each low end track, your overall mix level can become louder.

3) Boosting a particular frequency on a kick track, calls for cutting the same frequency by the same amount on your bass track. Specifically, when boosting 80hz on a kick track, be certain to cut 80hz by the same amount on your bass track. Likewise, if you boosted 130hz on your bass track, cut by the same amount and frequency on your kick track. This secret technique will give your song a far more low end sculpted sound, allowing for a hotter overall mix.

[Methlab]

I personally don't think you should boost a bass at 120..that's a little high for me. I focus the bass at 80 and the kick at 60.

I also use sidechain compression to achieve this. That is the secret for me. That way there is a lot of bass energy in my mixes but they aren't farting out either. I like to have a lot of low end in a beat..so i make sure to let the bass do it's thing in it's hot spot, and not EQ that out.

Also good rule of thumb is my basslines are usually 10db below my kicks.

[PeeWeeGee]

Smitty Boy is right on target. In my experiences, EQ'ing and submixing your bass and kicks do further than almost anything else to get them to gel. Use a limiter to control the energy that the combined pair deliver to the overall mix.

Another IMPORTANT facet is TIMING! A lot of hip hop "pahducahs" don't spend the time to tighten up their samples to insure that the kick and the bass hit on the one. The result is a sloppy sound right out of the gate. (No pun intended.) Check out some old Jane Childs material to see what a tight bottom sounds like. The girl is a BEAST.

[Methlab]

Originally Posted by PeeWeeGee

Another IMPORTANT facet is TIMING! A lot of hip hop "pahducahs" don't spend the time to tighten up their samples to insure that the kick and the bass hit on the one. The result is a sloppy sound right out of the gate. (No pun intended.) .

yeah..you are talking about flamming and it is definitely a track killer. For me, once my parts are performed tightly and sidechained, things already start to sound glued. the rest is EQ and compression.