Help with Bass Drum Sound in Mixing

  • Thread starter Thread starter Seafroggys
  • Start date Start date
Seafroggys

Seafroggys

Well-known member
So anyways, I've been trying to deal with my bass drum sound. I know I put a tad bit too much muffling than I would have liked in the actual tracking, but I've heard many records where the bass is far more muffled than mine and punches through much better.

My problem is that it is so buried. What can I do, EQ, compression, etc. to make it more pronounced?

http://www.soundclick.com/util/getplayer.m3u?id=5958219&q=hi
 
A few things you can try are playing with the EQ, cutting around 400, where things sound boxy. Boost a little around 2.5 or 3K, where ever the beater sound comes through at. As far as punch, compress it with a slow attack to let that initial hit though, then it will kick in a little after. hope that helps
 
no oppertunity to listen here but sometimes a kik can have a ton of sub energy that makes it hard, if not impossible to turn up and pull out of a mix.

if you have the room/monitoring to do so check the sub 80hz carefully.
 
jaybriggs84 said:
A few things you can try are playing with the EQ, cutting around 400, where things sound boxy. Boost a little around 2.5 or 3K, where ever the beater sound comes through at. As far as punch, compress it with a slow attack to let that initial hit though, then it will kick in a little after. hope that helps
Click to expand...

great starting point really.

i would cut the mids sorta 350ish-800ish, boost a bit around 80-120hz, if you can't monitor real low end the cut it, and a nice bost around the 1-3k mark to bring out the click.
 
if you go for the high-end boost, you might also want try a high shelf EQ...for whatever reason i usually like it more than a bell durve for bringing out the attack in the kick
 
I've already knocked off everything below 45, cut at 600, and slight boost in the highs. Since that mix, I've messed with compression and and cut more off the low in the guitar, and it is better. Not quite where I want it, but better.
 
Put a sub-synth at 40-50hz on the kick, that will bring it really nicely.

Another thing is to side chain the kick into the bass, so the bass will comp when the kick is hitting. Fast attack/release.
 
GuitarGoblin said:
Another thing is to side chain the kick into the bass, so the bass will comp when the kick is hitting. Fast attack/release.
Click to expand...

I did this on one of my recent projects and I got pretty good results.


What type of music is this and what other instruments are in the mix? (can't listen at work)

I have found that kick drum can be one of the easiest parts of the kit to rescue if the original sound wasn't tracked well, provided you got a decent original performance to start with... you can gate them, compress them, EQ them, do all kinds of digital "mangling" to recreate them and turn a crappy sound into something "useable" at least...

Another thing I would try that hasn't been suggested yet is this: instead of adding high boost in EQ, try something like PSP MixTreble (which I have really fallen in love with lately, especially on drums). Its not really an EQ, but it will give you the high end boost by adding high frequency harmonics, and it will also accenuate transients somehow. It can really help drums cut through a mix. I think there are a few plugs like this floating around, but MixTreble is the one I have been using and I like it...
 
oh my god that fixed all my problems.

I had set the attack to the fastest possible, I moved it up and oh boy its 20x better! I uploaded a new version. Thanks guys!
 
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