Bass gtr & kik

Talking about music is difficult, if not useless - any snippet we can hear?

Frequently what happens is that the kick is separated into two sections. Sometimes this is done by using two mics, one inside for click, one outside for thump. Sometimes this is done by creating two tracks, and using HPF and LPF on them to create a "kick high" and "Kick low" track. Sometimes people just use frequency dependent compression (multiband compression).

I do the first one now and find it very easy. I use a D6 mic just inside the kick head, pointed at the beater impact area. Outside, I use a "subkick" type of device to get the real lows. What happens is that the D6 is really good at picking up the "click" of the beater, so I accentuate that by finding a spot in the 7K-10K region to boost. i don't compress this track. The subkick is really good at picking up lows, but the mass of the cone creates a mechanical LPF, as well as being "slow" to react to transients, so I get a really round thump. I compress this lightly to keep it even. I boost the lows slightly around 50-60Hz and cut the boom around 125-300. I then blend the two together by just adjusting one or the other to fit the mix.

What you create is a very slow and round thump, which can be felt but not really heard too well. The click is very light, but adds a hint of detail in the mix. You don't really hear the kick sticking out, but it's there.


For bass, a lot of people really try to focus on the low end too, but I find that a lot of bass really resides in the mids. Your kick has a lot of quick energy, while your bass plods along through the whole song. You can't really have both competing, even if for a fraction of a second here and there.

I usually use a DI and an amp on bass. DI captures the "whole picture" of the bass detail while the amp really is used for the attitude. I generally scoop the mids on the bass DI track and use it mainly for highs and lows, while blending in the amp for the mids. Fuzzy lows from an amp only add mud. You want the lows of the bass to be clean. You want the highs to be clean as well since you don't want too much fuzz on the high end competing with vocals and guitars either.

That's the tricks that I've come to love.


You can emulate that with plugs and I'm sure you'll find what you're looking for.


however, there is one more trick to use.. On kick, set a tone generator to 50-60hz sinewave and gate it with the kick so that each hit triggers the tone on. It should be fairly low, just enough to add something to the low end, but not enough to be heard in the mix. Much like the DI bass, the clean sinewave will add to the bottom of the kick without adding mud.

I made the comment--it was because it was too limited. The lookahead removes the peak which is what pushes the woofer in a decided manner. Leaving just the low frequency "woof"....so you consciously can "hear" there is a kick hit, put it does actually hit you in the chest--no matter how loud you crank it.

I'm not sure why you would be going for that. If the problem is that you don't have any sub oomph....that's in a way the opposite problem. But, I get from "dancing about architecture" how you would get that. I'll tell you that I just mixed a record where what was delivered was a thin heavily EQ'd kick--it sounded (by guess) like a real kick's bleed with a horrible over snappy sample mixed in 75/25....otherwise--it was all beater and bleed! Ha. So,particularly on the slower tunes where that's completely unacceptable, I added an "out font" kick mic sample from BFD2 along with it's room (but separate channels)....it then allowed me to treat it like the two kick mic recordings I prefer---which is to get the beater mic gated pretty tightly and consistent dynamically--allowing the out of kick mic to provide the "bloom"--subbed to a mono channel that got labeled "G-Kick" and the other two hidden ASAP.

Yes, the sine wave thing can work. Key being if you can hear it, it's too loud. You should only hear it's absence when you mute it. But, that's one of those things that was a band aid back in the day (IMO/E) that isn't as relevant when every DAW can add a sample kick out mic in a matter of what 30 sec? Takes longer to sort of choose the sample really....because it's an out sample, like room samples, it literally shouldn't be phase aligned....you don't need the mostest accurratest (sic) analyzer like you might to replace drum hits.

Some of the kicks for BFD2 even have a Yamaha SubKick as a third mic....I mean if you REALLY want to make woofers shake....

You might putting a bit of boost on the kick in the range that corresponds to the resonance of the human chest cavity - IIRC that's around 80Hz, give or take but my memory might be a little off.