Hahahahah, we totally came to a misunderstanding here! I always use two kick tracks, the second one going from 400-16000 (I highpass it @400 to avoid any midrange mud a kick might have and leave more space for the snare that I usually have at 200-400hz)! In SD, those are in and out kick tracks. I was only talking about the low/low mid part of the spectrum, so I disregarded that I use another track for that meaty attack up there, and I use two tracks because I can't be bothered to work with multiband compression on things that can so easily be separated. When I said my kick has nothing above 60hz I actually meant that there's nothing more to it on the track that we 'hear' and 'feel' as that low, sub kick punch. My kick sounds tiny on its own, but when you get bass, kick and guitar (and snare, even) to punch together, it's really heavy because they don't get into each other's ranges.
Anyway, now that it's cleared up, I'd like to comment on the sidechain technique and why it is not always the best solution. I've had discussion about this when it comes to toms, how do you fit toms into an already maxed out mix? Sidechain compression doesn't help this much if you want toms to be an integral part of the mix, more than an occasional 'kick enchantment', since you're just replacing certain frequencies in the same range. Sure, if you lower your bass guitar to have toms punch through, you will get a punch instead of a very consistent tone, but is it really going to sound like a heavy punch after a few minutes of really low and consistent bass guitar rumble? The solution here is not to max out bass frequencies when mixing, meaning that you should best leave a few DBs of headroom down there anyway, so you can use it for special occasions. This comes as a no brainer, but some people really seem to forget it (myself included
) Some of Sneap's work on Arch Enemy albums utilizes this: if there are prominent tom runs in the song, bass guitar and kick will be backed off a little in the low spectrum, so once that toms come into the mix, you don't get a whole bass range of replaced frequencies, but instead get a lot of NEW content while the old one is still running strong, and of course, know that master compressor will take care of anything else that might bug this idea.
Now, when it comes to higher frequencies, we have a different thing going on. Usually we will have a lot of headroom, but still want the bass to poke through and not get overshadowed by guitar ALL the time, and especially, we want to hear it on mutes. This can be done in several ways. I like what Gojira did on L'enfant sauvage album.
About 8 seconds into the video, the bass guitar kicks in and it punches through guitars really nicely. How is it so tight yet they fit so well? Well, first off, it is that 1-2khz range. This range is where this bass 'honk' resides, and seriously, you can hear every attack. As for guitar, after utilizing spectral analysis on the 'guitar only' part of this song I realized this range is pretty dead on mutes. 1-2khz range is where the attack of new strings comes through most audibly, both on guitar and bass it seems, so when you have a slightly overdriven bass guitar it will enrich it and compress it so it fits nicely, and when you pound palm muted riffs, you will temporarily kill this range on guitars. So really, what kind of a bass guitar tone you want will also depend on arrangement. What are you actually playing is a great deal of what kind of a bass/guitar relationship you will want, and this goes both for low and high frequencies. If you have a guitar with a really strong honk area, around 1-2khz, you might scoop it @800hz and get bass to punch through 800hz, but this will result in a highly undesirable tone (if it's not your cup of tea
).
If you are to use the same tone for distorted bass as you use for guitar, know this: Once mutes come in, any attack of new strings is subdued: meaning that if you have a guitar tone in the background, even 3db lower, but with the same honk range it will poke through if you're playing it nonmuted. The same principle applies to a distorted bass guitar track, so what roflsaurusrex suggested for the tone of bass guitar is, in fact, highly advisable, though it would also be nice to lowpass that tone at 3-4khz so you don't get a lot of junk in there along with it.
The reason why guitars and distorted bass are so hard to mix is exactly what the poster described as one of his greatest problems - guitars' sharpness vs guitar's size. When you increase low frequencies you give the guitar more punch. You can easily compare this to another guitar track and hear if the other one has more, since you don't have many ranges to deal with. First you have that 70-120 range (and even lower if you're micing a cab and have to deal with resonances). This range will at best have one harmonic, and that is, one that'll mud things up, while bass guitar will have two harmonics in this range. It only makes sense to make this range richer by putting bass guitar into it instead of guitar, as Andy said, bass frequencies are to be dominated by kick and bass, and not guitars. And now we get to that troublesome 120-250 range. Why troublesome? Because it's a minefield, 120-180 will sound great, and from 180-250 it starts getting incredibly muddy and ear fatiguing, but you HAVE to leave this range so that mutes can punch through once you go up the fretboard. You have to examine this 180-250 range with so much caution because it will be so easy to kill the punch of guitar if you remove too much and make guitars mud everything up by having too much. However much this range is hard to mix, it gets better: We must decide the voicing of our guitars through IRs and EQ (and amps, obviously) as well as playing and selection of guitar. All things combined, the guitar sound will PEAK at some frequency range. To get a really heavy tone you will want guitars to peak at around 2.5khz - 5khz range, but if you want that modern djenty tone, you will probably want to make them somewhat honkier or much more aggressive in that 2.5khz - 5khz range. This is very tricky since, as many have said on this forum already, a 0.5db cut or boost in this range can make or break the tone in an instant, so you have to be incredibly careful. This is solved this way: listen to track with desired guitar sound and match your monitoring loudness to where you like it the most. THEN make your desired tone. Also make sure cymbals aren't obstructing your high end on guitars!
