ALL About Kick and Bass by YOU!

[RyanMRDJ]

Good Day all

I am starting this thread which I think A LOT of people struggle or just don't understand. KICK AND BASS.

The thing is just now all genres are different and all genres kicks and bass is different. I have experimented with it once... I have taken the same low end kick high end kick tricked the EQ and I made about 3 different genres of kicks.

I would like you to reply giving your idea of a good kick and bass which in your genre sounds good. the main idea behind it all is, you get a progressive house producer which creates his kick and bass in this way for the past 3 - 4 years and then a big room producer say how he produces kick and bass... you might try it in your progressive house song and vise versa ever thought that it might sound better?

PLEASE NO LINKS TO SOUNDS!!! just normal reply by words...
Give your thoughts...

FYI I am not a professional producer just been so long in this hobby.

RyanMRDJ Bedroom Producer since '98

 

[hcgaron]

This is a good idea for a thread seeing as it's one of the more frequent problems in amateur mixes/productions. While I think there is value in discussing how to MAKE a good kick, IMHO I believe that many producers have such a wealth of samples that it becomes more appropriate to discuss how to choose the right combination of kick and bass.

Genre will have a big impact on what type of kick to choose - hip hop and big room house won't often share the same low end principles. So my first advice would be to listen to some commercial/professional productions in your preferred genre and dissect what types of sounds are used for kick/bass. How much attack/high freq does the kick have? How much "edge & bite," vs "how warm and round" is the kick? How long is the tail? These considerations are often the most important in choosing an appropriate sample.

In comparison, listen to the bass as well and determine how much low, mid, and hi frequency content it has. Does it have a lot of upper harmonics to make it more audible in the mid range? How much subsonic info does the bass carry? These are the important factors in determining an appropriate bass.

In general the kick or the bass will carry the low end, but often one will be predominant. Your genre will make a big difference as stylistically some genres make more use of heavy subsonic kicks while others use more bite in the kick with more subs in the bass. But more importantly, consider your musical arrangement... Be sure not to compose an arrangement where the kick and bass are constantly fighting for low end space at the same time. This will make the job of mixing them much easier, and will make the arrangement inherently more musical.

Some side chain compression on the bass is useful... Try using a hpf in the side chain of the compressor being triggered by the kick. Set it to above 150Hz (perhaps much higher) which will allow you to gain more control of the side chain settings.

when observing all these things, I often don't need much (if any) eq/processing on my kick/bass (maybe a little bit of hpf). Just set the faders where they belong and let the music take care of the rest!

I hope someone finds this helpful - but I'd love to hear your ideas!

 

[steffeeh]

Kick and bass by me...uhmm..
(btw I do electronic music so what I say is more suitable for that I suppose)

Well... for a starter I have a thing that used to bug me out a little when I watched a bunch of mixing tutorials a while ago, and that was that they went on a little too kind on the sidechain compression on the bass. They set it all up, and started dialing it in, and didn't get very far, and yeah it got better, but I sat there thinking that it could be even better if they used it heavier, since you don't need to hear the bassline at the same time as the kick at all, as long as the kick is tuned right and have the right bass to convey the sort of bassline that you want in your track.
I prefer to just shove the ratio to the maximum and then dial it back IF it gets too much.
I also prefer to use a sidechain triggerer not routed to the master (often called ghostkick by some), that is a very short sound, which means that you can adjust the sidechain envelope with more precision.

Or I do this, which is actually an advice from David Guetta (well I bet there are a lot more people who give advice about it, but I got it from a video with him).
Don't sidechain the kick or triggerer to the bass - at all. Instead, use a gating/volumeenvelope-plugin on both the kick and bass, and shape them both so they cooperate perfectly and pretty much crossfade to eachother.

Further on, one thing that I think go unnoticed too often is the power to apply a gate to the kick, and take away that last tail that can interfere with the bassline.

Lastly, I know there are some amazing articles on kick-bass on Sound On Sound, so have a look at it.

 

[RyanMRDJ]

Well I have been up and down with this kick and bass story...

I hope someone actually read about this because most big producers have pre-made kicks which is layered which consist a low kick a mid kick (sometimes) and a high kick... what I have learned is you can choose any kick you want......................

I have 500 kick pack which I have downloaded for free a few years ago and first only choose like 1 kick at a time, now I choose 3 kicks which sounds good together, the 1 would have a low bass kick but yet have a click sound I just EQ it out, then a midrange kick which has more punch then yet also have low and high clicks but then EQ it out again the a high kick which has dirt then just EQ out the bass............... 3 kicks only by EQ sounds wonderful together, but now this is where compression comes in........ Compression is the tricky one you want to keep the punch of all the kicks but now you have to choose between cutting peaks (Reduces punch) and Dynamics which will over accessorise the kick........