synth, mid bass tips

[jakeshiftzw]

Everytime i make a synth, and put out a melody, it still sounds so weak, even with a sub bass underneath. I normally get my sound, and then split into two tracks. Track 1 bandpassed, with the sound coming through between 120hz - 600hz and then ill put some reverb on it and a spreader. Then track 2, hi passed 600Hz onwards, with a small boost around 4000-8000khz depending on the sound, and then ill put some reverb on that, a spreader and some distortion. The reason i do this, is so i dont distort the lower end of my synth, so i split it into two tracks instead and distort the top end. But even after doing all this, it still sounds weak. Its a bit like the track thats hipassed is alot more dominant, ive tried so many things but it still sounds weak. Whats the best thing to do, when using these kind of techniques?

 

[Prideinyouride]

By spreading you will lose some power as the speakers are firing slightly out of phase so you don't have that unified punch. Chorus and ensemble functions are handy for getting some more juice. But surgical EQing is essential as your sound can mask or be masked by other musical elements such as the drums. no doubt someone with much more experience will be here to prove me wrong

 

[Mr Fletch]

Dont "spread" everything. Like the guy above me said, you will lose alot of power from your sounds like that. You need to widen certain elements of your tracks to give it a good dynamic range, but if you do it to almost every sound you create then that will cause alot of problems with your productions such as stereo phasing / cancellation etc.

As a rule I will only split my bass synth's. I usually split into 3 channels, low / mid / high. I roll off anything over 150hz for the low. Cut anything below 150hz, and above 1.5khz for the mids, then cut everything below the 1.5khz range for my high's.

I then mono my low channel, and usually leave it as it is. My mids I put the spread anywhere between about 60-80%, so it's not quite stereo, but not mono either. Add distortion / chorus / saturation and maybe a few other FX depending on the sound I'm after. Then the high's I will put the spread at 100 - 105% to give it that nice dynamic range. Adding Saturation / Distortion / Chorus / Phaser / Delay / Reverb etc to get my desired sound.

Once that section is complete I will re-route back to a single channel, where I add some subtle compression to help gel the sounds back together, And add a final EQ to mould the sound to my liking.

 

[jakeshiftzw]

Cheers man, that helped a fucking lot! When you say 'spread' do you mean the Reverb spread? Or a spreader? I'm using Logic, and i used the spreader on that, but it doesn't have the percentage option of how much you want really. The option i have with that plugin is 'intensity', 'sample delay' and then a dial for the rate. What would you suggest there?

---------- Post added at 20:29 ---------- Previous post was at 20:13 ----------

Well to be fair, you get a percentage option on 'intensity' but it only goes up to 100%

 

[marcelkennard]

Izotope Alloy's got a sick multiband exciter, in which you can select 3 bands and make them wider or more mono so you can get that cone shaped stereo image for your bass that you want, friction and icicle always use that !