Question about mixing Kick drum

[Mike_W]

I just finished recording drum and bass guitar tracks for my band. I mixed all the drum tracks and they sound great when I monitor them by themselves. Now I'm mixing bass guitar and have a descent mix. But now when I monitor the bass guitar and drums together the kick seems to get lost in the mix (not as powerfull). What can I do to get the punch of the kick drum back. any suggestions would be much appreciated.



Thanks,

 

[jake-owa]

Boost a bit of low EQ in the kick or cut some conflicting low from the bass.

It's hard to say the best way to do this when we don't know how you recorded or what tools you have at your disposal.

 

[Light]

You can use a compressor with a slow attack, which will increases the attack of the kick, without adding the negative side effects of an EQ. This is always the first thing I reach for on a close miced drum which I need to add attack to.

Light

"Cowards can never be moral."
M.K. Gandhi

 

[bleyrad]

i usually have to boost the 3-4k range tons to get a nice punchy kick out of a rock song. when that high-end click is there, then the low-end magically appears to, because the click (in standing out in the mix) tells your ears when to listen for that low-end thump of the kick.

 

[ambi]

what's a slow attack?
20ms?
the standard mine is set at for everything is 2ms.
i need to read more about compressors...
But i think i know the release time needs to be slower for basslines!

 

[Light]

what's a slow attack?
20ms?
the standard mine is set at for everything is 2ms.
i need to read more about compressors...
But i think i know the release time needs to be slower for basslines!

It is one of those things you must always experiment with. This is one of the many reasons why you can never really use presets for compression.

Light

"Cowards can never be moral."
M.K. Gandhi

 

[littledog]

2ms is an extremely fast attack time that will clamp the crap out of everything. That's okay if you are going for certain things like brick wall limiting or removing transients, but much of the time on things like vocals, guitars, drums, bass, etc. you will find you will find it useful to back off on the attack time.

 

[pipelineaudio]

The kick and bass battle has been a plague upon recording man since recorded time. Did you ever see " The Principal" ? "The two biggest kids on the block man, sooner or later theyre gonna fight"

This is the PERFECT place to learn sidechaining techniques. I hope you got a compressor with a sidechain input.

Take a split from the kick drum and send it to the sidechain input of your compressor. Set the compressor to key from the sidechain.

Start with the ratio at at least 12:1, but youll experiment with higher and lower settings in a bit

Turn the attack to as fast as possible

Set the release somewhere between 50 and 80 mS to start

Now plug your bass in thru the regular audio input and output of the compressor

Solo the bass track

Start lowering the threshold control until the bass is getting " ducked" every time the kick hits

Now unsolo the bass track, and adjust the compressor till it sounds like the kick drum is "playing" the bass guitar

 

[Light]

Pipeline, you have just reminded me of how lazy I some times get. I almost never bother to use a sidechain like that, but it is a great suggestion.


Light

"Cowards can never be moral."
M.K. Gandhi

 

[lomky]

This is the PERFECT place to learn sidechaining techniques. I hope you got a compressor with a sidechain input.

Take a split from the kick drum and send it to the sidechain input of your compressor. Set the compressor to key from the sidechain.

Is this possible w/ a DAW software plugin? Just curious.

 

[pipelineaudio]

"Is this possible w/ a DAW software plugin? Just curious"

allegedly

actually its possible in SAW

but there are some plugs, by TC and DB that claim to do it...they dont seem to work in the right time, but theres a discussion here just yesterday about a new version of the DB one

http://www.sonicfoundry.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?MessageID=161051&Replies=6&Page=1

Im going to try today. Ill put a metronome click on one track and a sine wave on the other and lets see what happens

 

[zallen25]

good plug for it

the C4 multiband compressor from Waves is a very nice tool for this.......the side chain method is also good but i have had some nice results from the C4. Sounds like you might have some phaseing problems between the kick freq's and the bass's. ........im the kinda person that likes the tight punchy kick (depending on musical style) but i usually boost around 45-60Hz cut some mids out quite a lot and boost some highs around 6k-10k.......changes all the time but its funny how similar the pattern looks on my kick EQ's on different sessions. Give that kick some tick in there and it might help break away from that bass.

 

[ambi]

isn't 45-60 pretty low? doesn't the bassline occupy a lot of that?

Do you also boost the kick at about 100 and the bass at about 140, or vice versa?

 

[mixsit]

isn't 45-60 pretty low? doesn't the bassline occupy a lot of that?

Do you also boost the kick at about 100 and the bass at about 140, or vice versa?

Ambi, this sound like you're looking for some gereneral preset eq settings. (? maybe not But it could vary hugely depending on your intent. Sometime the kick could be huge with the bass filtered to do the midrange for example or vise versa.
Yea?
Wayne