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Hi everyone.

I make Dubstep since a few months (I'm 13) and i have not more than 10 tracks (sometimes electrohouse, dubstep, moombahton), and i use FL Studio 9 (I had v.10 but the fruity 9 goes better on my pc (a little old).

And every time i put the subbass on a song (for that using Sytrus) it takes the hell out of my kick's sound, i put the volumen up of the subbass and at the same time the kick goes slower. What should i do? I think that i have to do somehting called Sidechain, but i don't how the fuck do that xD

Please help me, and sorry for my bad english i'm from Argentina

check your levels
read the mix down thread

eq out a notch at around 80-100 on the sub and do a little bump on the kick in the 2kish area. all depends on the sample but the cut in the sub may help make room for the boom in the kick and the bump on the kick helps add thud/pop. then im guessing your sub is a bit loud so turn it down. then reach for the sidechain if need be, but always eq and mix first. IMO.

it sounds like you have a nice little hike ahead
youll need to better understand eqing, also learn sidechaining from the video above, but in this case youll want a very short attack and release on your sidechain compressor with gentle thresold to achieve mix-purpose sidechaining. But it's not typical for your subbass to sidechain to your kick because your subbass needs to remain consistent, as well as your kick. its best to understand where you kick sits in the frequency range and of course a high pass filter or eq a low end dip to your kick would be a good idea to give room for your subbass since your subbass should hit generally within 30hz-100hz, that's why kick and subbass are one of the more difficult tasks to mix, i believe sidechain compression would be my last option when mixing the 2 together

That thief!

Put that fiend where he belongs, behind bars.

^^ hes right you need to EQ first and try and remove clashing frequencys. IMO if you want that heavy sound you need to sidechain aswel. Theres a very old saying in production "You cant polish a turd" so try and get it to sound a good as possible before sidechaining.

Some people will say that you should low cut your kick at 80hz but I wouldnt do that. Kicks in dubstep have a lot of 45-55hz in them.

When EQing your kick think about your sound, It starts high in pitch then gose down. So if you EQ high at like 80-90hz its going to boost the bass at beginning of the kick giving it more attack. 50-60hz is where the real boom is and its near the mid/end of the sound.

You can lowpass your sub at like 70hz all the stuff above that is just mess that dosnt really need to be there. If you do that you leave room at 75-up for the attack of your kick to come through.

Then sidechain.

When I sidechain I use 3 different buses. One for everything other than my kick, snare and subs (let call it Highs). One for the subs and one for the kick and snare(use for activating the sidechain).

Have a really heavy compression on the subs channel, as much as you need to get the kick really punching (this is used to make your kick stand out).

Then on the Highs channel have a very light compression (this just there to get your track bouncing a little to the beat).

^ i agree with most of that, but if its a pure sine sub (which is the strongest) theres not need to make eq cuts because there aren't any harmonics to it

http://bit.ly/MAg7B5
that is all

ehbrums1 wrote:^ i agree with most of that, but if its a pure sine sub (which is the strongest) theres not need to make eq cuts because there aren't any harmonics to it

Agreed but if you use a square wave you can use different cutoff amounts on different subs to give them a bit of a different rumble. It just helps stop all your different subs from sound like one sub and keeps things interesting.

You say that a sine has no harmonics but if you put 3xosc through a freq analyser you will see it has band of bleeding. As does Massive.

Some digital synths add subtle saturation to their wave forms to give it the impression of analogue; so YES do EQ/Filter your subs if you're using a software where the sine isn't completely harmonic-less.

We all know a 100% clean sine will not have any harmonics but that is your BEST case scenario but i'm afraid it isn't always true.


The key is to find a balance where your sub and your kick are both punchy, this is achieved by EQing/Filtering or - if you want to save CPU pitch up your kick or play your sub lower.

legend4ry wrote:You say that a sine has no harmonics but if you put 3xosc through a freq analyser you will see it has band of bleeding. As does Massive.

Some digital synths add subtle saturation to their wave forms to give it the impression of analogue; so YES do EQ/Filter your subs if you're using a software where the sine isn't completely harmonic-less.

Hes right!

I just saw you're using Sytrus (It begs the question - why? but alas..) that also has a very harmonic heavy Sine wave.


Filter/EQ, friend!

legend4ry wrote:I just saw you're using Sytrus (It begs the question - why? but alas..)

is there something wrong with sytrus? i was under the impression that it was a very nice synth and i use it pretty frequently

they never said anything was wrong with it. i actually prefer subs with harmonics, as i think it makes it easier to blend with midrange basses.

on that note, you can have a little bit of overlap, but generally your sub will hit between 40-80hz. so you want to pick a kick that hits mainly 80-120hz.

if you want a subby kick AND a sub going on, just side chain the sub to the kick, so that the sub ducks when the kick plays (plenty of tutorials to make your sub duck for the kick, if you don't know how).

bassbum wrote:

ehbrums1 wrote:^ i agree with most of that, but if its a pure sine sub (which is the strongest) theres not need to make eq cuts because there aren't any harmonics to it

Agreed but if you use a square wave you can use different cutoff amounts on different subs to give them a bit of a different rumble. It just helps stop all your different subs from sound like one sub and keeps things interesting.

wut

legend4ry wrote:You say that a sine has no harmonics but if you put 3xosc through a freq analyser you will see it has band of bleeding. As does Massive.

Some digital synths add subtle saturation to their wave forms to give it the impression of analogue; so YES do EQ/Filter your subs if you're using a software where the sine isn't completely harmonic-less.

We all know a 100% clean sine will not have any harmonics but that is your BEST case scenario but i'm afraid it isn't always true.


The key is to find a balance where your sub and your kick are both punchy, this is achieved by EQing/Filtering or - if you want to save CPU pitch up your kick or play your sub lower.

Or you can do what I do us just generate a sine wave at 45 hz in audacity and throw it in a sampler