Greetings, fellow music makers!
This here is a little guide on how to get some extra depth to the low end of your tracks.
In this guide I will be using FL Studio, but same principles apply to any modern producing software. These are just my personal views so feel free to disagree on anything. I'm always using < 160 Hz as the low frequency range. This is just for convenience in writing, and should by no means be strictly adhered to. Use whatever range you like.
1. Sub bass doesn't like company
Human hearing works in such a way, that in a given frequency, the listener hears only the loudest sound. For example, if you have instrument A (-3dB) and instrument B (-6dB) both at 1000-2000 Hz, the listener will consciously hear only instrument A at 1000-2000 Hz. However, instrument B will still interfere in the mix, making instrument A sound "muddy". Since that part of instrument B won't be heard well anyway, it's best to get rid of it altogether. As a result, instrument A will sound much better.
( In theory, that is. In practice, you'll have a lot of overlapping in your tracks, but let's not get into that now, as this is just a guide on low frequencies.)
With the above in mind, only two main instruments should exist in the low frequencies: bass drum (a.k.a. kick) and the bassline.
Randomly occurring samples and effects aside, get rid of the low end of everything else! In all other instruments - leads, pads, drums, whatever - cut everything below 160 Hz using a hi-pass EQ or filter. The instruments may sound like they're not making any low sounds, but do it anyway. It may sound like EQing one instrument doesn't make any difference at all, but do it anyway. Your final track can easily have something like 5-10 main instruments, and they all accumulate useless "garbage" to the low frequencies. Your bass is much better off without it.
2. Make it mono
Another feature of the human hearing is that it does not sense direction at low frequencies. If you don't believe me, put your friends in front of a home theater system, blindfold them, play some music and tell them to point where the subwoofer is.
All stereo effects below 160 Hz are just needlessly messing up the sound. Use a visualization plugin to make sure everything below 160 Hz is coming out as mono.
Also, for low frequencies, forget all about delay, reverb, flanger, phaser and other such effects. You don't want them there.
You might want to split up the signal so that the bass sound below and above 160 Hz go into their separate channels. This way you can add effects and tweak the >160 Hz channel to your heart's content. You might even want to create the sound for the two channels from separate instruments so that the low one is mono all the way from the start. But if you don't want to go into that much tweaking - I often don't - try OtiumFX BassLane. It's a handy free tool that you can use to convert the sound into mono below the frequency of your choice. That way you can quickly create for example a distorted stereo bass that is still mono at the low end.
3. Sine is good
Now that the bass and kick have the lowest frequencies all for themselves, use a layer (i.e. several synths playing the same notes) and add some sine wave to your bass layer. A simple sine waveform is a really deep sound. You can rarely go wrong by adding low-pass filtered sine to your bass. Just don't make it too loud. No need for heavy CPU usage or any unintentional sound processing here, so use a simple plugin like the 3xosc.
4. Sidechaining
It can be a huge pain in the ass trying to EQ the bass and kick so that both could be heard clearly. Good news: you don't necessarily have to. Sidechain them, and then you can EQ them just to make them sound nice.
In short, sidechaining means linking two instruments together so that when instrument A is playing, instrument B is automatically quiet. Apply this to the bassdrum and the bassline.
Since the listener hears only the loudest sound at a given frequency (as explained above), sidechaining creates the illusion that both the kick and the bass are playing simultaneously, when in reality the bass is quiet when the kick hits. Since the low bass frequencies now won't interfere with the kick, it sounds clearer, more powerful, and also louder without actually adding any volume.
However, the bassline will probably have much more material at the higher frequencies than the kick (depends on the track of course, but anyway). You probably don't want to silence the higher frequencies of the bassline for no reason. That would just sound silly. So, use a multiband compressor, and apply sidechaining to only the low frequencies.
Here's how to do it in FL studio:
All your instruments or layers should reside in separate mixer channels. First add a peak controller to the kick channel. Peak controller monitors the signal level and lets you do things with it.
Make sure the peak controller is at the uppermost slot, so it won't be affected by whatever effects you add to the kick later. Set decay speed to maximum so that it works as fast as possible, and make sure the output is not muted (the mute switch defaults to on for some strange reason). Ignore the LFO section.
Then, add a multiband compressor to the bass channel. If you're going to add delay, reverb or other such effects, place the compressor below (=after) those effects, so that the volume change will work as intended. In other words, put other sound-changing effects between the peak controller and the multiband compressor. (No such effects are used in this guide.)
1. Right-click the compressor low band threshold knob, select "link to controller", and the following link menu pops up.
In the "internal controller" menu, select "peak" (no lfo!) of the peak controller you created earlier. The compressor knob is now linked to the peak controller.
If the program suggests you to remove conflicts, Do NOT do so. Sometimes you might want to link several compressors to one peak, and this option removes other links.
Then, from the "mapping formula" menu, select "inverted". This inverts the signal (it normally is at minimum with peaks towards maximum, but in the threshold knob it should be at maximum with peaks towards minimum).
All right. Click accept, and you're back to the compressor. Continue doing the following steps as shown in the previous image:
2. Set the low band to active.
3. Give the low band an appropriate frequency range. The bands should not overlap or leave a gap between them (that'd mess up the sound). Make the curve look something like the one in the green circle.
4. You're working with the lower frequencies only, so set mid and high frequence bands to bypass. This way the compressor doesn't do anything to them.
5. Finally, set the attack and release values to minimum, to make the compressor work as fast as possible. If you get an unusual amount of crackling noise when the compressor works, set the values a bit higher or try increasing the peak controller decay a bit.
Now lay down some kick and bass notes if you haven't done so already. Play the track, and see if the peak controller output and the compressor knob "dance" to the rhythm of the bass drum. If not, smash your face to the keyboard and start over to see if everything went right in the above steps.
If you get to this point and your forehead isn't bleeding too badly, congrats. Turn off all other instruments besides the bass (right-click at the green button in the mixer's bass channel) and start playing the track. Even with the mixer channel muted, the kick keeps affecting the compressor. In this mode, you can clearly hear the bass volume going up and down.
You can adjust how powerful the effect is by tweaking the peak controller volume and/or the compressor ratio (which has to be more than 1:1 for it to work). The idea is, that you should clearly hear the effect when the kick drum is muted, and you shouldn't hear it much when the kick is unmuted. If you can hear the effect clearly with all instruments on, make the compressor compress a little less, adjust its frequency range, and/or if your kick has a long tail, remove it.
Again, the improved clarity and power of the sound may or may not be immediately noticeable. However, all the things done so far combine and add up to the sound. With all of the above done, the combined effect is definitely noticeable - so don't give up if it doesn't immediately sound awesome.
Sidechaining can be tremendously useful in the higher frequencies as well. Use your imagination. You might want to have pads dodge the main lead, for example. Or if you're making drum'n'bass, you might want a whole bunch of instruments dodge the snare drum. I won't get into that in detail now, however.
5. Keep epic bass riffs epic
If you've made a monster bass riff that makes everyone's skin crawl, you might be disappointed at the kick smothering it out. Yet you might need the kick there. In this case, the riff is more important than the clarity of the kick, so you can temporarily turn the sidechaining compressor off.
Select the pattern the monster riff is in, and then right-click on the on/off button (the small green one) next to the compressor, and select "edit events". Remember that this saves the envelope in the currently selected pattern. Draw the envelope to temporarily turn the compressor off.
Remember to have the compressor turned back on at the end of the pattern. Otherwise it may be left off at the wrong place, especially if you move patterns around. Also, for convenience, you might want to turn the compressor on and select "init song with this position" in the same menu you selected "edit events" in. This makes sure the song always starts with the compressor on, no matter what you do to it later in the track.
The compressor should not alter the sound when the kick is not hitting notes. Play the track and turn the compressor on and off at a "non-kicking" section of the track to make sure. Change can occur if the signal level is above -0dB when it enters the compressor, which may happen with distortion plugins, for example. If this is the case, reduce post gain in the effect that makes the sound louder. (In some rare cases it may even be the synth itself giving out more than -0dB.
6. Chop & tune
The longer the kick is, the larger chunks it chops away from the bass sound. In slow, hypnotic music it can be a desired effect. In fast-paced music, if you're using sample packs, you might want to shorten the kick a little. The tail is often unneeded anyway.
A short kick envelope needs only some hold time.
If possible, tune the kick so that it's playing the same note as the base note of the bassline. This makes the combination of those two sound a lot better. You may not be able to discern what note the kick is at, but play it a few octaves higher and you will. Then select the appropriate low octave note. If it changes the sound of the kick too much and it starts to sound bad, see if you could find another kick sample that would be more suitable.
7. Keep it down
Don't make the combined volume of all instruments exceed -0dB. This can distort the sound, make tweaking more difficult, and give unpredictable rendering results (final wav sounding different than playback in FL studio). Instead have the instruments play somewhere around -10 to -6 dB, and as a very last effect in the master channel, apply a limiter to boost the signal to the maximum.
8. Hit play and hit the door
So you've made some nice bass melodies, and they sound great from your headphones. The track is quite awesome from your home monitors as well. Then it gets played live from a big PA in a party, and all of the sudden all the nice bass melodies are gone, and all you can hear is some loud, muddy rumbling. You're just about to complain at the party organizers about the lousy PA, but then you notice the next track sounds just fine. What's going on?
Well, sound waves act differently in different environments. If possible, play the track from various sound systems in various environments (hi-quality speakers, crappy laptop speakers, car, etc) before releasing the track. One trick for working with the low frequencies is to start playing the track, getting out of the room and closing the door. If you can't hear the bass notes changing in the low indistinct rumble coming through the wall, then you probably won't be hearing them in a big party either. You may be missing some of the higher "warm" bass frequencies (150-400 Hz or something like that). The track will never sound good through your wall, but EQ it until you at least hear what's going on in the bassline. Keep playing some extremely well-produced tracks for comparison. Once you're done with that, you might notice that it now sounds even better from your headphones and monitors as well.
But, if you're doing this at home and you have neighbours, don't do it in the middle of the night. Assholes do that.
9. Bass isn't all about the subwoofer.
A powerful bass isn't all about the low frequencies. The snapping punch of a bassdrum and the raw distorted power of a DnB bassline actually come from rather high frequencies. Don't be shy with them - but tweaking them is a science of its own, and going there would be too much for this short guide. The above tips are just for giving your track a fuller, deeper low bass, which in most cases is an improvement to the track. Here is an example clip of a track with the above techniques in use.
That's it for this guide! If you have any ideas/suggestions/corrections to it, or if you disagree with some part, don't hesitate to tell me. I'd also be happy to hear if it proved useful to you. The guide can be discussed in this thread right here on the SceneSat forums, or you can drop a line in the shoutbox on the official Byproduct site.
Thanks to PoisoN, Achtung^ and glxblt for help with revising the article.
Keep up the sound!
Cheers,
Juhana / Byproduct
