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Hey all,

So I've been working on my synthesis skills for a while now, and I feel like I'm getting a lot better at creating heavy moving midrange bass sounds. However, I'm still having trouble figuring out how to EQ these sounds to fit into my mix.

Usually what I first (and always) do is highpass my bass so that all of the frequencies below around 100 Hz are cut. Then I add in the subbass separately. Next, I usually try to make a narrow cut at around 200 Hz for the snare (or whatever frequency the snare peaks at). But after this, I'm usually lost. I feel like I should be making more frequency cuts in my midrange bass to make room for the other elements in the mix, i.e. hats, kick drum, pads, etc. but I usually don't do this. If I do make additional cuts, I feel like they are randomly placed and often result in a huge decrease in the intensity and power of the bass sound.

My mixes usually don't sound awful or extremely muddy, but they certainly aren't crisp or anywhere near "professional" sounding. I usually keep my gain structure pretty solid (generally keeping the kick drum at -12 dB and comparatively mixing all of the other levels according to that). What I'm wondering is this -- what techniques do you all use to make your huge, heavy basslines fit into your mixes? Im amazed sometimes when I hear the heavy sounds people create, and yet they fit beautifully into the rest of the mix.

What daw are you in?

Hi cut above 16khz, get rid of any fizzy frequency, Try make sure you have got any other elements in the mid range EG: cut the mids slightly in your kicks. Anything like hats and cymbals low cut them around 500hz. This is just one way of doing it, mostly for songs that have a lot going on in the mix.

Earjax wrote:What daw are you in?

I'm using Ableton

Digezt wrote:Hi cut above 16khz, get rid of any fizzy frequency, Try make sure you have got any other elements in the mid range EG: cut the mids slightly in your kicks. Anything like hats and cymbals low cut them around 500hz. This is just one way of doing it, mostly for songs that have a lot going on in the mix.

I sometimes do this -- one thing I've been noticing recently in my mixes, however, is that while they sound bassy and "full" on my monitors, they sound weak, and "airy" on my headphones...I don't know if this is a problem with my monitors / the lack of an external soundcard?

I feel like it may be a result of hi cutting literally all of the elements in a track other than the subbass...

Maybe you should make the cutoff higher for your midrange. I'm still learning but I use my ears and make my bass high passed at the point where the sound isn't too high passed, but I try and do it at 150 or wherever it sounds good.

I do it so the kick isn't masked, and I don't like the lower stuff like sub, kick, and bass to mess (maybe its phasing?) with eachother.

Go through the frequencies of your midrange bass and notch out any screeechy/scratchy frequencies. I saw Ascian do this in one of his bass processing tutorials, I'd post which one it was but I'm capped at the moment.

atfens wrote:Go through the frequencies of your midrange bass and notch out any screeechy/scratchy frequencies. I saw Ascian do this in one of his bass processing tutorials, I'd post which one it was but I'm capped at the moment.

Yea that sounds really helpful -- post it when you can.

I guess I'm just struggling with keeping the girth and power of the sounds I make while making them fit in the mix...They either sound awesome alone but muddy in the track as a whole, or vice versa...Anyone else have any useful pointers?

Earjax wrote:What daw are you in?

Most useless question ever for this thread.

To the OP: imho it sounds like you're doing everything right. One thing to look for, to make things really crisp, is the order of which you do things. For example, if you're hi-passing/low-passing BEFORE FX are added on, you get a very different sound than when you do it after it's all applied. For example, you can make a midrange bass sounding really clean by low-passing it at the right spot (so you still hear the distortion.etc. but so that it tidies it up a bit).

Good advice. I'm going to experiment with where I put in my high pass filter in the insert chain.

eq side chaining
the bass usually has more frequencies in brostep so i let it sound full no matter what (obviously i low cut the mid range bass at 100hz/150hz).
next i set up peak controllers so that when other sounds come in it will duck a bunch of eq points just to give space for the other sounds whenever they decide to come in.
i dont know how to do it in other DAWS but in FL its something i do whenever i complete a song, its the only way im able to dodge other frequencies like white noises and drums coming in. its a bitch to do to every single sound in your project but its a good way to get your stuff to have that fullness to it.
i dont see the point in having to lose frequencies PERMANENTLY in a sound just so it sits better with other sounds that only come in momentarily.

subfect wrote:

Earjax wrote:What daw are you in?

Most useless question ever for this thread.

To the OP: imho it sounds like you're doing everything right. One thing to look for, to make things really crisp, is the order of which you do things. For example, if you're hi-passing/low-passing BEFORE FX are added on, you get a very different sound than when you do it after it's all applied. For example, you can make a midrange bass sounding really clean by low-passing it at the right spot (so you still hear the distortion.etc. but so that it tidies it up a bit).

This is good advice...I'll keep that in mind.

sunny_b_uk wrote:eq side chaining
the bass usually has more frequencies in brostep so i let it sound full no matter what (obviously i low cut the mid range bass at 100hz/150hz).
next i set up peak controllers so that when other sounds come in it will duck a bunch of eq points just to give space for the other sounds whenever they decide to come in.
i dont know how to do it in other DAWS but in FL its something i do whenever i complete a song, its the only way im able to dodge other frequencies like white noises and drums coming in. its a bitch to do to every single sound in your project but its a good way to get your stuff to have that fullness to it.
i dont see the point in having to lose frequencies PERMANENTLY in a sound just so it sits better with other sounds that only come in momentarily.

I thought side chaining like this is usually a bad idea (rather than simply cutting frequencies)? But maybe I'm completely wrong...

I guess I can use this song to illustrate my issue, since I'm listening to it now anyways...

I just don't understand at all how at like 1:09, that bass sounds SO full and huge, yet all of the other elements (hats, snare, kicks, etc) still hit perfectly within the mix. Is this really all just careful EQ work?

I would just say notch where your snare hits and also take away frequencies in the hi end region if there too overwhelming. usually you want mid some sometime depends on your sound if you boost or notch your mid range you can add different characters to your sound but of you just wanna make it good for your levels. just take away a very small amount in the mid range area and also some top end but very little. also that bass is so huge cause there's many voices on it and it has some stereo width. try to add voices onto your sound and stereo widen the top end

Mannyyyyy wrote:I would just say notch where your snare hits and also take away frequencies in the hi end region if there too overwhelming. usually you want mid some sometime depends on your sound if you boost or notch your mid range you can add different characters to your sound but of you just wanna make it good for your levels. just take away a very small amount in the mid range area and also some top end but very little. also that bass is so huge cause there's many voices on it and it has some stereo width. try to add voices onto your sound and stereo widen the top end

I'm not saying I'm having trouble making bass sounds appear "big" or powerful...I'm more just having trouble fitting them in the mix without EQing the bass to the point that it isn't powerful anymore.

almostskate100 wrote:I thought side chaining like this is usually a bad idea (rather than simply cutting frequencies)? But maybe I'm completely wrong...

whats bad about it? i cut frequencies anyway because a lot of frequencies sounds like crap when using distortion, also when the song is full and complete the ears kind of fill in the gaps when doing large cuts (since theres so many sounds thats going on in this kind of dubstep). if i left my basses sounding too full then i would lose headroom and such. if you think its a bad idea on the sake of saving headroom then fair enough, but it sounds a bit unnatural with normal sidechain compression in my opinion. how else can i have a low end punch on midrange basses with a thick snare hitting? (by low end i dont mean the sub, i mean the lower midrange frequencies). i dont see how else excision was able to have such a thick bass like that along with a phat snare there in the example you put up, hes possibly eq sidechaining or its very tight and careful sidechain compression.

subfect wrote:

Earjax wrote:What daw are you in?

Most useless question ever for this thread.

To the OP: imho it sounds like you're doing everything right. One thing to look for, to make things really crisp, is the order of which you do things. For example, if you're hi-passing/low-passing BEFORE FX are added on, you get a very different sound than when you do it after it's all applied. For example, you can make a midrange bass sounding really clean by low-passing it at the right spot (so you still hear the distortion.etc. but so that it tidies it up a bit).

Was wondering whether he was in logic in which case I might have been able to help and explain things