Hey, what's up guys?
My name is David Glenn for theproaudiofiles.com and davidglennrecording.com.
In today's video, I want to show you how to manage your low end.
Now, I'm not going to talk about getting an incredible kick sound with tons of sub or
bass or whatever.
I am going to however talk about getting a sub heavy kick, a sub heavy bass, some pads
with some sub, I got a sonic boom with some sub, and a choir pad sound that sounds really
cool with some sub all to get to work together well in the same song – the same mix.
We're going to do that by arranging our low end.
But first, I'm going to give a plug.
I've got a membership site – it's called themixacademy.com, and right now, this month,
if you're watching in September of 2015, I'm giving away a bonus of three sets of multi-tracks
from a recent record that I mix, and I'm mixing the song Arise start to finish.
The videos are up online, ready for you right now, and you get the three song multi-track
bonus as well as the full start to finish videos as a coaching call online, and then
you get VIP admission to our live coaching call and web show that's happening next week,
and it's a great deal, a great bonus I couldn't pass up sharing that with you guys here.
I actually started leaving up the previous month files, so you can actually download
the August files – the multi-tracks for that, the start to finish videos, the coaching
call, all of the files that come with that in addition to the current month's bonus of
three songs.
All of them can be mixed for your resume, and then even more than that, I give a free
bonus course if you sign up.
It's just $27 a month and you can cancel anytime.
So effectively, you could go on, sign up today, join, get last months, this months, all of
the bonuses, e-mail me, get a bonus course, and then cancel and have all of that for just
$27.
It's maddening, but I wish you would take advantage of it, because it's insane.
I wish I would've had something like that when I was first learning.
So anyways, that aside, let's dive into the tutorial today.
So like I said, I have a kick – I like a lot of sub in my kick.
I like a lot of sub in my bass.
I've got this sonic boom here that has a lot of sub, and then I have these two sounds down
here that we're going to talk about, and there's a pad.
I'm going to show you first the pad choir sound.
Let's check that out in solo.
[pad plays]
Cool.
Then we have a pad here.
[pad plays]
You can feel the warm sub in the sides.
I've done some mid/side EQ.
Then if I come up here and show off the sonic boom – and actually I was messing around
before I went live with this.
I'm going to back that off a little bit.
Here's some of the sub from this guy.
[boom]
Okay.
So there's some subs in there, and then we've got the kick.
[kick drum]
Tight subs, but they're there.
And the bass guitar, I do multi-band treatment here.
I'll show off.
Let's come down here and show this section.
[bass guitar]
And because I gave a shout about The Mix Academy, let me show you a more interesting part of
the song.
[song]
Cool.
As much as Pro Tools will let me before a glitch.
Some guys, I get e-mail all the time.
“Hey, is your system – I see you run a lot of plug-ins etc.”
The only time I have problems is when I run a full mix that's been done and then do a
tutorial off of that.
So glitches don't come when I'm mixing, just when I'm doing the video at the same time.
Okay.
So managing the low end.
I've got kick and bass being side-chained.
The kick is pushing down the subs and the bass.
I've talked about that a ton on the blog.
Videos are out there on how to side-chain your kick and bass, and I like the subs to
dominate in the kick to push them down in the bass.
You can see that really, really quickly.
I send the kick into the bass.
Pro-MB from FabFilter, can't beat it.
Push the subs down a little bit there, Waves Factory Track Spacer works for that as well.
What I did with the Waves Factory Track Spacer is I used that and committed the processing
for the sonic boom.
When the sonic boom comes in, the initial transient – the impact of the subs pushes
down the kick, it pushes down the bass a little bit, and it dominates for that instant that
it hits, and then it sustains and it sounds nice and full.
So those are things that I've talked about before, but what I want to feature in this
video is the work that I did here to the pad, and the pad choir.
First up, you'll notice that there's an automation lane here, and that's for Band 2 of my Pro-Q
2.
This may look like a spaghetti mess, it may look crazy, but there is a method to this
madness.
Let's take a quick look.
Once again, here's that sound.
[synth pad]
Okay.
What's going on here is I have mid/side EQ instantiated, and I'm doing a shelf – a
low-shelf lift from 90Hz and below only on the sides to just give a little bit of push
to the sub frequencies and just the sides of this sound.
Then what I have is two low-cut/high-pass filters.
One on the sides, and one down the middle.
The one on the middle, I'm allowing the kick, the bass, all of that stuff to live there,
and I'm sucking out everything below 50Hz or so for this choir pad sound, but then for
the sides, I'm allowing that 20, 30, 50Hz to live there, and then what I do is you'll
see when I click – so here's where this pad choir is here.
When I click over here, you're going to see that shelf disappear, and further in the song,
that side shelf actually automates to go up a little bit to not allow that much frequency,
and I think I saved this as – let me actually demonstrate how I would do that.
This right here – this side-band, what I would do is I would on Pro Tools, hold all
three modifier keys, click enable, Command+Control+click.
Now that automation lane is open.
I'm going to make a selection for the rest of the song, and I'm just going to pull that
frequency up – probably somewhere around 60 or 70 because I just don't need – maybe
even 75 – I just don't need that when I've got the bass guitar in and I've got the other
elements rocking.
So now, this sound is dominating the sub frequencies during the first part that it's in, because
we don't have a whole lot going on, but then whenever everything is in, let's come over
here and listen.
[synth pad]
It's pretty much the same part.
[song]
And even there, there's not much going on sub frequency wise in the sides, so I can
put that back down around 30Hz.
Now let's listen to it.
[song]
Pretty killer.
So now we've got this full side thing going on, but then at the chorus, where things get
a little bit hotter and they get a little bit more energetic, it's going to back off
and it's going to remove the subs so that the low end is featured down the middle in
mono with the kick and the bass.
That's that sound.
Over here with the pad, I felt like this intro here...
[music]
The bass is there, and the bass is filling up
the sub frequencies down the middle, but I still felt like the pad choir had us all heavy
and weighty on the sides during that intro.
For this pad to come in and not have subs I felt was a little bit weak.
So I came over here with the Pro-Q 2 – mid/side mode again – I've got a stereo low-cut/high-pass
filter here at like, 23-25 Hz just to keep any of that extra stuff down there from getting
in, but I've instantiated a side low-shelf – about 80Hz and below – and I'm boosting
what, about 6dB of it to give this pad sound a little bit of weight on the sides so that
it's not down the middle and it's not going to interfere with the bass, but it's going
to boost the stuff on the sides.
It sounds really good.
I've also got this Hoser – let me take a look at when I've got that coming – yeah,
so.
That one is bypassed here, but it's in...
Nope, I have that backwards.
It's in right here.
Yup.
There we go.
So listen to that in solo.
Here's with the low end.
[synth pad]
Okay, and then coming out of that section, here's going from having subs on the sides
to them being gone.
[synth pad]
Cool.
And then more importantly in the track, here's in context.
[song]
Cool.
And so the pad choir, the bass guitar.
Pad choir subs aren't completely gone.
We've removed some of them, but they're not completely gone.
It would be too much to have the pad, the choir pad, the bass, all of that stuff going
on at the same time, and so by picking and choosing which sections of the song you allow
those sub frequencies to be boosted or enhanced, etcetera, you can really help a song feel
more weighty.
Let those subs out.
It's a beautiful thing, sub frequencies.
Right?
A lot of modern mixes have a ton of subs and that's one way it can be achieved.
Now, if you come across a situation like I did in this song where things built pretty
darn big towards the end of this, and I actually was clipping my limiter – not going to get
into an argument with you guys about mixing through my buss compression.
If you see my stereo buss master class that's there, I mix through my limiter.
Some guys do it.
I feel like it gets me to the finish line quicker, so I do it, but we'll save that for
another day.
However, I did however notice that whenever I got to the peak of the song, it was hitting
my limiter too hard, and what I found to be the culprit was the low end.
So I went in and I automated some low end cuts to that specific section.
[mix]
Okay.
And it was happening during this build, because what I failed to mention was that I actually
have toms that I like some subs in my toms.
Sometimes I'll cut 70Hz and below.
It just depends, but what I like to do is automate it so that the toms can have a low
end sustain whenever there's room for it, and when there's not, I'll bring that back
and actually, I don't know if I've done that yet.
I started to do that, but here's the 65Hz and below.
What I might do is come in here and automate – let's go enable this.
Command+Control+Click, pull open that lane and I'll leave this up here so you guys can
see it.
For this particular fill, I love that the toms have that energy, but we have a lot of
sub stuff going on right here.
So what I may do is pull that up to anywhere from like, 85 to 100 to help it out a little
bit more, but something like this.
[mix]
We've got that sonic boom, so the sonic boom can dominate the low end on that particular
hit.
I'm not worried about the tom having a bunch of low end there, but for the build there,
it was causing the limiter to distort in a horrible way.
So let me back that up and let's hit play.
[mix]
Cool.
So we've cleaned up our toms, we've removed some of the – well, we've done preventative
maintenance for the low end so that it doesn't distort our processing, and we've arranged
the low end so that things are working together.
If you have any questions – if I went too fast or botched any of these explanations,
feel free to e-mail me.
David@davidglennrecording.com.
I definitely answer e-mails faster in The Mix Academy.
There's a forum and I get those first, but feel free to e-mail me and I will try my best
to explain it better.
So I hope you dig this.
Managing your low end.
David Glenn Recording, The Pro Audio Files, themixacademy.com.
Links are in the description below, and we'll catch you soon in another tutorial!