How can I improve my rhythm section mix?

W

WolfandWeather

New member
I've been producing on an amateur level for a few years but I've always struggled with mixing my rhythm section, particularly when it comes to getting my drums and bass to lock together and sound like one cohesive unit.

I'm currently working on a new project and I'd like to tackle these issues now and make sure I get it right this time so I'd really like some second opinions and criticisms about what I've got so far. Feel free to comment on anything: levels, EQ, compression, the performance, the arrangement etc.

FYI: I used Ezdrummer (Indie Folk expansion/4 mic setup) for the drums with a Neve 1081 plugin on the bus for EQ. I recorded the bass (precision bass copy) direct and re-amped it with Amplitube (Ampeg B-15), and then used the 1081 plugin and an LA2A plugin for EQ and compression respectively.

Any help would much appreciated!
View attachment Wasted Time (Drums and Bass).mp3
 
i don't hear much to be improved - but if this were my mix, I'd vary those rides and hats a bit. The rides, in particular, seem very precise. I'd nudge every few before or after the gridline very slightly. You can try the humanize feature, but I believe that using it will override any volume adjustments you made. If there is a way to humanize only location and not volume/intensity, do that.

but yeah, i don't hear anything that jumps out at me. If I were sitting down mixing this, it would be a little different, as it would for anyone, but nothing jumped out at me or seemed to be screaming for correction/adjustment as far as EQ or comp. It's dynamic, it's loose - but that seems to be the genre.
 
Thanks for your comments! I'm currently using Ableton's groove feature to add a bit of randomisation to the timing of the drum hits. I have it at around 15% at the moment but I'll look into adjusting that upwards.

My main concern is that the drums are sounding slightly thin in comparison to the bass, or maybe the bass is too boomy and muddy in comparison to the drums and it's creating a clash. Can you hear that or am I imagining it?
 
I hear that it's muddy. Maybe you should hi pass further up on the kick drum. I'm really not sure how far up you're technically supposed to go, but I've hi passed it up at 125 and then let the bass carry the low end, and I thought that sounded good. Maybe a pro while chime in and tell us all how to better mix the low end. If you listen to most pro recorded songs (and i'm not just talking radio, but even cult following type bands), they have very little low end [outside of rap, etc]. The music is much brighter than home recorded/amateur mixes. I think getting as much mud out as possible, while still retaining some info there, is a good idea.

You can also try notching out the fundamental of say the kick and boosting the fundamental of the bass in that same area.
 
There's a huge hump at around 50-60hz on the kick so rather than try to eq that out, I've let that cover the low end and I've high passed the bass at 80hz to try to get that to sit on top. I just thought it'd be easier to fit the bass around the kick rather than the other way around. Maybe I should bring the high pass filter further up?

The main problems lie in the 100 to 300 range I think because it's the beefiness of the snare and toms that I'm missing.

The question is, is there too much of this on the bass, not enough on the drums, or both? I never know whether to cut the lows and low mids on the bass at the risk of reducing its power and impact, or boost them on the drums at the risk of muddying up the whole mix.
 
WolfandWeather said:
The main problems lie in the 100 to 300 range I think because it's the beefiness of the snare and toms that I'm missing.

The question is, is there too much of this on the bass, not enough on the drums, or both?
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The bass sounds good to me. I think the problem is the kit. Listen to the snare -- it's very muffled. The entire kit sounds muffled. Try to boost anywhere from 4k to 8k to make the snare brighter, and maybe boost everything above 10k like 3-4db to get life into that kit. I'd cut that 100-300 region (400 is the mud region, so look there, too) like 3 or 4 db. Really you've isolated the problems and you know how to use EQ, so just get to work and fit that kit. If your drum software has different samples or drums try those.

I like the vibe. Cool song.
 
Thanks for the feedback! I think the drums sound dark because it's a vintage kit recorded with an old-fashioned 4 mic setup but I'm actually going for a warm, dry, vintage-type sound so that's perfect. I'm definitely not looking for a bright, modern sounding mix.

I agree that the snare sounds a bit restrained but I was thinking that this might be because of frequency clashes in the low mid range rather than a lack of highs? The kit sounds alright soloed but thins out a bit when I bring in the bass. I'll have a play around with the EQ but wouldn't cutting the low mids on the drum track actually cause the snare and toms to lose even more body and make the bass even more overpowering?
 
WolfandWeather said:
but wouldn't cutting the low mids on the drum track actually cause the snare and toms to lose even more body and make the bass even more overpowering?
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I'm not sure, man. I'm not an expert on all this stuff and learning as I go, but I think you should export each drum to its own track so you can EQ them individually. It sounds like you're trying to EQ the entire kit.
 
Well the samples are already processed so I don't need a huge degree of control to get the drums to sit right in the mix. There are only three tracks anyway and most of the sound of the kit is coming through the overheads. I'm only really using the EQ to add preamp saturation and for broad boosts at around 60hz and 3khz to help define the kick.
 
I thought the drums sounded pretty good.

The bass wasn't too bad either. It was a little on the muddy side. I might notch out something around 300hz with an EQ. I'm hearing more of the bass than the kick. You might need to play around with the 70hz - 140hz range with both of those. Boost the kick somewhere in that range and/or cut the bass somewhere in that range. Be careful - it's easy to make things worse in that range (while thinking you're making it better).

Compression on everything sounded fine to me - levels were pretty consistent.
 
Compression was one of the things I was worried about because it's not a particularly well set up bass so I was concerned about some notes coming through louder than others. Good to know it's alright on that front though.

I see that there's a big spike on the drum track at around 160hz every time the snare hits so I'm thinking that if I notch that out a bit on the bass, it might allow the bottom of the snare to come through a bit better. There's also a small hump at around 120hz on the kick so I could take that down on the bass as well. Is it a good idea to do both though? In the past I've often gone a bit overboard and ended up with a weedy sounding bass.

When you say you're hearing more of the bass than the kick, could that be a problem with levels as well?
 
Yeah, I'll play around with the EQ and see if I can carve some space out of the bass to help the kick poke through.

Do you think a touch of parallel compression might help? I've tried it on the drums once before but found it made things sound a bit too resonant and roomy so that could make the clarity issues even worse. On the other hand, it might help glue the drums and bass together if they're both running through the same compressor.
 
So I did some cutting in the low mids on the bass track and I managed to clear things up a bit but I still wasn't feeling the bass tone. It was still a bit round and flabby.

I actually ended up taking Nola's advice and switching the roles of the bass and the kick. I pulled the high pass on the bass down and pushed the high pass on the kick up so that now, the bass is the the foundation of the track and the kick is sitting on top and poking through at 60hz and in various spots between 100-200hz. This seems to suit the song much better and the bass feels a lot tighter.

I also decided to use separate EQ on the kick and the overheads because the high pass filter was interfering with the toms. So now I've tamed the low end of the kick to allow the bass to come through underneath but there's less of a roll off on the overheads so the rest of the kit still sounds weighty enough.

Here's the new mix: View attachment Wasted Time (Drums and Bass).mp3

Does this sound better?
 
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This is kind of getting into an area where you need the rest of the tracks involved to make proper decisions. I personally liked the bass sound in the first mix better. But without being able to hear the entire mix, it doesn't really matter. How the bass sounds when solo'd with the drums is somewhat irrelevant.

I'm hearing better separation between the kick and bass in the second mix. But I still think there is some work to be done there. The bass is still covering the kick to a large degree.
 
TripleM said:
The bass is still covering the kick to a large degree.
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I think it's better than it was but I agree. I've been tweaking for hours now and I can't seem to find the balance. If I pull out the lows on the bass track it gets too thin. If I pull out the low mids I lose note definition.

Can you tell roughly which areas are causing the biggest problems? Do I need to cut the bass around 60hz some more to let the boom of the kick through or should I do some more cuts further up in the 100-200hz range? Maybe I should boost the high mids on the kick to bring out the attack? Which bit of the kick is being masked?
 
I've been using the song "Nude" by Radiohead for reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbWBRnDK_AE

You can hear the bass and drums soloed at around the 40 second mark. If someone could tell me what's going on with the drums and bass mix on the Radiohead song then it might help me figure out where I'm going wrong with mine.

I might be wrong but it sounds to me like there's a fairly severe high pass on the drums so the bass is providing most of the low end. It doesn't seem like there's a lot of treble on the bass at all yet it doesn't sound muddy like mine does and you can hear every note that Colin is playing very clearly. How have they done this?

I know that Colin uses a Precision Bass with an Ampeg and this is also the setup I'm using (albeit with a P Bass copy and the Amplitube version of the Ampeg) and even the arrangement of the song is somewhat similar so theoretically, it shouldn't be too difficult for me to get at least in the same ballpark.
 
Sounds pretty good to me. There are places where the bass tone could use some definition I think, it's kind of hard to tell sometimes exactly what note is being played. The bass line sounds fine with the drum. I thought the drums were an actual recording so nice work there. . .
 
WolfandWeather said:
Can you tell roughly which areas are causing the biggest problems?
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No I can't. You just need to sit down with the multitrack and play with it. Try to solo the bass and the kick. Then take a big, but narrow notch out of the bass - like -10db with a very narrow width. Set it at 60hz. Start working your way up the frequency range and see if the kick pops out somewhere. There are several methods to do this kind of thing, but that's how I'd do it. Then once you find the frequency in the bass that's causing the problem, make the cut much less drastic and a bit wider. Maybe -4dbs or so. And be careful you're not wimp-i-fying the bass when you do that.

See if that helps.
 
easlern said:
There are places where the bass tone could use some definition I think, it's kind of hard to tell sometimes exactly what note is being played.
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You're right. I'd say that lack of definition is one of my biggest problems at the moment. Any ideas about how I can remedy this? Is there are certain magic frequency range that I can boost or cut in to improve things or is this more to do with compression?
 
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