compressing just the.....

  • Thread starter Thread starter no_monkeybiznus
  • Start date Start date
N

no_monkeybiznus

New member
I finished mixing a few songs, and noticed later the bass guitar, and bass drum sound a little off, or sloppy or something. Actually the bass guitar is taking up frequencies that are way lower than the bass drum, It sounds silly sometimes.

Is there a way to try compressing just the bass frequencies? I have 2 RNC's, and a dbx compressor, and 4 channels of gates, and various other stuff. Is there anything I can hook up to play around with? I'd rather not remix, although I know I should. Actually, Is there a way to just make the bass drum hit lower??
Thanks for any help.
 
What it sounds like you are looking for is a multi-band compressor. This is a standard tool for mastering. Such a compressor compresses different frequencies seperately. There are a bunch available. The one I use is Izotope's Ozone and it works well, but YMMV. Waves, Wavelab, and lots of other folks make good ones too.

Cool edit pro 2.0 has a nice compressor with band limiting that you can set to only work on a particular band. You can download a 30-day free trial from syntrillium.com.

-lee-
 
You probably need to remix and work the EQ on bass and kick. Some compression will probably help also.
 
tee hee.
Can I perform some sort of side chain trickery w/ the rnc? I never used a side chain. Thanks:confused:
 
You got no computer? Are you typing this from inside mine?

Now go remix and do what Tex said. You know you need to anyway. Mastering as a band-aid for lazy mixing is best performed by the big boys, and they don't work cheap. Do you?
-kent
 
Some songs like to have the kick drum lower than the bass, and some songs like it the other way around. This is a song by song thing, and the mix engineer needs to decide which way benefits the song the most.

In this case, it sounds like you needed the kick deeper than the bass. There is little you can do in "mastering" that is going to remove the lower bass guitar stuff without also effecting the kick drum, sorry!

When you remix, try feeding the kick drum to two channels on the mixer and use a post eq compressor on one of the tracks and boost a crap load of 60-70 and make the compressor compress a whole bunch on that low stuff, then add it in very delicately. While you are at it, the bass guitar will benefit from post eq compression too. You can use a low cut filter to get rid of the lowest stuff that is competing with the kick drum, then boost up the frequencies that need some gerth then compress that to all hell! :) If done correctly, the above will produce a very well rounded low end and there should be some decent seperation between the bass guitar and kick drum.

Good luck.

Creepy
 
What if I tried eq'ing the lows out of my mix, while feeding it (via direct output) into 2 more channels, then suck everything but the lows out of that. then compressing that. then combining the two. Kinda ridiculous?? Probably. Would that make the bass less sloppy?? tanks
 
Why do you ask for advice then ignore it? I'm guessing you have already tried to fix your master with EQ and it didn't work. If you haven't tried it then just do it and see if it works. Stop being lazy. Do it right or just call it finished and move on ;)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top