DnB TIPS ON EQ'ING BIG DIRTY BASS SOUNDS

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XenfleX

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Joined
May 20, 2012
Location
Vancouver
I make neurofunk style DnB, and use a lot of gnarly bass sounds made in FM8 and Massive.

Recently I have had trouble getting the perfect mixdown and a lot of it comes from EQ'ing the bass.

I have found that scooping out a chunk (up to 15db) at around 350 Hz seems to work well in getting the bass to sit well in the mix.

Also, it is essential to low cut every single sound so that the low end is not taking up headroom in the mix (but that one is widely known).

Does anyone else have any good advice or suggestions for EQing bass to get it to sit in the mix well?

Of course there is the obvious answers of cutting out the frequencies where the kick and snare come through (around 100Hz and 200Hz depending), and of course sidechaining the sub with the kick, and sidechaining the main/mid bass with the snare.

But what I want to find out is ideas for EQing fat bass sounds to make them sound loud & upfront, and to make them sit well in the mix.

Any info?
 
All i can input would be to make sure that all your bass elements are not fighting for the same frequencies. If im making a bass lead track i would usually have 3 basic sections, sub, low mid and a bit of high mids to liven it up but i would eq them so there not clashing, otherwise itl just start to sound muddy.
Also watch how the sound changes through the fx chain. you may have a bass sound and highpassed it at 750hz but then you add some distortion or something on it and it brings back those unwanted higher frequencies.
 
Yeah be careful if you apply any dynamics processing to your synth parts. You may attenuate/remove the lower frequencies with an EQ but compression or limiting is going to bring them back up again. I'd suggest using a multipressor.

Try splitting your bass into mulitple frequency bands as well.

I tend to Hi Pass my kicks at around 60-65 Hz so I once I have all of the sounds sitting well together I send them to a bus, call it 'basslead' of whatever.

Set that bus to no output then add 3 or 4 aux sends.

Low pass aux 1 at around 60 Hz with a steep slope of around 48 dB/octave.

Band pass (combination of high and low pass filters) aux 2 at 60 & 250ish Hz (find what is best for you on the latter)

Do the same to aux 3 but this time BP at 250 - 2000 Hz

Then high pass aux 4 at 2000Hz.

This now means that aux 1 will sit underneath the kick nicely without any interference. You could then try using sidechaining your kick and snare to initiate compression on aux 2. Then maybe adding a touch of reverb to aux 3-4, nothing too drastic though, maybe a short plate reverb or if you use space designer try one of the drum booth IR's.

You can also try adding distortion to aux 3-4 although place an eq at the end of your effects chain as distortion will create some wanted or unwanted harmonics which will overlap (sometimes this works well).

Also, be sure to check that aux 1-2 are in mono as well.
 
Hey Sam,

Your explanation of frequency splitting is the best I've seen on the web so far, thanks man.

I also heard from a someone who has released a lot of records that the bass should slope down from left to right in a consistent line from 20Hz all the way the frequency spectrum, if you were to look at it through a spectrum analyser. But I still think it is important to cut away 6 to 8 db with a high Q at around 90 and 200 for the kick and snare, even if you sidechain the bass to the kick or snare, for more clarity.
 
Remember when taking out resonant peaks, when boosting to find the peaks it affects the upper harmonics so cut then FINE TUNE your decision to cut
 
sam the dnb man said:
Yeah be careful if you apply any dynamics processing to your synth parts. You may attenuate/remove the lower frequencies with an EQ but compression or limiting is going to bring them back up again. I'd suggest using a multipressor.

Try splitting your bass into mulitple frequency bands as well.

I tend to Hi Pass my kicks at around 60-65 Hz so I once I have all of the sounds sitting well together I send them to a bus, call it 'basslead' of whatever.

Set that bus to no output then add 3 or 4 aux sends.

Low pass aux 1 at around 60 Hz with a steep slope of around 48 dB/octave.

Band pass (combination of high and low pass filters) aux 2 at 60 & 250ish Hz (find what is best for you on the latter)

Do the same to aux 3 but this time BP at 250 - 2000 Hz

Then high pass aux 4 at 2000Hz.

This now means that aux 1 will sit underneath the kick nicely without any interference. You could then try using sidechaining your kick and snare to initiate compression on aux 2. Then maybe adding a touch of reverb to aux 3-4, nothing too drastic though, maybe a short plate reverb or if you use space designer try one of the drum booth IR's.

You can also try adding distortion to aux 3-4 although place an eq at the end of your effects chain as distortion will create some wanted or unwanted harmonics which will overlap (sometimes this works well).

Also, be sure to check that aux 1-2 are in mono as well.
Click to expand...

/\ A million times this. Splitting the bands, processing and recombining them in a bus (with more processing if you desire) is a great way to get that "big" bass sound. The other advantage is that you can add some light stereo FX to the separate high freq band while keeping the low end nice and centered.
 
Use a good Linear Phase EQ to split your freqs and also on mastering/mixdown!

I noticed that non linear phase eqs (IIR) change a lot the natural sound of the original sound... causing loss on transients and harmonics.
 
hey fellas, know this is a semi older thread, but I have a question for FL users...

I'm running FL 9 xxl and I was wondering if it is at all possible to add more aux sends? I like my 4 sends with verb delay(s) and motion, but I want to add Sams idea in there. Is it possible to use the regular channels in the mixer as aux sends?

Or maybe im just tired as hell and not getting it, but any help would be appreciated.

Cheers
 
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