So today I want to give you the key to a banging track regardless of genre and it's all about
balancing your low end that is your kick and your bass. If you get your kick and bass relationship
wrong it's almost impossible to create a really good, solid well-balanced, track. Listen to these
three different examples of an idea with different low end treatment. I'm also going
to filter out the high end, so we can really hear the difference in that low end
Okay, so the first one is a common mistake that music producers make, which is just boosting the
low frequencies, hoping it's going to make their track more Bassy; but as we can hear it's actually
too boomy and it's overbearing and when we try and get the rest of our track up to that loudness
we're going to run out of Headroom and our tracks just gonna sound muddy quiet and horrible.
So, the second one is balance better in terms of frequency but we can hear it's just like this
big long bass sound now that might sound okay on your headphones, your studio monitors but if
you're in a big club or a festival, those giant cones those bass speakers are just going to be
going and that's going to sound horrible because everyone's going to lose the Groove On The Dance
Floor. There's no definition between the kick and the bass, there's no Groove so that's another No-No.
so in this one we can hear we've got a nice balance between the kick and the bass in terms
of volumes and we've got some nice definition in terms of the low end Groove and that's exactly
what I'm going to show you how to do today now before we start most low end videos on YouTube
my own included make two main mistakes one they assume people's ears know what to listen
out for which is about as useful as saying trust your ears spoiler alert if you can't
make music that you like it means that your ears alone can't be trusted otherwise you wouldn't be
watching this video right now so I'm going to show you a hack to get around that problem and
the second problem one again that I'm guilty of is trying to give one size fits all in terms of
levels and settings but again depending on which genre you're creating what key your track is in
and a bunch of other things there isn't just a one-size-fits-all settings or levels so with that
in mind today I do want to give you a one size fits-all approach despite what I just said but
you'll see the difference in a couple of minutes because this approach relies on other people's
ears okay step number one is decide what kind of track you're writing and what kind of bass
you're using so will there be a very short sharp staccato 16th base like in melodic techno track
will there be a long sustained re-space like in track that's got a respace and this is really
important because you need to select a reference track that has got a similar kind of bass and a
similar kind of vibe this means that if you're writing a DubStep track you're measuring your
low end balance against another dubstep track similarly if you're writing a melodic techno
track with a 16th repeating bass you want to be measuring your low end balance against a
melodic techno reference track that's also got a 16th repeating bass this is going to give you
the surest far away to hack using other people's ears and getting a balance that works for your
genre of music and if you can get it in the same key as your track that's going to make this even
easier so no more blabbing let's find out how to do it let's hop into the door and get it done
okay so the first thing we want to do once we've selected our reference track is to drag it into
a blank audio Channel within our DAW and there are a few tools here that you can see we've got Sesame
and they're going to be really important in what we're doing today so let's go through those tools
but we're just going to make sure that this is in sync so we'll turn on our metronome and press play
so we can hear it's in sync and the easiest way to find out how to get it in sync is to just look up
the tempo of your reference track on the internet go into the clip make sure that you warp it to the
correct Tempo and that the start marker is set to the first transient of the track and then it
should be nicely in sync and you can actually see it visually as well we can see here the drops are
happening on the grid there and there so we know that's in sync fantastic now let's look at how we
set up our door to reference and get this low end balanced so first let's look at our ghost
track or our reference track Channel you can see here we've got two utility plugins we've got an
eq8 and then we've got this plugin called span which is basically just a free Spectrum analyzer
and I'll link to that below this video next we want to look at the routing so I've set this to
external out now you'll see why very shortly but by default this would have been set to master so
it's going to go to our Master Channel but as I say I'm going to set this to external out for now
and that's because we've got our own plugins on our Master channel that will just be for balancing
our low end okay let's go through these plugins one by one so first we've got a utility that's
just taking down our reference Trap by 12 decibels and this is so we can account for the fact it's
already been mastered because if we try and use this as a reference track against our track it's
going to sound much fatter and much louder because it's already gone through the mastering process so
-12 is going to take this usually down to about minus 18 luft's average volume which is roughly
what we need so it's not an exact science but we can check that so if we load in this Julian
loudness meter again another free plug-in this is going to measure the average volume so let's
just hit this and let's have a look we'll turn off the metronome now it's in sync so we'll go
to the busiest part of the track and check the average volume okay so it's a bit quieter than
that so let's put that to minus 10. and look at this integrated excellent so it's roughly
minus 18 so that's perfect for what we're doing today okay next one of the plugins we have here
is another utility and this is just switching our track from stereos to Mono now the reason
that that we are doing this is because our ears get very easily distracted especially by the
stereo field so if your ears are as stupid as mine you basically want to make it as easy as
possible to focus on what it is that you should be focusing on so what we're going to be doing is
we're going to be taking out the stereo field by having said mono we're also going to be taking out
the high end because we're going to be focusing on the low end balance and that's what these two
plugins do so we've got an eq8 after this utility which is cutting off everything above about 110
Hertz and we basically want it to be so we can just hear the rumble of the kick and the bass
and that's usually anywhere between 110 and 130 Hertz okay and now we've got the
span which we've already touched upon just a spectrum analyzer and then the
Uli and loudness meter which we don't really need anymore but we'll leave
it there for shits and giggles okay so now let's look at our track we've got our kick
we've got our EQ which is kind of separate from this this is just getting the right kick and
remember to check out that tutorial on getting the right kick and then we've got an LFO tool
which we're going to touch upon shortly and then we've got our bass sound which is broken into two
we've got our mid bass like this and we can just filter out everything under about 122 Hertz and
then we've got our sub bass which is separate from that mid bass and we've just done an EQ
the opposite way so we've got control separately over the mid frequencies of our bass and the sub
frequencies and that's going to be very important when it comes to balancing the bass it also allows
us to have a different degree of side chain bounce with sidechain compression like this
a different amount for the mid and the sub bass if we so choose [Music]
which is going to allow us to gel it with the kick even better and then on our Master Channel
we've got this utility here which we can set to Mono using a little keyboard shortcut and
you can set that by pressing command and K or control and K if you're using Windows
clicking on that mono button and I set it to be option and M because nothing else in Ableton
uses that shortcut and then we can quickly switch our mix to be mono or stereo like so
very very handy because again we're going to be taking out the stereo field so we can balance
the low end much more easily then we've got an eq8 much like we do on the reference track and
then another one of the span Spectrum analyzers so let's start balancing this kick and bass together
and get that perfect low end first thing you want to do is make sure that your kick is peaking at
-12 DB so let's just play this on its own and we can see it's peaky at about minus 13 and a half
so we're going to pump this up a little bit okay there we go so it's not in the exact science but
roughly -12 is great now this is where we start comparing it to our reference track so we've got
our reference track here I'm going to switch on this eq8 so we're taking out everything above
108 I'm going to make sure that our roll-off is happening in exactly the same place so that's 108
and now we can switch between the two and listen how closely the kind of peak of that kick matches
so we're listening out for the low end energy
so yes this has got the bass playing as well and ideally if your reference track has a part of it
that just has the kick playing without the bass that's going to be easier to match your kick in
terms of levels but if you set it to -12 Peak it's almost guaranteed to be a similar level and you
can switch between that and just listen does the energy level of that Main bump sound comparable
that's ultimately what we're going for but as I said our ears can't always be trusted especially
if they're not used to this kind of work yet so what we can do is open up the span on our channel
for our reference track we can also open up the second span that we have on our Master Channel
and now we can play our kick whilst we're seeing what the reference track is doing
so this is the reference track kick here and what I've done is I've set the mode of these
spans to high resolution so we can really see the fundamental frequency of the kick which is
this one here which we can see kind of going boom boom boom so if we compare ours our boom boom boom
is here and they're both hitting about -36 on this scale when you open them side by side so it sounds
good and it looks kind of comparable so that is already a great place to start our kick is kind of
in the right place and remember we're looking to get this about 90 similar 85 90 because we haven't
done any mixing yet we haven't done any mastering yet so it's not going to be able to sound exactly
the same as our reference track so now it's a case of balancing the levels of the bass now what we
can do for that is with our filter still on like so we can play our reference track with the bass
switch to hours
and just bring up that base like so I'd leave the base bus at 0 DB
actually and I bring up first the sub bass which is this one
so it's kind of sounds similar
so let's just have a quick check on the span so we'll open up both spans
okay I mean it looks like it's a similar shape it's kind of and that's why it's important
that the tracks be in the same key because then these frequencies are going to be very similar
we can see in our track here we have got more stuff going on down here and that's because they
would have rolled off everything under about 30 Hertz more or less when they mastered this
track so we can kind of mimic that on our Master Channel we're just going to roll off everything
under 30 Hertz as well and we can see here now it's even closer to the reference track
and now it's a case of getting the upper harmonics or using our mid bass
so if we listen to the reference track even with the filter on
there's a bit more energy
in the low mids so we'll bring up our mid Bass
it's subtle but that's off and that's on we can hear
it kind of sounds almost the same and all we're done in terms of mixing is adjust the levels the
comparative levels so let's turn off the EQ or at least this upper one and we'll turn off the EQ of
our reference track and now let's see how our base and kick is balanced so that's the reference track
foreign
so that's sounded pretty good already to me and we've got some side chain compression so
the bass can bounce against the kick and kind of slot in nicely and if we do need to adjust
the difference between the sub and the bass we can use this reference thing technique and then we can
just adjust the volume of these separate mixer channels now the last really important factor
I want to touch upon when it comes to balancing the low end in your mix is the transient energy of
your kick and your bass now this is what we heard in example two at the beginning of this video it's
when we have a very flabby bass line that's not going to give the bass speakers any time to relax
in between each hit so if we listen to our kick drum on its own let's just turn off our filter
we've got this LFO tool and what I've done here is I've just made
this a shorter Kick Drum so this is when the LFO tool is turned off
and this is when it's turned on
so it doesn't sound like much of a big difference
but if we look at our sub bass as well and have a listen to it
that's actually quite short and sharp whereas if it's like this
yes the side chain compression helps when it's bouncing But
ultimately the low end is going to end up flabby and out of control so
we'll put our filter back on and our Master Channel and just have a listen
and then we've got that effect where it's just like one long now if you have got a sustained
base like a re-space yes your Baseline is going to be sustained but then your Kick's gonna have
to be really short and Punchy so it doesn't end up clashing with your bass line and again
this is where comparing to a reference track is so important because if we listen to this
reference track we can hear the kick but we can hear each separate 16th bass note going do
where is an owls [Music]
it's a bit flabbier and that's exactly why I put this LFO tool on the kick drum to make it
shorter and it's also why I dial in the Decay on the sub bass to be really short and punchy
and just imagine the big speakers in the club they've got time to release in between each
pulse which is going to translate the groove of your track to the dance floor on the big speakers
and help you avoid a horrible flabby low end and that really is a solid foundation for a track now
like I can now go on to add the Beats I can now go on to add whichever other sounds I want in
that track and the kick in the bass the levels of balance they're comparable to our reference
track so I know that this is a solid foundation for a great track so we've touched on some very
powerful techniques today for balancing your kick and bass in the fastest possible way but if that
kick isn't the right sound or if that bass isn't the right sound any amount of balancing
isn't going to make it into a good track now which of those two things do you think is the
most important in fact don't bother letting me know in the comments below I'll just tell you
the bass is the most important out of the kick in the bass because the bass is what's going to give
the track the character and the vibe and the tombra and then we can find a kick to match in
with that bass so I put together how to find the perfect base for your track regardless of genre in
this video here but before you watch that if you enjoyed this you found it useful please give it
a like and consider subscribing to my channel for music production tips like this each and
every week thank you so much for watching and I'll catch you over at that next video