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Bass and kicks getting muffled out by other sounds? help?

Hi, I really noticed lately when I have a kick drum and/or a bass playing solo, its nice and loud and sounds great.. but as soon as I play.. lets say a synth sample with the kick and/or bass, the impact of the kick/bass just goes down, it seems quiter, and gets muffled., its extreemly bad when you have like 5 other synths playing.. the kick and bass are just lost in the confusion this is really bugging me, as It takes away the energy and power, especially at a climax .. there's got to be away to solve this, any tips people?

EQ the "other" synths so that they don't have much low frequencies. If you use compression on the entire mix, try to compress your bass & kick separately to prevent anything pushing anything else away. Maybe put bass & kick thru an enhancer.

compression and eq will help the most as all ready mentioned

If it's not a question of volume on the kick, then I tend to try pitching up the kick slightly. It'll probably make the kick punchier and, therefore, allow it come through more.

As mentioned by other ppl, I usually compress my drum kits with the intention of making them punchier so that they are more noticeable. As far as the Reason compressor is concerned (that's what I use), I find that the attack and release are what determines how punchy the drums will be.

It was mentioned that you could try eq'ing the synths to get rid of the bass on them. Alternatively, if all you want out of a certain synth is a mid to high frequency sound, you could try putting a bandpass filter on that sound, to really get rid of that bass interference.

Hope that helps.

thanks for the tips, I guess I'll try compressing and eqing each track individually now, instead of the entire mix at the end.

quote:

Originally posted by Anheuser Alternatively, if all you want out of a certain synth is a mid to high frequency sound, you could try putting a bandpass filter on that sound, to really get rid of that bass interference.

Don't you mean a highpass filter? With bandpass if you'd remove low you'd also almost certainly remove high

I suppose it depends on the sound. I've had instances where a bandpass with some resonance really helped a sound cut through (after tweaking the frequency of course). You're right, high pass is another option and is probably more likely to work, if cutting the bass is the goal.

1) Don't take too much low end out of your synths - they'll lose their warmth. I used to make the same mistake, and all my tracks sounded very "tinny". It's a hard balance to achieve.
2) Try using different bass and kick sounds. It could just be that they don't have that punch that cuts through in a mix.
3) Try EQing them a little different, giving them more highs and high-mids (again though, don't go overboard).
4) Are you using cubase or a comparable piece of software with a decent mixer? If you are, send the kick and bass tracks to the same group, and run your compression on the group, so that the kick and bass punch through each other. Then, turn the overall volume of that group up.
And most importantly...
5) Step back and listen to the track. Is there just too much going on? Try muting parts and seeing if it fixes the problem. If it does, ask yourself if that part is really adding to the track. If it's not adding to it, it's taking away from it!
If nothing's working, then it's got to be #2. It took me years to find the right kick and bass sounds!
That's about all the advice I can give. This is probably one of the hardest areas to get the hang of in production. But once you get it, you'll get it every time, and it'll only get better!
Hope that helps!

thanks axs, that helps alot actually. I'll try these tips out next time I load up Sonar.

no problem. good luck!

If you tend to use a lot of reverb, give the reverb some lowpass, 200hz or something, NOT the whole synth

Do you mean highpass? I tend to EQ a lot of the low-end out of my reverbs. To much low-end in your reverbs will muddy things up a lot.

So a lot of good tips already.
As said use eq. The trick is to get a good balance between your kick and bass first. It depens on what you want do you want the kick or the bass to drive your song. Try to eq out frequenties that overlap in the kick and bass. This is sometimes hard to get right. When you are doing this balansing do it without compression so you can hear better what you are doing with frequenties and stuff. If you got that right start compressing the bass till it sounds right. then balance the volume of the kick and bass untill the come nicely together. If you do this right you will see that compressing the kick is not nessesary anymore. Thats a good thing because when you compress a kick you will remove some of its punch. When you have this done mix in the rest of the drum sounds untill the balance is oke. Some times its a good idea to to remove some low from the snare drum. Remove the low from all the hihats.

Now the drum andbass part of the mix is done and now start mixing in the synths and other stuff. Do not remove the low end from a synth if possible but sometimes you have to do it when it has a lot of low in it.
make a balance and listen to it if there are things that need some compression and stuff.

Becarefull with compression over the complete mix. When you compress the mix to heavy the punch of the kick will get less again.

I hope this helps a bit.

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