Scottgman
Legend in Own Mind
I’m in the process of recording a friend’s band. We have most of the tracking done and I’ve recently started mixing a couple of the songs. Anyway, I’m having a tough time getting the kick drum to cut through the mix. I’m pretty sure this is a result of the bass guitar and kick drum competing for frequencies because when I mute the bass guitar tracks, the kick cuts-though the mix nicely.
So, I’ve been lurking on this forum for almost a year now and I’ve read lots of stuff on “carving out” space for each instrument in the mix using a little EQ (preferably subtractive EQ). It seems so logical and easy on the surface but making it happen is a whole different story. I probably spent two hours last Saturday just playing with EQ on the kick drum and Bass guitar with no real success. I probably put the same amount of time in tweaking compression settings. I’ve tried reversing the phase on the kick drum track also. The only thing that really seemed to help was panning the two bass guitar tracks (one mic on a 4x10 cab the other on a 15) about 20% which made the kick drum cut through better but still not as much as I’d like.
With the EQ, I was trying to cut the low lows on the bass (< 100 HZ) thinking that would give the kick some space but it really didn’t and seemed to make the bass guitar lose some beef. I continued tinkering with EQ but the end result always seemed to be too much loss in the bottom-end, whether it was the bass guitar or kick drum getting cut.
So I guess I’m looking for clarification or advice on how you “carve out” that space at the bottom? I'm having a tough time making the kick drum and bass guitar play nicely in the same frequency sand box.
So, I’ve been lurking on this forum for almost a year now and I’ve read lots of stuff on “carving out” space for each instrument in the mix using a little EQ (preferably subtractive EQ). It seems so logical and easy on the surface but making it happen is a whole different story. I probably spent two hours last Saturday just playing with EQ on the kick drum and Bass guitar with no real success. I probably put the same amount of time in tweaking compression settings. I’ve tried reversing the phase on the kick drum track also. The only thing that really seemed to help was panning the two bass guitar tracks (one mic on a 4x10 cab the other on a 15) about 20% which made the kick drum cut through better but still not as much as I’d like.
With the EQ, I was trying to cut the low lows on the bass (< 100 HZ) thinking that would give the kick some space but it really didn’t and seemed to make the bass guitar lose some beef. I continued tinkering with EQ but the end result always seemed to be too much loss in the bottom-end, whether it was the bass guitar or kick drum getting cut.
So I guess I’m looking for clarification or advice on how you “carve out” that space at the bottom? I'm having a tough time making the kick drum and bass guitar play nicely in the same frequency sand box.