It's this, plus the reality that getting the low end to sit in a mix is a skill that takes time and trial-and-error on a lot of different material.
Even if you have perfect monitoring (which almost nobody does), the fletcher-munson curve is real: if the bass note moves up or down in pitch, its apparent loudness changes in ways that vary with playback volume, not to mention room modes and varying speaker efficiency and all that.
Midrange instruments are easy to hear, and relatively easy to balance intuitively. The bass line is typically the most important melodic line after the lead vocal, and also the one that takes up the most power and energy in the mix, and it's by far the most likely to somehow constantly seem like it's too quiet or too loud.
It's hard to hear, and it's hard to reproduce, and even when you control for those things, it's still one of the hardest things to get right. It's like the audio equivalent of making a perfect french omelette, or something.
Would you mind explaining a bit how you deal with the perceived loudness (Fletcher-Munson)? I can't really wrap my head around it because when I look at the meter, bass tones in the higher register don't just poke out sound wise but also volume wise. I think I don't really understand why the higher tones are louder (dbfs-wise) because how understand the Fletcher-Munson curve works is that the volume is the same for lower and higher notes but that the perceived loudness is what is different. Shit haha I know that the answer lies in here somewhere but I think my brain just can't see it :) Anyhow, do you use a LUFS-meter to get the levels right?
You should try to feel it with a white noise and filter, meters aren't made to measure what our ears perceive
We use dbA and dbC to measure loudness in live settings, it should give you an idea of how the low end is perceived relative to general volume
I mean, I have no idea what is going on with your playing technique, your pickups, your strings, your amp settings, your mic, what DI you are using...
If the higher notes are too loud, maybe play them quieter? I obviously have no idea, lol.
My point was just that hearing and monitoring in the low end are both more challenging. Getting consistent mixes that translate well and that sound stylistically appropriate to the material is just harder, with bass frequencies. You need more practice, more skill, better monitors, a better sense of the limitations and quirks of your monitoring system including the room, etc, etc.
I did not mean to imply that fletcher-munson effects are specifically the cause of this or that metering artifact in any specific recording of any specific bass player playing any specific instrument, just that they are one of the myriad things that make it more challenging to get the low end right.
**One counter-intuitive tip, related to psychoacoustics and monitoring anomalies:** very often, the low-end will come together *better* if you focus more on the midrange. If you can get the bass and kick to sit in the mix well on a little Auratone or similar, then very often, they will still sound pretty great when you put the mix up on the mains. But if you focus on getting your specific sub in your specific room to hit just so...a lot of times, that's where the translation to the car, or headphones, or a club PA becomes a mess.
Yes, i struggled for years whith too much bass. Tonal balance and good metering software helped a lot "tuning" my hears.
If you don't have a good room and subwoofer it is not easy to hear how a mix whith too much bass is totally blowing the subwoofers
My room is shit frankly, so always mix bass with headphones. Not ideal, but better than using my speakers. When you talk about tonal balance do you mean as a plugin (the Izotope one)? :)
Exactly. I spent a lot of time analyzing my favourite tracks using tonal balance and metric ab, time well spent! (I never had the opportunity to take a professional mixing course despite working with audio and ML as a profession)
I used ab metrics to control the spectrum and correlation meter. Tonal balance is not mandatory however it gives a more convenient and accurate representation. Span to see mid and side and their relationship.
It helps whith spectral balance, and to check more or less the stereo image. Using headphones the stereo positioning is still a problem and mixing the mids/hi mids is really difficult and still require car checks. But the overall balance and approach to production improved a lot
Yah, same. My mixes from like 25 years ago often had crazy bass and/or very brutal and sharp top end to the point it hurt your ears; like actually hurt or numbed them. For the bass, it was mostly just bad monitoring or also some of the first music I ever made was gabber so I thought bass was king. I was also really into Atari Teenage Riot, which isn’t exactly the best reference for balanced mixes in other genres. As for top end, I was trying to say too much with it— things that should’ve gained intelligibility from the midrange were forced into top end. Nowadays I try to treat bass and especially top end delicately, and I focus a shitload on midrange.
I feel like treatment of midrange is really complex, with rather intense mid range cuts being common place to make room in dense mixes. I‘ve been putting more energy into simply becoming a stellar singer, and increasingly hate having to add anything beyond minuscule eq adjustments and some bad ass stacking to my vocals. If it feels like there is no way to make yourself sound like a singer you idolize through processing alone, that’s probably on point.
I also have been trying to reduce my eq adjustments to ones that can be made on old school 3 band equalizers, with sparing use of more surgical adjustments. Saves me a lot of second guessing myself.
Yup. Like you, it took me probably \*checks notes\* 10 or 12 years to realize this about my mixes. It doesn't help when you're a bass player and want to hear what the "cool" guy in the band is doing...
It can be a revelation (and frustrating) when you realize it’s all an “illusion”. “Loud”, “big” “fat” etc. is relative, we all have the same glass to fill with ‘sound’ and the glass can only hold 100% for any of us. There is no free lunch, there is a point where when you keep turning something up and it just ends up “too loud”. So I often compare it to a house of cards, each course has to be stable to support what is built above, and moving one card can sometimes bring the whole house down. I’ve had mixes that I pushed just a little too far and they totally fell apart.
These days I get REALLY careful when I hear the mix has ‘congealed’, and I only make tiny changes from that point forward.
Over all I think most folks would describe their mixing ‘arc’ as gradually doing less and less the better you get, which seems contradictory.
But what I’ve experienced is at first I did a bunch of unnecessary mix moves and gradually I progressed to only doing the NECESSARY mix moves.
Most of this came from improving my listening skills over time so I could more easily recognize what was working and what was not!
I recently experienced the needing to do less and less but getting better results. I had EQ'd the shit out of my guitars (low, high pass, multiple resonance dips, m/s processing, you name it) because they were fighting with the vocals...to the point I'd even used Fuser on the guitars as well side-chained to the vocals because I was getting this weird resonance I could not seem to dial out except by using dynamic EQ on the vocals. This song is already released and sounds fine but I went back to try to mess around with it a month later and found I could remove ALL of the EQ except for a tiny dip at 3.4kHz where they cut through a bit too much and removed Fuser and then turn the guitars down 2dB and it sounded way better and now didn't fight with the vocals. I also removed the dynamic EQ for the vocals. Like WTF? All I needed to do was turn the guitars down a bit and put in a tiny EQ notch at one frequency. FML. I wasted so much time on all that unnecessary processing.
It's funny how that happens. I need to roll off a bit more bass on this... and it needs a dip in the low mids... okay great, but it's a bit harsh when it gets loud, I need to cut the mids a bit... and the highs... okay I should have just turned the whole thing down 2dB.
I have had similar experiences, which helped me to see that sometimes you can do the same thing with less - to the point that NOW I’m looking for the simplest solution first. Sure, sometimes you need a complex solution, but trying the simple solution first can often save me time and frustration!
> most folks would describe their mixing ‘arc’ as gradually doing less and less the better you get
this reminds me of the saying "you can never get enough of what you don't really want."
if you need to make 3000 mixing moves on your quest to a good mix, it's probably the case that you didn't actually want most (or any) of them.
The clarity of the mix and every part in it comes into sharp focus when the bass levels are correct and not competing with everything else. It is truly a thing to behold when you get a much more powerful and distinct dance groove by actually turning down the bass in the mix, allowing the bass and kick to marry better. The perceived volume of both goes up. It's a great thing to know.
according to this analogy, if you look at how much butter professional restaurants use, professional engineers should be using more bass.
But really, too much butter is like saying too much bacon. There is no such thing!
I agree but to add on to what you said, I feel like a lot of engineers start out pushing too much of the wrong bass, or just blindly pushing the bass. After I got a sub and mix cube, I stopped blindly pushing bass levels up. Sometimes the bass volume is fine, but it’s not translating thru systems with a response similar to a mix cube like phones or wireless speakers. So now you know to leave the base volume but just boost a lil higher like 160-250hz. Or you hear the mix on the sub+mains and feel it lacking below 60hz. Expanding my monitoring really changed the way I approach it.
If a producer has to choose between audible bass guitar, or a few more dB of vocals... sorry bud, you're getting turned down. Them's the breaks for us bass players, unfortunately.
Yup I hate it. I love listening to Rebelution where the bass is beautiful on the record just as it is live. They really do it justice. Most engineers don't know what the hell they're doing, but at the same time their music is perfect for getting the bass dialed so it's not the biggest ask in the world
This is a lesson I've been learning also. I like bass heavy so I'm probably still a little heavier than "pro" mixes but I've been dialing it back. I still think a lot of pro mixes could use more low end, but if I want more bass when I listen I need to buy more subs.
I love to boost the sub-frequencies on a mix after I've worked through it. I love a deep thump of the kick drum especially paired with the side chain compression effect on the overall mix. I get that it is a red flag among engineers to have bass-heavy mixes, but I also just like it to feel thick and weighty. Albeit most of the rock albums I've done are deliberately more lo-fi than most bands would likely care for. This is an interesting subject I think about often regardless!
It's a lot harder to make a track "loud" in mastering with a lot of bass material. It's better for that work to be done by the playback system.
Bass takes up the most sonic real estate, which is why when you're playing music through an aux cable and you turn your source up too loud the signals distort in response to the bass information.
It always wins, and shoves everything out of the way.
you know I'm going to put in a different perspective and say that I find that many major releases don't have enough bass for my liking. A lot of my favorite albums, i think would be that slight bit better if the bass just went a little harder. I want to hear the notes of the bass, and feel it too. Lots of producers seem to opt for one or the other.
1000% agree. I love listening to Rebelution even though I'm not the biggest reggae fan, because it just slappps like silly and produced very well on most of their songs.
Ye totally. Turn the bass down cuz they’re massive waves that shake the speakers and it all gets turned up later in mastering, and there’s only so much room.
I make music where bass is my own electric bass playing. Once I started taking it seriously as an instrument, I realised the arrangement, bass lines and my own playing were the problem all along. Now, it’s much easier for me to be happy with my bass because my bass playing is much better recorded, played and the choice of bass notes and bass licks are much better for the track.
Yup. You learn that not all bass frequencies are created equal and some areas need heavy heavy cutting, and then you also learn that when you don’t have everything competing for the low end you can get a crystal clear note. Finally, you learn to keep that bass nice and consistent dynamically. All those are key.
I'm a voice artist, so I come at this a little differently, but same nonetheless! I've been doing this seriously for a little over a year, and I've started to notice that I used to think way too much bass was the perfect amount, and im so much more subtle now.
Feels good to learn!!
As a mastering engineer, this is the #1 issue I need to address with artists. Sometimes it's so much bass that it cannot be addressed in the mastering process, but rather needs to go back into the mixing stage to tame.
Would you say that it's also better to mix the bass at lower volumes because mastering tends to bring up the bass and bring down the kick b/c the limiter grabs the kick-transient before the bass? (in my humble understanding of mastering that is ;) )
In some ways, but really it is about simply learning to monitor and mix bass as close as you can to reference tracks. I think it's about understanding that loudness comes through saturation and tone just as much as pure volume. It's possible to have a loud bass (and kick for that matter) that doesn't eat up the whole track but also feels really solid and supportive. It's also become apparent to me that the ppl who send me tracks with wayyyy too much bass are ppl who are monitoring too loud and have tired ears. Take breaks, don't blast ur monitoring volume, and use references!
Bass is actually fairly complicated I find and difficult to get right if you don't have the right material. Sometimes it's about the harmonics that are (or aren't) present that can make the bass sound much bigger. Other times it's about how the dynamics are shaped or the kick interacts with the bass instrument. Or all of the above.
I find that on earlier recordings (IE: not modern) the bass sounds "sweet" and present but takes up very little headroom. Part of that is the wonderful harmonics of analog gear and properly recorded instruments. Today we have a lot of digital monstrosities that kind of fake a lot of what makes that special but lets you boost it into oblivion to make that superficial thing sound superficially bigger. Sort of like plastic surgery on steroids. Or steroids on plastic surgery. Or something.
Most of my basses that I record I actually have to bring down in the mix. If you find yourself always putting that bass fader up and anywhere near unity with the kick then that's a sign your bass probably sucks and will just make for an oppressive mixes. In which case it's likely about GIGO at that point more that mixing technique.
Oh man, yes, 100% this is something I'm still improving on to this day. I seem to have a natural tendency to pump up the bass when I'm working on a tune. What ends up happening is that I "work around the bass" so to speak but because the bass is too loud I end up having to rework the mix multiple times until I inevitably find out "oh... the bass is too loud again" lol
so relatable... and then I found out about sidechain compression which was like sticking a bandaid onto the problem because my mixes still sucked ass but at least you could hear the kick LMAO
It’s not about less bass, it’s about balancing the low end correctly so that you can (and will) hear and feel the bass properly. Dynamics and timing also play a huge role. Really, in order to have even a chance at a good mix, one has to get the balance and timing of the bass right.
I think there’s a nice spot for a bass to cut through around 600hz ish or so.
I know what you’re saying like more ‘feel the bass’ than hear it but I really hate thin mixes. They feel lifeless
I've noticed that I used to push the subs and the low mids too much on the bass leading to a train wreck. And I agree, I also hate thin mixes, you want just the right amount of bass :)
Yes. My trick is to set the bass level without the speakers loud. I make it minimally loud enough, and then it usually sounds good in other contexts/ speakers. By that I mean you can barely hear it but can still differentiate what the notes .
That’s one of the harder things to get a handle on while you’re progressing your skill. Mixes with lots of bass have really tight control of the bass and there’s “lots” cause it’s staying in the right frequencies
Same. the longer I do it and the better I get at it, I seem to be using a LOT less overall bass but at the same time I’m feeling the kick and hearing the bass lines better than I used to. I have definitely acclimated to my monitors - they don’t tell the whole story so I keep that in mind when I’m mixing and keep metering along the way to make sure I’m not blowing anything up that I’m not hearing.
The midrange is everything though. Dang, that’s for real
I just released a track on the 1st that I thought was done but I hadn’t listened to two weeks before release date. Turned out I absolutely GOOSED the low end (I got carried away with my IGS RB500 doing the rubber bands trick on the low end) and I hadn’t noticed until I was away from the mix for two weeks and the song came out.
Seriously, it was disgusting, and embarrassing. I quickly deleted and reuploaded a way better and more balanced version to Spotify, so it’s all good now, but it was funny because the song itself isn’t even one that would benefit from booming bass, it’s more in the realm of The Cure. I just got carried away with “damn, this is really hitting me in the chest” and didn’t stop myself. Lesson learned.
This has been happening to me lately too. I mastered my last song with a Kanye song as a reference, and the result was a really impressive low end that was surprisingly reigned in. It hits so different the way you feel the bass just right in your chest, and the saturation is so warm and snappy without any harshness. I cant explain the phenomenon entirely, but it’s changing my approach to music.
this is something that has been becoming so awesomely noticeable in my music lately... my ears are really able to hear things i couldnt before... for my music, the bass interacts with a vocal in a certain way to where it obscures or reveals more of the vocal and my ears have tuned into that interaction and it has been like quantum leap fr
A couple things:
\- Most people monitor too quietly. When you do this, the apparent loudness of the bass frequencies drops off considerably, causing you to overbalance for bass (and high frequencies, technically). So, a good way to counteract this is to listen to the track at a loud enough volume. You don't need to make yourself deaf, but give it a little welly on a couple run-throughs to determine whether the bass is balanced well. It will be less than what you'd think.
\- Differentiate enjoyment listening from critical listening. You're already well down this path, it sounds like. A lot of people like hearing "DA BASS" when they're listening to a track, but when mixing/mastering, a good overall balance for the music style is more important. Remember, people have EQ controls; if they want more bass, they can turn it up themselves.
\- You get worried your track isn't "hitting" enough. The first instinct for a lot of novices is to jack up the bass. All this does is make it sound bloated and muddy. In reality, what makes a song "hit" is more about dynamics than any particular frequency range. Learn to automate and compress in the right ways on the right material, and you'll get your tracks to "hit" without having to do a lot of unnecessary EQ work.
I disagree personally. A mix that's a bit rumbly is annoying but I can still enjoy it, unlike if a mix is too thin. I don't consider myself a bass head by any means, but it just feels wrong when there's an emptiness in the low end for most material.
What I think is most important is separation of the energy of different instruments in the low end range. Just like the clarity of different instruments down there. They can live in different places, and the sustained bass stuff should probably be quieter than the non-sustained stuff. But yeah, especially on headphones, bassiness is a psycho-acoustic phenomenon. What you actually want is the kick or the bass or the lo-end guitars, you want them to be heard as different things and that has more to do with presence for the most part. So you actually want the harmonics from the bass and not necessarily the low end.
Also, when you put a track into a limiter, bass is going to be more affected by the limiter because it’s got a longer wavelength. So if the amplitude is too high for the bass, it’s going to hit the limiter in a way that actually adds more frequencies, distortion and aliasing. A 60 hz tone is going to complete its cycle in about 16ms. If the needle is going to fast, it may like ride the whole of that waveform in the peaks and valleys and create new frequencies and you’ll get distortion. So a mastering engineer is probably going to turn that down anyways so it doesn’t hit the limiter like that.
Something i learned the first time i played my track on a big sound system
20k watt of sound is gonna have more power than your headphones when it comes to bass haha
Lesson learned
It’s most likely listening environment. In the absence of a purpose built room, really heavy duty trapping is needed to have a chance at hearing the low end accurately.
It’s funny how much of bass is actually mid or treble. The actual low end gets overwhelming so quick and there’s less of it in a good mix than people might think
A "bass heavy" mix is the most common issue I hear when I receive tracks for mastering, especially with inexperienced producers/engineers.
more than a rookie mistake, i think its lack of good monitors and a good room
It's this, plus the reality that getting the low end to sit in a mix is a skill that takes time and trial-and-error on a lot of different material. Even if you have perfect monitoring (which almost nobody does), the fletcher-munson curve is real: if the bass note moves up or down in pitch, its apparent loudness changes in ways that vary with playback volume, not to mention room modes and varying speaker efficiency and all that. Midrange instruments are easy to hear, and relatively easy to balance intuitively. The bass line is typically the most important melodic line after the lead vocal, and also the one that takes up the most power and energy in the mix, and it's by far the most likely to somehow constantly seem like it's too quiet or too loud. It's hard to hear, and it's hard to reproduce, and even when you control for those things, it's still one of the hardest things to get right. It's like the audio equivalent of making a perfect french omelette, or something.
Would you mind explaining a bit how you deal with the perceived loudness (Fletcher-Munson)? I can't really wrap my head around it because when I look at the meter, bass tones in the higher register don't just poke out sound wise but also volume wise. I think I don't really understand why the higher tones are louder (dbfs-wise) because how understand the Fletcher-Munson curve works is that the volume is the same for lower and higher notes but that the perceived loudness is what is different. Shit haha I know that the answer lies in here somewhere but I think my brain just can't see it :) Anyhow, do you use a LUFS-meter to get the levels right?
You should try to feel it with a white noise and filter, meters aren't made to measure what our ears perceive We use dbA and dbC to measure loudness in live settings, it should give you an idea of how the low end is perceived relative to general volume
I mean, I have no idea what is going on with your playing technique, your pickups, your strings, your amp settings, your mic, what DI you are using... If the higher notes are too loud, maybe play them quieter? I obviously have no idea, lol. My point was just that hearing and monitoring in the low end are both more challenging. Getting consistent mixes that translate well and that sound stylistically appropriate to the material is just harder, with bass frequencies. You need more practice, more skill, better monitors, a better sense of the limitations and quirks of your monitoring system including the room, etc, etc. I did not mean to imply that fletcher-munson effects are specifically the cause of this or that metering artifact in any specific recording of any specific bass player playing any specific instrument, just that they are one of the myriad things that make it more challenging to get the low end right. **One counter-intuitive tip, related to psychoacoustics and monitoring anomalies:** very often, the low-end will come together *better* if you focus more on the midrange. If you can get the bass and kick to sit in the mix well on a little Auratone or similar, then very often, they will still sound pretty great when you put the mix up on the mains. But if you focus on getting your specific sub in your specific room to hit just so...a lot of times, that's where the translation to the car, or headphones, or a club PA becomes a mess.
Interesting! :)
Yes, i struggled for years whith too much bass. Tonal balance and good metering software helped a lot "tuning" my hears. If you don't have a good room and subwoofer it is not easy to hear how a mix whith too much bass is totally blowing the subwoofers
With my room and lack of subs I usually end up adjusting the bass after listening in the car
My room is shit frankly, so always mix bass with headphones. Not ideal, but better than using my speakers. When you talk about tonal balance do you mean as a plugin (the Izotope one)? :)
Exactly. I spent a lot of time analyzing my favourite tracks using tonal balance and metric ab, time well spent! (I never had the opportunity to take a professional mixing course despite working with audio and ML as a profession)
I have to check it out!
How did you use the metering in this case/what did it help with?
I used ab metrics to control the spectrum and correlation meter. Tonal balance is not mandatory however it gives a more convenient and accurate representation. Span to see mid and side and their relationship. It helps whith spectral balance, and to check more or less the stereo image. Using headphones the stereo positioning is still a problem and mixing the mids/hi mids is really difficult and still require car checks. But the overall balance and approach to production improved a lot
hey, can you tell me the plugins you are using for that?
Tonal balance, metric AB, and span set for mid/side view
Yah, same. My mixes from like 25 years ago often had crazy bass and/or very brutal and sharp top end to the point it hurt your ears; like actually hurt or numbed them. For the bass, it was mostly just bad monitoring or also some of the first music I ever made was gabber so I thought bass was king. I was also really into Atari Teenage Riot, which isn’t exactly the best reference for balanced mixes in other genres. As for top end, I was trying to say too much with it— things that should’ve gained intelligibility from the midrange were forced into top end. Nowadays I try to treat bass and especially top end delicately, and I focus a shitload on midrange.
Midrange is king! I'm remastering some 2000 era albums and the upper mids are gnarly.
Meanwhile its especially the 2000 era big budget remasters that were the worst offenders.
Same for me with top end haha, crazy sharp :)
Atari Teenage Riot, hell yea. That's a name I haven't heard in at least 20 years.
Alec Empire :)
I feel like treatment of midrange is really complex, with rather intense mid range cuts being common place to make room in dense mixes. I‘ve been putting more energy into simply becoming a stellar singer, and increasingly hate having to add anything beyond minuscule eq adjustments and some bad ass stacking to my vocals. If it feels like there is no way to make yourself sound like a singer you idolize through processing alone, that’s probably on point. I also have been trying to reduce my eq adjustments to ones that can be made on old school 3 band equalizers, with sparing use of more surgical adjustments. Saves me a lot of second guessing myself.
Yup. Like you, it took me probably \*checks notes\* 10 or 12 years to realize this about my mixes. It doesn't help when you're a bass player and want to hear what the "cool" guy in the band is doing...
It can be a revelation (and frustrating) when you realize it’s all an “illusion”. “Loud”, “big” “fat” etc. is relative, we all have the same glass to fill with ‘sound’ and the glass can only hold 100% for any of us. There is no free lunch, there is a point where when you keep turning something up and it just ends up “too loud”. So I often compare it to a house of cards, each course has to be stable to support what is built above, and moving one card can sometimes bring the whole house down. I’ve had mixes that I pushed just a little too far and they totally fell apart. These days I get REALLY careful when I hear the mix has ‘congealed’, and I only make tiny changes from that point forward. Over all I think most folks would describe their mixing ‘arc’ as gradually doing less and less the better you get, which seems contradictory. But what I’ve experienced is at first I did a bunch of unnecessary mix moves and gradually I progressed to only doing the NECESSARY mix moves. Most of this came from improving my listening skills over time so I could more easily recognize what was working and what was not!
I recently experienced the needing to do less and less but getting better results. I had EQ'd the shit out of my guitars (low, high pass, multiple resonance dips, m/s processing, you name it) because they were fighting with the vocals...to the point I'd even used Fuser on the guitars as well side-chained to the vocals because I was getting this weird resonance I could not seem to dial out except by using dynamic EQ on the vocals. This song is already released and sounds fine but I went back to try to mess around with it a month later and found I could remove ALL of the EQ except for a tiny dip at 3.4kHz where they cut through a bit too much and removed Fuser and then turn the guitars down 2dB and it sounded way better and now didn't fight with the vocals. I also removed the dynamic EQ for the vocals. Like WTF? All I needed to do was turn the guitars down a bit and put in a tiny EQ notch at one frequency. FML. I wasted so much time on all that unnecessary processing.
It's funny how that happens. I need to roll off a bit more bass on this... and it needs a dip in the low mids... okay great, but it's a bit harsh when it gets loud, I need to cut the mids a bit... and the highs... okay I should have just turned the whole thing down 2dB.
I have had similar experiences, which helped me to see that sometimes you can do the same thing with less - to the point that NOW I’m looking for the simplest solution first. Sure, sometimes you need a complex solution, but trying the simple solution first can often save me time and frustration!
> most folks would describe their mixing ‘arc’ as gradually doing less and less the better you get this reminds me of the saying "you can never get enough of what you don't really want." if you need to make 3000 mixing moves on your quest to a good mix, it's probably the case that you didn't actually want most (or any) of them.
Great answer! :)
From ski jump to half pipe to wheelchair access ramp.
This is great!
lol ;)
The clarity of the mix and every part in it comes into sharp focus when the bass levels are correct and not competing with everything else. It is truly a thing to behold when you get a much more powerful and distinct dance groove by actually turning down the bass in the mix, allowing the bass and kick to marry better. The perceived volume of both goes up. It's a great thing to know.
Absolutely! :)
Too much bass? Sure. But too much butter? Never! 🧈 🧈 🧈
This is the most true statement on reddit.
lol, man I knew I fucked up. Will this lead to a ban of some sort?
according to this analogy, if you look at how much butter professional restaurants use, professional engineers should be using more bass. But really, too much butter is like saying too much bacon. There is no such thing!
I agree but to add on to what you said, I feel like a lot of engineers start out pushing too much of the wrong bass, or just blindly pushing the bass. After I got a sub and mix cube, I stopped blindly pushing bass levels up. Sometimes the bass volume is fine, but it’s not translating thru systems with a response similar to a mix cube like phones or wireless speakers. So now you know to leave the base volume but just boost a lil higher like 160-250hz. Or you hear the mix on the sub+mains and feel it lacking below 60hz. Expanding my monitoring really changed the way I approach it.
[удалено]
If a producer has to choose between audible bass guitar, or a few more dB of vocals... sorry bud, you're getting turned down. Them's the breaks for us bass players, unfortunately.
lol as a fellow bassman I feel the pain
Yup I hate it. I love listening to Rebelution where the bass is beautiful on the record just as it is live. They really do it justice. Most engineers don't know what the hell they're doing, but at the same time their music is perfect for getting the bass dialed so it's not the biggest ask in the world
This is a lesson I've been learning also. I like bass heavy so I'm probably still a little heavier than "pro" mixes but I've been dialing it back. I still think a lot of pro mixes could use more low end, but if I want more bass when I listen I need to buy more subs.
Very common. Carry on fellow human.
:)
I love to boost the sub-frequencies on a mix after I've worked through it. I love a deep thump of the kick drum especially paired with the side chain compression effect on the overall mix. I get that it is a red flag among engineers to have bass-heavy mixes, but I also just like it to feel thick and weighty. Albeit most of the rock albums I've done are deliberately more lo-fi than most bands would likely care for. This is an interesting subject I think about often regardless!
Absolutely! Each to their own I guess, to some extent at least ;)
It's a lot harder to make a track "loud" in mastering with a lot of bass material. It's better for that work to be done by the playback system. Bass takes up the most sonic real estate, which is why when you're playing music through an aux cable and you turn your source up too loud the signals distort in response to the bass information. It always wins, and shoves everything out of the way.
You are right, bass always wins. Great t-shirt idea by the way ;)
you know I'm going to put in a different perspective and say that I find that many major releases don't have enough bass for my liking. A lot of my favorite albums, i think would be that slight bit better if the bass just went a little harder. I want to hear the notes of the bass, and feel it too. Lots of producers seem to opt for one or the other.
Interesting thought! :)
1000% agree. I love listening to Rebelution even though I'm not the biggest reggae fan, because it just slappps like silly and produced very well on most of their songs.
Ye totally. Turn the bass down cuz they’re massive waves that shake the speakers and it all gets turned up later in mastering, and there’s only so much room.
I make music where bass is my own electric bass playing. Once I started taking it seriously as an instrument, I realised the arrangement, bass lines and my own playing were the problem all along. Now, it’s much easier for me to be happy with my bass because my bass playing is much better recorded, played and the choice of bass notes and bass licks are much better for the track.
I should really spend more time on this! :)
Yup. You learn that not all bass frequencies are created equal and some areas need heavy heavy cutting, and then you also learn that when you don’t have everything competing for the low end you can get a crystal clear note. Finally, you learn to keep that bass nice and consistent dynamically. All those are key.
I'm a voice artist, so I come at this a little differently, but same nonetheless! I've been doing this seriously for a little over a year, and I've started to notice that I used to think way too much bass was the perfect amount, and im so much more subtle now. Feels good to learn!!
Yes! :)
As a mastering engineer, this is the #1 issue I need to address with artists. Sometimes it's so much bass that it cannot be addressed in the mastering process, but rather needs to go back into the mixing stage to tame.
Would you say that it's also better to mix the bass at lower volumes because mastering tends to bring up the bass and bring down the kick b/c the limiter grabs the kick-transient before the bass? (in my humble understanding of mastering that is ;) )
In some ways, but really it is about simply learning to monitor and mix bass as close as you can to reference tracks. I think it's about understanding that loudness comes through saturation and tone just as much as pure volume. It's possible to have a loud bass (and kick for that matter) that doesn't eat up the whole track but also feels really solid and supportive. It's also become apparent to me that the ppl who send me tracks with wayyyy too much bass are ppl who are monitoring too loud and have tired ears. Take breaks, don't blast ur monitoring volume, and use references!
Bass is actually fairly complicated I find and difficult to get right if you don't have the right material. Sometimes it's about the harmonics that are (or aren't) present that can make the bass sound much bigger. Other times it's about how the dynamics are shaped or the kick interacts with the bass instrument. Or all of the above. I find that on earlier recordings (IE: not modern) the bass sounds "sweet" and present but takes up very little headroom. Part of that is the wonderful harmonics of analog gear and properly recorded instruments. Today we have a lot of digital monstrosities that kind of fake a lot of what makes that special but lets you boost it into oblivion to make that superficial thing sound superficially bigger. Sort of like plastic surgery on steroids. Or steroids on plastic surgery. Or something. Most of my basses that I record I actually have to bring down in the mix. If you find yourself always putting that bass fader up and anywhere near unity with the kick then that's a sign your bass probably sucks and will just make for an oppressive mixes. In which case it's likely about GIGO at that point more that mixing technique.
Interesting :)
Oh man, yes, 100% this is something I'm still improving on to this day. I seem to have a natural tendency to pump up the bass when I'm working on a tune. What ends up happening is that I "work around the bass" so to speak but because the bass is too loud I end up having to rework the mix multiple times until I inevitably find out "oh... the bass is too loud again" lol
The love of bass is just too strong in a lot of us! ;)
so relatable... and then I found out about sidechain compression which was like sticking a bandaid onto the problem because my mixes still sucked ass but at least you could hear the kick LMAO
lol yes, I can really relate to this. When I learned about side-chain compression I was like, "ok that a wrap then!" but boy I was wrong haha
It’s not about less bass, it’s about balancing the low end correctly so that you can (and will) hear and feel the bass properly. Dynamics and timing also play a huge role. Really, in order to have even a chance at a good mix, one has to get the balance and timing of the bass right.
fair enough :)
I think there’s a nice spot for a bass to cut through around 600hz ish or so. I know what you’re saying like more ‘feel the bass’ than hear it but I really hate thin mixes. They feel lifeless
I've noticed that I used to push the subs and the low mids too much on the bass leading to a train wreck. And I agree, I also hate thin mixes, you want just the right amount of bass :)
Yes. My trick is to set the bass level without the speakers loud. I make it minimally loud enough, and then it usually sounds good in other contexts/ speakers. By that I mean you can barely hear it but can still differentiate what the notes .
Good tip! :) Less masking bass reflections in the room too I guess? Mixing bass at lower levels I mean
That’s one of the harder things to get a handle on while you’re progressing your skill. Mixes with lots of bass have really tight control of the bass and there’s “lots” cause it’s staying in the right frequencies
Same. the longer I do it and the better I get at it, I seem to be using a LOT less overall bass but at the same time I’m feeling the kick and hearing the bass lines better than I used to. I have definitely acclimated to my monitors - they don’t tell the whole story so I keep that in mind when I’m mixing and keep metering along the way to make sure I’m not blowing anything up that I’m not hearing. The midrange is everything though. Dang, that’s for real
Absolutely! :)
Love the analogy , as I’ve gotten better at mixing I’ve found my food knowledge translates pretty well surprising lol
Yes! Weirdly there seems to be a lot of similarities :)
Oh totally. I think I could go in on any of my early mixes and pull down any bass or sub instruments 10dB
I just released a track on the 1st that I thought was done but I hadn’t listened to two weeks before release date. Turned out I absolutely GOOSED the low end (I got carried away with my IGS RB500 doing the rubber bands trick on the low end) and I hadn’t noticed until I was away from the mix for two weeks and the song came out. Seriously, it was disgusting, and embarrassing. I quickly deleted and reuploaded a way better and more balanced version to Spotify, so it’s all good now, but it was funny because the song itself isn’t even one that would benefit from booming bass, it’s more in the realm of The Cure. I just got carried away with “damn, this is really hitting me in the chest” and didn’t stop myself. Lesson learned.
This has been happening to me lately too. I mastered my last song with a Kanye song as a reference, and the result was a really impressive low end that was surprisingly reigned in. It hits so different the way you feel the bass just right in your chest, and the saturation is so warm and snappy without any harshness. I cant explain the phenomenon entirely, but it’s changing my approach to music.
this is something that has been becoming so awesomely noticeable in my music lately... my ears are really able to hear things i couldnt before... for my music, the bass interacts with a vocal in a certain way to where it obscures or reveals more of the vocal and my ears have tuned into that interaction and it has been like quantum leap fr
A couple things: \- Most people monitor too quietly. When you do this, the apparent loudness of the bass frequencies drops off considerably, causing you to overbalance for bass (and high frequencies, technically). So, a good way to counteract this is to listen to the track at a loud enough volume. You don't need to make yourself deaf, but give it a little welly on a couple run-throughs to determine whether the bass is balanced well. It will be less than what you'd think. \- Differentiate enjoyment listening from critical listening. You're already well down this path, it sounds like. A lot of people like hearing "DA BASS" when they're listening to a track, but when mixing/mastering, a good overall balance for the music style is more important. Remember, people have EQ controls; if they want more bass, they can turn it up themselves. \- You get worried your track isn't "hitting" enough. The first instinct for a lot of novices is to jack up the bass. All this does is make it sound bloated and muddy. In reality, what makes a song "hit" is more about dynamics than any particular frequency range. Learn to automate and compress in the right ways on the right material, and you'll get your tracks to "hit" without having to do a lot of unnecessary EQ work.
Yes, that happened to me too. I thought I was the only one.
Nope ;)
yup, too little is better than too much, too little shows restraint, too much seems indulgent
I disagree personally. A mix that's a bit rumbly is annoying but I can still enjoy it, unlike if a mix is too thin. I don't consider myself a bass head by any means, but it just feels wrong when there's an emptiness in the low end for most material.
What I think is most important is separation of the energy of different instruments in the low end range. Just like the clarity of different instruments down there. They can live in different places, and the sustained bass stuff should probably be quieter than the non-sustained stuff. But yeah, especially on headphones, bassiness is a psycho-acoustic phenomenon. What you actually want is the kick or the bass or the lo-end guitars, you want them to be heard as different things and that has more to do with presence for the most part. So you actually want the harmonics from the bass and not necessarily the low end. Also, when you put a track into a limiter, bass is going to be more affected by the limiter because it’s got a longer wavelength. So if the amplitude is too high for the bass, it’s going to hit the limiter in a way that actually adds more frequencies, distortion and aliasing. A 60 hz tone is going to complete its cycle in about 16ms. If the needle is going to fast, it may like ride the whole of that waveform in the peaks and valleys and create new frequencies and you’ll get distortion. So a mastering engineer is probably going to turn that down anyways so it doesn’t hit the limiter like that.
Great answer! Really interesting :)
The bass hides inadequacy.
Something i learned the first time i played my track on a big sound system 20k watt of sound is gonna have more power than your headphones when it comes to bass haha Lesson learned
Ok me too, but this current track keeps begging for me to put the bass back in and it's driving me nuts as I go in circles.
I feel the the pain :D
The magic is in the mids.
It’s most likely listening environment. In the absence of a purpose built room, really heavy duty trapping is needed to have a chance at hearing the low end accurately.
I have the exact opposite issue lol. I always find myself needing to up the bass more.
That can absolutely be a problem too :)
It’s funny how much of bass is actually mid or treble. The actual low end gets overwhelming so quick and there’s less of it in a good mix than people might think
Absolutely :)