Let's talk about massive low ends

[ElDiablo1878]

I like big butts and I cannot lie

I find one of the things that really separates the men from the boys(in mixing and otherwise) is how they handle the low end

Listening to great metal mixes like The way of all flesh etc I find the low end holds up on any speakers/headphones and I find that difficult to replicate

Massive yet tight(lol this is too easy)and clear low-end being the aim, what helped you with these frequencies when you were starting out??

Cheers

 

[bryan_kilco]

This seems like one of the hardest parts of mixing.

I've been a "bedroom warrior" type hobbyist mixer for probably almost 10 years now and I constantly struggle with the low end.

One day I think I have a pretty good balanced mix going on, then a day or 2 later I come back to the same mix and hear too much bass guitar popping out. Never-ending battle.

 

[Machinated]

I think it's down to monitoring. to get it right you really have to be able to hear what's going on and that's what the big mixing engineers who get great low end have in their favour.

FWIW I think Tchad Blake is king in that regard at the moment, with an honourable mention to Alan Moulder. I also love the low end Cenzo Townshend gets. Tchad Blakes mixes for Arctic Monkeys and Black Keys are top. Sure refuse's lowender plays a part, but then having the monitoring to hear what it's really doing is more important. Easy to destroy your work....

 

[ElDiablo1878]

This seems like one of the hardest parts of mixing.

I've been a "bedroom warrior" type hobbyist mixer for probably almost 10 years now and I constantly struggle with the low end.

One day I think I have a pretty good balanced mix going on, then a day or 2 later I come back to the same mix and hear too much bass guitar popping out. Never-ending battle.

I hear ya man, I do literally the exact same thing. I have just chalked it down to some days I mix bassier than other days. I think setting a mix reference at the beginning has helped me here so I can go back to it to see what level I want it at

 

[ElDiablo1878]

I think it's down to monitoring. to get it right you really have to be able to hear what's going on and that's what the big mixing engineers who get great low end have in their favour.

FWIW I think Tchad Blake is king in that regard at the moment, with an honourable mention to Alan Moulder. I also love the low end Cenzo Townshend gets. Tchad Blakes mixes for Arctic Monkeys and Black Keys are top. Sure refuse's lowender plays a part, but then having the monitoring to hear what it's really doing is more important. Easy to destroy your work....

yea I think monitoring is a big part of it definitely....I think bedroom producers like me have to rely on spectrum analysers to try to get to that level, but there is no substitute for good monitoring...I'd say the source material is also really really important(as in all other frequencies) but i feel moreso in the low end

I struggle with the fact that when I try to get clarity in the low end I do it by cutting, but then I compare it to my mix reference and I realize I've lost a lot of the thickness....I'm sure experience will teach me something but curiosity is making me impatient to wait many years

 

[Jormyn]

Add me to the "can't do low end to save my life" camp.

For my money, it doesn't get much better than Dan Swano - the covers he recorded for the Odyssey reissue, or his mix on November's Doom - Into Night's Requiem Infernal... good god.

 

[frazzlepuff]

I hear ya man, I do literally the exact same thing. I have just chalked it down to some days I mix bassier than other days. I think setting a mix reference at the beginning has helped me here so I can go back to it to see what level I want it at

I agree about the reference mixes, I now have my session set up so I can instantly AB between my mix and reference mixes from the very start. It's amazing going back to mixes I did where I had no reference mixes and seeing how bass heavy they tended to be or whatever. Often the commercial mixes don't have as much bass as you'd think, it's just that it's kind of...nicer. I also wonder how much of an ''Awesome low end" is actually the low end, like you don't just hear the low end on it's own and I think the higher up frequencies massively affect how we perceive the low end. I was watching an interview with someone on Pensado's Place recently, I think it was maybe JJP, who was talking about this and saying about how the mid frequencies massively define the whole energy of a mix.

I'm discovering new things all the time. Lately I've really been liking Waves Lo Air on kicks for some low end punch. It synthesizes a low end below a frequency which you can set and has a knob for turning up or down the unsynthesized low end below that frequency too. It was originally designed for film post production like making explosions and earthquakes sounds bigger but I quite like the sound it gives to kicks.

I'm keen to hear other peoples tips on low end though, as you say, it separates the men from the boys!

 

[Random3]

Something I have found very useful to do is to A/B with reference mixes but with extreme low pass filters on them. I do this using the multi-bands on Ozone but you could do it with any single-band EQ. I have found it helps to isolate, say, 60Hz-100Hz and compare a commercial mix to my mix, and it helps with balancing the kick and bass properly.

EQ-wise for gluing the bass with the kick I tend to cut out everything below 40Hz on the kick and get it centered around 60-70Hz, and then a small cut around 100Hz which is where I find my bass peaks. I then cut everything below 60Hz-70Hz on bass so that it doesn't interfere with the kick.

I have experimented with side-chaining and I don't really use it very much. I am currently working on a mix where I am blending percussive slap bass with a synth bass, and side-chaining all of that to the kick has helped keep everything clear but for most mixes I prefer to isolate them with EQ.

 

[Canaan]

I think it's down to monitoring. to get it right you really have to be able to hear what's going on and that's what the big mixing engineers who get great low end have in their favour.

Agreed. What I find helps alot is to find a spot in your room where the low end is very audible and take note as to where and when certain frequencies seem to be flopping around. More than likely this will be stemming from the bass guitar. If so then throw some headphones on a try to find those frequencies and notch them out a little. Bass Rider + L1 on the low end of the bass is also your friend here. Bass Rider can really help Smooth track and L1 can pin it down.

If that's not working for you another really cool trick is to take the bass guitar and spilt it into 2 tracks convert 1 into midi via Autotune or Melodyne, etc then use a sine wav or vsti bass synth and replace the low end of the bass guitar with that. LP at around 90-100 for starters then you have a low end that remain constant that you can automate up and down as needed as needed. The second track remove all the low and low mid frequencies with a sharp high pass filter 300-350. Blend the 2 and now you have a bass and low end that is not as dynamic and a lot easier to manipulate. Hope this helps.

 

[Barnsy]

Agreed. What I find helps alot is to find a spot in your room where the low end is very audible and take note as to where and when certain frequencies seem to be flopping around. More than likely this will be stemming from the bass guitar. If so then throw some headphones on a try to find those frequencies and notch them out a little. Bass Rider + L1 on the low end of the bass is also your friend here. Bass Rider can really help Smooth track and L1 can pin it down.

If that's not working for you another really cool trick is to take the bass guitar and spilt it into 2 tracks convert 1 into midi via Autotune or Melodyne, etc then use a sine wav or vsti bass synth and replace the low end of the bass guitar with that. LP at around 90-100 for starters then you have a low end that remain constant that you can automate up and down as needed as needed. The second track remove all the low and low mid frequencies with a sharp high pass filter 300-350. Blend the 2 and now you have a bass and low end that is not as dynamic and a lot easier to manipulate. Hope this helps.

Man that is an inspiring post, I'm totally going into the studio tonight and trying all of this. Love the idea of VSTi bass synth handling the low end.

 

[Jormyn]

Extra points if you can put together a bass synth patch that sounds like the beginning of Orion and blend that in quietly with the rest.

 

[HollowmanPL]

Waves R-Bass

 

[Barnsy]

I've managed to transpose a bass DI track into MIDI using Melodyne, works pretty well. I have to source a good bass VSTi now, I am thinking of trying Trilian and the NI Kontakt Scarbie stuff. Something that I can blend with the real bass track and have the VSTi just be the subs/bottom end of the tone.

 

[Canaan]

If you have a synth that plays a sine wave that's all you need if you are blending with a real bass guitar.

 

[Terminus]

I learned from Pensado's Place to use an eq and lopass down to where you can only hear the low end work on it while switching the filter on and off.

 

[Heabow]

Low end was and still is a real nightmare for me. Lately, I tried different stuff. In some Eyal Levy's online courses, Aaron Smith says that he likes to listen to his mixes without the kick then unmute it and see how it affects the low end. I tried and I think it's a pretty good technique, easier to hear masking frequencies. Also I used to set my low end way too low, and too much. Now I set the kick at around 70-80Hz and my bass at 50-60Hz (I used to do the other way). Kick with a little bump, just enough to "feel" it but not more. I think I got better results so far.