Bass and kick placement

L

lbsterner

Member
I'm a bass player/vocalist when I'm playing live so my tendency is to want to hear the bass and kick as one solid unit, since tightness with the kick is what I usually try to achieve when I play.

I'm currently mixing a song I wrote that uses two mono loops for drums. I'm using a stereo spread plugin to enhance the sound of the more natural loop and I'm able to adjust the spread to separate the dominant frequencies for the kick and snare so that they voice on different sides.

My gut says I want to keep the kick drum and the bass guitar in the same space in the mix. Does this make sense? Is there a rule about this? What do you all do?
 
No rules at all but I agree with locking the kick and bass since without that, IMO, the song looses impact. No difference between playing live and recording, if those two elements are out of sorts, the song will not be tight.
 
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Thanks. I just didn't know if there was a specific way people like to hear them. Since I don't mic a kit I never really have occasion to get too fancy with drum mixing.
 
Typically for most genres, keeping the low end instruments in the center along with the main vocal works the best. Width to the upper frequencies creates depth to a mix.

Though every song has it's own needs.
 
For me, the low end info is almost always dead center. Maybe a crazy bridge might get panned wide or something, but 99.9% of the time, right in the middle.
Also, if the mix happens to be going to vinyl, low end in the side channels is a big no-no!
 
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