hey what's going on out there i'm sean divine hope you all are doing well before we get started today
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and let's dive into the tutorial all right so the first thing we're going to look at with
mixing super low sub bass is going to be adding some modulated distortion or saturation texture
to your 808 which may be something that you're not as familiar with
let me just solo the 808 and if i turn off shaper box we get this
so just a nice clean 808 there's not a lot going on
really above about 250 or so so by adding shaper box we get this
not only are we adding some of that harmonic content you're going to be able to you know
hear this on laptops smaller computer speakers but we've also got that rhythmic modulation
that's happening on both the crush as well as the drive and then i'm also panning the just the the
high mids and the upper end of this sound so if you watch here i've got the split at 660 hertz
and all that saturated content we're just panning back and forth
so just a really unique way to add that harmonic content saturation to your 808
but do it also rhythmically so it's going to add this texture
that definitely sets your 808 apart from the rest all right so the next thing i want to show you is
utilizing multi-band compression to control the extreme subs or lows in your baselines your 808s
a lot of times there's just stuff going down there that will eat up a lot of headroom we're going to
talk about some other ways to kind of clean that up but multi-band compression to me is one of the
best ways to you know kind of remedy this low-end mud and murk so if we play this back right now
we've got a lot of stuff happening below 30 of course
we can go ahead and just set this low band and i'm going to dial this in at about 60 hertz and then
you're going to notice that we've already got the threshold and some things set here automatically
we're going to adjust this a bit let's play back and see what kind of reduction we have right
i'm going to set the attack time pretty quickly just so it's going to catch the transient of that
low end and just adjusting the range so that when we hit that really low note that's going into the
30 25 territory really creating a lot of murk that compressor is just going to grab that and keep it
more controlled obviously when we compress this it's just going to attenuate the level of a lot of
the lows make it quieter so we're going to limit the dynamic range that's compression but now we're
going to actually bring the volume up so we'll just bring that up to you know maybe let's say 2
db and what we're doing is we're just compressing it and then we're keeping everything a lot more
consistent it's going to make that just sit better in the mix with this uh compression happening
so we just get a more consistent even sound there that's going to work better in the context
of the mix now if you're not as familiar with multi-band compression you can utilize a tool
called bass rider and it does something very similar in that it's going to kind of control
some of the notes and the frequencies in your bass lines that kind of poke out you know some of them
just seem to not sit as well in the mix so with bass rider this intelligently will ride the level
of that bass i know a lot of you deal with this i have this happen to me in certain mixes where
you know some 808s they just tend to poke out in the frequencies in the mix and you
know i don't necessarily want to have to go in and draw them in i can use something like bass
rider so if we turn this on i want you to just kind of watch how this is attenuating things
so you can see on that last note that's going to play back a little bit louder it's going to
be perceived a little bit more in the mix so bass rider will just actively kind of bring that back
going to create the same sort of consistent sound in your super low bass lines
all right so the next tip i have for mixing super low sub bass is going to be to utilize a linear
phase eq on your master which linear phase just tends to be cleaner it's more surgical
less colored and it's going to you know accomplish this in a better manner than a typical eq would
generally speaking so we've talked about setting high pass filters on your stereo bus or the master
buss to just kind of clean out that low end and you know i've seen some people out here who have
suggested cutting you know 50 and even higher than that for this style of music i would not recommend
that in any way shape or form but it is very useful to cut lower like say below 30 or in most
cases for me it's more towards 25 and anything below 20. and some of you are going to have a lot
of trouble kind of picking up how much of that is even happening in your mix you know number
one you're not really going to hear that even if you have a sub it's going to be difficult to kind
of pick up on that i'm going to show you how you can still kind of pick up on this and also
how much you can gain in terms of your overall mix loudness and maximization by doing a cut like this
so first of all if i just turn off this linear eq i want you to just listen closely here you know
now some of you might not have picked up on that super low note that's causing some
distortion in our mix it's also going to present some problems when we get to the
limiting and maximization if we play it right now with the linear eq off
without that cut you know below about 27 hertz i want you to keep an eye on the attenuation here
okay so on that super low note we're getting about 3.7 db of reduction which that's not
you know an incredible amount for a transparent limiter like this but it's quite a bit
and i want to show you the difference there in that this you know these frequencies
that we can't really hear anyway if we go ahead and just turn on our linear phase eq
drop it below 28 now keep an eye on the limiter here you know
okay so same note it's reducing about a db right with that linear eq it's not hitting any less hard
it's just cutting out a lot of that really low sub stuff this is particularly useful when we get to
the master limiting or the maximization trying to get the most level we can
out of our mix or our master because we don't want to you know overwork the limiter because
those you know really low 20 hertz notes when it's having to work harder and it's attenuating more
your mix is not going to be able to be pushed as much it's not going to be as transparent
so let me just show you with the linear eq on since we're only getting you know about
1db reduction now i can kind of boost this up a little bit more and let's see what happens
so that's more of kind of the commercial master level
that we're going to be going for there and i'm getting about 3 db of reduction that's not
something to be again particularly concerned about especially with a transparent limiter
so now if we turn off the linear eq we have all that build up below 30. let's see how it reacts
so you could see that reduction was quite a bit more substantial has some distortion and you can
just kind of hear the limiter working harder it's just not as transparent the mix doesn't sound as
clean so just that little cut on a linear phase eq gives you that much more headroom to work with get
more level get more loudness out of your mix and your master keep that super low sub bass cleaner
and more impactful last thing i want to show you guys in terms of mixing super low sub bass
is you know how can you kind of monitor what's happening and you know have sort of a threshold
or a baseline for what you're aiming for because a lot of you just can't hear you know below 40
even with whatever monitors you may be using maybe your room is not tuned so there's some different
nulls in the low end or maybe your headphones aren't responding the way you want them to
if you can't hear it makes it really difficult but if you have something visually that's just
going to kind of give you some guidelines that's going to be really helpful right so i've got this
plug-in from izotope it's called tonal balance control so what this is is a tool where they've
measured a lot of different source content so different commercial songs and releases
they've measured the tonal balance or the frequency response of these songs
and they've given you this sort of guideline here that you see represented in this blue
kind of tube across the frequency spectrum so obviously you know this track definitely bass
heavy so they've just measured a lot of bass heavy content and releases and so this is kind
of something to aim for now why this is useful in this particular case with super low sub bass
is visually we can kind of see where we are in relation to you know some of those commercially
released tracks so without our linear phase eq going back to that cut let's just say that i
hadn't picked up on you know a lot of that build up let's play this back and see what it gives us
okay so if we take a look at that below 40 we're way above you know kind of what the guideline is
for there and then the rest of the curve looks where it needs to be right so just an indicator
that we're pretty far off there now if we turn the linear eq on you know the show must go on
we're still on the upper end there but you can just see it's a lot more close to you know kind
of that that baseline or that guideline that it's giving us so just to note you know there
are going to be some deviations i've had certain sessions where you know things might be a little
bit different than you know kind of the guidelines of tonal balance control but generally speaking
this is a really useful reference considering the amount of material that they've measured here
and especially for those of you who just can't hear or can't really get a good idea
of what's going on in your super low bass this is going to be a great tool
to uh to check out all right y'all so check out some of these tips that we talked about for mixing
super low sub bass i know this is definitely going to help you get a cleaner low end more impactful
but also just controlled in a way that you know more of what's going on down there and you're
not going to let it kind of take over or affect your mix or your master in a negative way so if
you have any questions about mixing your low end feel free to leave a comment below if you learn
anything in the video please like subscribe and consider sharing we'll talk to you soon