I'll start the ball rolling - here's an excellent guide to perfecting your kick and bass by Eufex.
Kick and Bass Mastering
The first step in getting your bass mix right comes from choosing the right sounds to use in the first place, don't be tempted to try and fix it in the mix. If you want more bass in your track it isn't simply a case of turning up the bass EQ but if you want to make a pigs-ear of it then by all means do.
The Kick.
Years ago the 909 kick was de-rigueur but these days one of those straight out of the box sounds weedier than a gnats fart. Hard dance music is just that, HARD. The kicks need to be huge. How do you go about getting a huge kick? One way is to simply sample somebody else's (naughty) but that isn't being very creative. Over the years there have been literally thousands of different kick drums made and the sound is constantly being refined and reinvented. Whenever you buy a new record or get a new CD, always sample the kick drums to store in your library for later use.
Some may need cleaning up - random noise or cymbals may need to be removed. I'm not going to tell you how to do that because I want to make you think but I will give you a pointer: noise reduction is not the answer on a single kick, it will ruin the sound.
When you come to start writing a new track the first thing you will need to do is create a NEW kick. You already have your huge library of kicks to hand so you can start by getting several kicks that you like the sound of and that you think will fit together and then start experimenting layering those kicks together in various amounts. You may only need to use two or three kicks to get the sound you want. The sound can then be further refined with the use of compression, EQ and distortion or any other effect (careful!).
At this point you are using EQ creatively to alter the sound's character significantly. Extreme boosts don't tend to work well in the bass area, as you will find that you have problems when it comes to the mixdown. Compression can be used to tighten the kick, lengthen the decay or to add pop to the attack; again this is using compression as a creative tool. Always save your layered kicks and make new kicks with those too - your library will constantly grow and your 'depth of sound' will get greater.
The Bass
You've got your kick, now you need a bass to go with it. It's a good idea to just sit in the studio for an afternoon every now and again and program bass sounds on whatever synthesisers you have available, sample them off and store them away for later use - it is much easier to have a library of bass sounds to hand than to try and program a sound that will fit with your kick drum. Again your bass sounds can be layered together to create new ones. You can also significantly change the character of your bass sounds with EQ and/or filtering. Again we are being creative at this point and trying to make the character of the sound how we want it so anything goes.
Mixing the two together
The mixdown is usually the last thing that gets done to a track, after all the programming, writing, arranging etc. Mute everything apart from the kick and the bass (which incidentally must have their own separate mixer channels), you are going to be listening to this for quite some time and at high volume so your neighbours are going to hate you if you aren't sound-proofed. Don't be tempted to try and mix anything else in your track until you have your foundations in place, you will be wasting your time.
There is a minimum of facilities that are required to be able to get that pro sound in the bass on every track that you mix. It can be done with less equipment but much more time needs to be spent when you create the kick and bass sound in the first place (as will become apparent).
An absolute must is a decent pair of monitor speakers, positioned correctly and with you sitting in the correct position. Your room needs to be well damped and you will find from time to time, if you are in a small control room or project studio, that depending on what frequencies are in the sounds you are using different items in the room will buzz or vibrate - you need to damp or shield these so you can hear what is coming from the speakers and nothing else.
Also required is a mixing desk or facility (could be in your PC) where you can group tracks together, a compressor and decent EQ. If you are using an analogue desk you will probably not have enough EQ to do the job and will need to insert extra parametric (preferably) or graphic EQ on both the kick and bass channels.
So, first things first - listen to any hard dance records and you notice that the kick and the bass are at roughly the same volume level. So, presuming that your desk is normalised, solo the kick and adjust the volume so that it is peaking at around +3 to +6 DB on the main output meter (if your mixer goes to +15). You want the maximum amount of volume coming from the kick channel (if you are in software you can set this to slightly below maximum) while leaving enough headroom on the main outputs to fit the rest of your mix in. Why is the kick so loud? We want to get the best signal to noise ratio possible and to use the full bandwidth available on the mixer.
The same process is then done with the bass, solo it and set it to the same (or just slightly less) level on the main meters.
Listen to the two sounds together and note what the main meter is now doing - depending on what parts you have written the output will be moving around somewhat. Ideally you want the volume level in the bass end to be fairly constant otherwise headroom will be used up for no reason and bass 'power' will be lost. Compression needs to be used to smooth the levels out. This has the effect of increasing the average volume whilst using no more headroom. Both the kick and the bass need to be compressed together so the two channels need to be grouped and a compressor placed on the insert of the group. How the compressor is set very much depends on the material and there are several articles on compression out there. A good starting point would be to use 6:1 compression with a fast attack (to let the peaks on the kick to come through) and a release of around 150ms. The amount of gain reduction again depends on the source material.
Depending on the speed of the track the compressors release setting can cause 'pumping' - that is where the overall volume pumps up and down in time with the track. You may want this effect or you may not. If you are going to make the mix pump be very subtle otherwise it just sounds naff. The compressor type will affect the character in the bass end so use the right one - you might want to use a fairly transparent compressor or you might choose to go with a very hard compressor for a more noticeable and aggressive effect. One thing to notice is that on notes where both kick and bass coincide, the volume of the kick will lessen if too much processing is applied.
Volume and compression are now set. Already the bass mix will seem to have much more energy than when you started out. Now comes the difficult part.
EQ'ING THE BASS
Previously creative EQ has been used to make new sounds (art). Now EQ is going to be used in a much more technical way to perfect the bass mix (craft).
A couple of notes before we start, if the bass sound is bass light don't try to simply boost the low end EQ - it makes for a muddy mix. Always remember that if you cut one end of the frequency spectrum comparatively you are boosting the other end. So to boost that bottom end you would roll off the top end and increase the volume level back to where it was previously. EQ cuts sound much better than boosts when mixing down, especially in digital systems.
To get a tight mix you need to be very accurate with your Eqing so be warned, this is going to take time, especially for a start. If it means spending a couple of hours just to EQ the bass then put the work in, the results will be worth it.
Every kick and bass you mix together will be different so there is no point in having or using the same 'magical' EQ settings unless you use the exact same sounds every time. I would recommend sitting down and listening to the bass end in some really well produced tracks. What do you notice? The kick and the bass don't interfere with each other, they sound 'tight' and they don't bloat out the whole mix. They 'sit' right.
Now we are going to get our bass to sound like that. This is where the decent monitors come in, without them you will really struggle to do the job.
CRANK UP THE VOLUME
That's right really crank it up! If you are using near-fields you should be around 3- 4 feet away from the speakers, you need to be monitoring loud enough so that you are really 'inside' the sound. Don't monitor so loud that your ears start to hurt, go numb or ring - if you do you are monitoring too loud to be able to hear things properly and you will be doing yourself some damage. Don't try and mix the bass by monitoring quietly - what you have already probably sounds great when listened to at those volumes. It isn't! This is heavy music that is played loudly in clubs, not on tiny home stereos.
A quick note on 'harmonics'.
All sounds are made from a combination of sine waves. If you want to see the maths behind this look on the web for 'Fourier Analysis'. In any sound there is a fundamental (or root) pitch plus a combination of harmonics. A harmonic is simply a multiple of the root pitch, i.e. the second harmonic is a sine wave at twice the pitch of the fundamental. So a square wave for example is made from a root sine wav plus every other odd harmonic going upwards in diminishing amounts.
Listen carefully to the bass. If it sounds bass light in comparison to the kick, use a high cut EQ (or the lo pass filter in your sampler) to reduce the high frequencies and thus boost the bass. The frequency to cut to depends very much on the bass sound itself. If it is almost pure bass you could get rid of everything above 500-750 HZ. If the bass has a clanky attack you may want to keep that clank in and cut at a higher frequency - 1000 to 2000 Hz maybe. It's all relative to the sounds you are using.
After each EQ change check the volume of the bass on its own again to make sure it is still at the correct level. If it has changed alter the volume accordingly.
You will notice that as you progressively EQ the bass that it will start to sound very different to the sound you started with, this is normal and nothing to worry about, you've just got used to hearing the sound in its' unaltered state. Don't get into the mindset where you can't EQ the sound in a certain way because it makes it different to how it 'should' sound. It has got to sound that way to work with the kick.
EQ'ING THE BASS - CONTINUED
Listen very carefully at the lower end of the frequency spectrum. Does it sound like there is a constant hum or note down there that runs through the notes that are being played. If there is then that is a 'ringing' harmonic - in other word one that isn't needed, all it is doing is using up valuable headroom and bloating the mix out. If you listen again you will also perhaps note that it makes the mix sound too fat and interferes with the kick, frequencies around 110-115 Hz are the usual culprits.
The frequency needs to be isolated and reduced until things sharpen up. The best EQ to use for this is a parametric as specific frequencies can be isolated but a graphic can be used at a pinch. The results will never be as sharp though. You now need to listen elsewhere for harmonics that ring out or whistle - these can be anywhere in the frequency spectrum. You might want to keep one or two of them in there if they are in tune with the bass notes playing (a-la Klub bass) but be careful what you leave. If you leave the wrong harmonics, especially as you start to move into the 200Hz region they will start to interfere with the lower-mids of the sounds in the rest of your mix. Again when you get a handle on where the 'bad' harmonics are, isolate them with a band of parametric EQ and reduce them until they no longer ring out.
So that's the bass Eqed. Well, not quite. The sub end of things needs to be looked at, if there is too much sub in there the mix may sound great on your small speakers but when you play it on something larger you could max out the amps or blow the cones out. A nice little check is to listen to the mix through headphones. For a few seconds crank the headphone volume right up and listen to the kick drum - it will be making the headphones buzz quite a lot. Now listen to the bass, if it's making the headphones buzz about the same amount then things are OK in the sub department. If it's REALLY making the headphones buzz then you have too much sub on the bass. Another check is to look and see how much the bass sound makes your speaker cones flap in comparison to the kick - if it looks like your cones are about to blow with the power then, again there is too much sub in there. If your speakers are larger or you have a sub box then you are laughing. I bet the neighbours love you! A low shelf at 49Hz with about 2-3 DB of reduction will suffice if you have too much energy in that region.
It's almost there now. It's now a good idea to add an open hi hat, set a rough volume level for it and then listen to see if there are any harmonics that shouldn't be there between the 'real' bass and the hats. If there is, again, using parametric, get hold of those frequencies in the bass and EQ them out. That's the bass Eqed.
Now go back to listening to just the kick and the bass. Listen with more of an emphasis on the kick. Mostly you don't need to do any EQ work on the kick but sometimes there will be just the odd harmonic that seems to 'ring' out on top of the kick and the bass. If it's too much and clouds things up, reduce it, again with a parametric.
Along with this article are two samples using the kick and bass from Ravage 4 'Resident 4 President' so you can hear before and afterwards. Please "RIGHT CLICK and SAVE AS" to download the sample.
Unprocessed Sample
Processed Sample
The EQ settings on this example were as follows:
Bass
Lo Shelf @ 49Hz 2.5db cut
Parametric @ 112Hz 10.4db cut Q on max
Parametric @ 279 Hz 2.5db cut Q on max
Hi Cut at 1500Hz
Kick
No EQ used
Compressor settings:
Ratio 7:1
Attack 10ms
Release 142 ms
Threshold -28db
If you apply these EQ setting one at a time to the un-EQed sample you will be able to hear the 'ringing' harmonics in the bass (remember in real life you would be Eqing the kick and the bass separately)
And that is it. Job done. The track should now have a tight and punchy bottom end that will rock on any sound system. There are now just the other 50 sounds to sort out.
AUTHOR - Eufex - http://www.eufex.co.uk
Eufex is widely regarded to be in the 'super league' of hard dance producers, his own productions have appeared on over 20 labels including Nukeluz, Ravage and Vicious Circle, he Djs throughout the UK and has engineered albums for Storm and Sundiisential amongst others