AUDIO
ALL ABOUT THAT BASS … ( AND THE DRUMS ) | Bill Gibson
Meghan Trainor lets everybody know , beyond question , that she is all about that bass , no treble ; all about that bass , no treble ; all about that bass , bass , bass , bass …
When it comes to building a powerful and musical mix , Ms . Trainor is on to something . Low-frequency management in a live or studio mix is a fundamental issue that must be skillfully and insightfully addressed . Many experienced sound operators feed the subwoofers from a dedicated aux send . That way , they can select the very few mix ingredients that need to be routed to the subs , typically the kick drum and bass guitar / synth bass .
I developed and teach a course for
Berklee College of Music Online called , Live Sound : Mixing and Recording . In the newest update , I added a term project that begins on week six . It ’ s a mix project that we work on every week until the end of the course . I mention this because , with 99 percent of my students , drum sounds and low-frequency management are
Some of the biggest mix problems are caused by shaping the kick drum and bass instrument sounds so they have excessive low frequencies in the same ranges . the first major hurdles we need to get past . I do at least one 10- to 20-minute video evaluation each week for each student . I ’ m very picky about the drum sounds because drums are extremely important in all genres . And , I know that , once each student understands how to build a clean and powerful drum sound , we have a solid foundation for the mix .
We build the class mixes by mixing the drums and then adding the bass guitar / synth bass . Our goal is to craft the kick drum and bass instrument so they peacefully co-exist in the low-frequency band - a task that doesn ’ t seem to come naturally to many . That means that a decision needs to be made about which instrument fills in the sub-bass frequencies and which focuses on other frequencies .
PICK YOUR LOW-FREQUENCIES WISELY The music , genre , sounds of the kick and bass , and so on will guide your choices ; however , I ’ ve found that assigning the bass instrument to round out the lows in the mix works very well .