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-- Bringing In The Bass

Bringing In The Bass

I have been spinning for about 6 months now, and I can beatmatch fine, still needs alittle work, but some days are better than others. Anyway, I think really the only problem that I have right now is that I can't seem to bring in the bass of the incoming track without it being too overpowering. I have tried many methods that I know of, and nothing seems to work. So if you guys can tell me how you bring in the bass I can try some others things. I will keep you guys updated when I start getting different methods. Thanks everybody for any advice that you can give me.

Peas

what i do is test the track before i play it live...

i move the needle to a part of the record where all the action is happening...i normally have the bass all the way cut...i turn up the bass (EQ) and while im doing this im paying close attention to that channels LED meter...OK once you have the LED meter of that channel at same level as the one thats live..you'll have your maximum bass level. Look down at where you have your bass EQ set at...this will be the maximum you'll want to bring it at

so now when you bring it live you'll never have it go be overpowering

hope this helps in some way

the mid EQ has alot to do with the total output of the ovreall track as well...use that in junction with the bass EQ and you should start seeing results.
I did, at least...

here's what I usually do. As I'm brining in the bass EQ on teh incomming track, i lower the current track's eq by a quarter. Then as I slowly (or quickly) bring in the bass on the new track, I lower the outgoing track just as much as needed to keep the levels constant.

Well, I think that it depends heavily on which mixer you have. My DJM-600 has several features that other less expensive mixers do not have. First off, most tracks I can get the volumes right by doing exactly what liquid does. I fast forward to the chorus of the track, where the bass beat and all of the other intruments are most intense, and I set that to peak at about +2dB. There are some tracks however, that the bass doesn't have as much depth, or has too much--whichever--and I either have too much bass or not enough. I can monitor this by setting the volume % of the live and cue tracks to 50/50. This way, if the LEDs are all lined up and the vocals of my cue track are way loud compared to the volume of the live track when I'm listening at 50/50, I know that the volume of the cue track is still too high!

It also depends on your crossfader. I know a lot of mixers don't have the option to switch the resistance levels of you crossfader. The DJM-600 allows for three different modes. One that sets both track levels to 100% when the fader is in the middle, one that sets both track volumes to about 80% and one that sets them to about 50%. Now don't get this confused. It doesn't lower the overall level of the track, your vocals and highs will still be the same level, it just reduces your bass a little bit more. This is good to have this option because different djs have different mixing styles and the mixer adapts to your mixing style rather than having to adapt your mixing style to the mixer.

You can mix several ways:

1. Leave the crossfader in the middle and use the volume sliders on the channels to mix. I do this by putting the crossfader selection to 100% volume and then when I increase about 80% of the volume slider on the cue track, then I start reducing the bass eq on the live track. It's a mix between slightly lowering the bass eq on the live track, reducing the overall volume on the life track and increasing the volume on the cue track (with the cue's bass remaining the same throughout the process).

2. Leave the crossfader in the middle and use 50% volume resistance on the fader. Then use the volume sliders, but you don't have to really play with the bass eq very much at all because the crossfader selection compensates for it.

3. Use the crossfader and use 80% resistance. I still use the bass eqs, but leave the channel volumes at 100%. This is nice for much quicker mixing.

There are of course other ways to mix, but those are the three that I use most commonly. Some people use the gains/trims to adjust the volumes, some people use both crossfader and channel volume sliders, but whatever floats your boat is what you should use. I usually use second option when I am recording mixes. I notice the bass fluctuations much less when listening to the mix afterwards in studio headphones.

Thank You

Wow !!! thank you so much guys for your responses, they have helped me out alot. The only problem I have is that I don't have the best of mixers, Numark DM1002x, and the LED's don't show the volume of the channels, it only shows the levels of the left and right channels when they are playing live. I'm saving up to buy a new mixer, and input on the, I'm looking for a mixer that shows the levels of the two tracks seperatly and not live. Other than that, anything other features I don't really care cause I don't know too much about them. So anyway, thank you all for your input and I will try to keep you guys posted on what ended up working out the best for, and again thank you.

Peas

Again, you can still listen to the tracks live and look at the LEDs while you are brining in the cue track. Just do it slowly and bring the bass down on the live track one or two notched reguardless of how it sounds in your monitors. Chances are if you don't have channel LEDs, then you don't have crossfader resistance options either. This means that they should be playing at 100% on each channel. Use the channel volume sliders and leave the crossfader in the middle, if you don't normally mix like this and see how it works. This way as you increase the volume on the cue track with the volume slider, once it seems loud enough, just stop increasing the volume on the channel slider and continue on as normal.

Well alrighty then, thank you very much for the information that you have given me.

Peas

In your situation, considering the mixer you have, you will have to go by ear. I had a mixer, when i first started, that did not let me monitor the volume through the LEDs,,, only the live program, just like your mixer.


Figure out which songs are loud and which ones aren't. The ones that are louder, you may want it to match the song currently playing, and the ones that have a lower volume, bring up the volume slightly.
You must be asking "how can i listen to them if one is playing live and the other is monitoring?" Well, you monitor the one playing live with your headset on, then eliminate it from monitor, and then monitor the track you will bring on with your headset on. Then you do the adjusing on volume knobs for the track you will bring in.

Also, dont mix with the crossfader but with direct volume limiter for each channel. As you bring up the volume on the incoming track, try to have the bass low about 9 oclock, dont bring it up until the limiter on the new track has surpassed the limiter on the ending track. Then, as you bringing the new track in, slighly lower the volume on the playing track, but not much to where its not even noticeable to the human ear. That provides the same type of effect as mentioned above on the higher end mixers, where the overall volume lowers about 2-3db, but your actually doing it manually, instead of letting the crossfader doing it for you.

The point is, if you have a cheap mixer, you will be better off not using the fader, but the volume knobs or limiters on each channel.

Trust me man, you can get some good mixes with a cheap mixer. To be honest, a good mixer will only bring you more expandability, better sound quality. If you master what you've got, and if you learn how to use it make work for you, you can have a better mix than someone with a 1000 dollar mixer.

I have also got a question about the bass, im mixing for 6 months now, and i have a rookie question: Sometimes (it depends on the records i mix) the basses of the records are at the same moment and the bass "falls" away, you push the record a bit and it goes away, i hope you guys know what i mean, its like the bass gets less and the next beat it is normal again, the next beat it falls away, etc. WHy is this, and how can i prevent this

well first question: does this happen while you are bringing in you next track? Becasue if that is the case, that is fine that it happens that means that you have the two tracks beatmatched, the bass is cancelling each other out. The only way that I'm aware of to get rid of that is to bring down the bass of the live track a little bit and see how that works.

and bachatu, I don't use the cross fader, I don't think I have used the cross fader since day one, but thank you for your input. I think what it all boils down to is, now that I have gotten good responses from you guys, I will have to take the advice and see what works for me. I was starting to get down cause I had tried everything that I knew, and nothing seemed to help. Thank you everybody

Peas

tecno logy:

the two basses cancel each other out. I dont' know how, someone explained it in the dj booth a little while ago, so search for it and it might come up.

I'll explain why this happens to the bass. I hope that everyone at least knows what a sine wave looks like. If not then you can see one here . So I'm going to just talk about two single bass beats and assume that there is no other interference from any other part of the track. Given that:

Bass beat 1 (the live beat) beats at a certain bpm. Your objective as a dj, is to adjust bass beat 2 (the cue beat) to the same bpm and the same phase as bass beat 1.

So you have the sine wave of the live bass and you hear the sound when the wave hits a maximun or a minimum. Look at picture "a" at the above link if you need a picture. The beat starts at 0 on the timeline and every time you hear a beat the wave is at +1 or -1 on the y-axis. This holds true for the cue beat also.

So now comes the time when you have both beats matched and you are ready to play them live at the same time. Well, since you don't know which beat is at +1 and which is at -1 (because they are indistinguishable by ear--if you want to know how you can go about detecting it, I'll elaborate to replies, though it's not an experiment that you yourself can perform without expensive equipment) you know if you have the beats synched, but you don't know if you have them in phase yet. Now, don't confuse being in-phase or out-of-phase with phrase matching. There are two possible senerios:

In-phase means that the waves of both bass beats are at +1 at the same time, and hence at -1 at the same time too. When this occurs, the two waves will add together, and you will get an over-powering/double (1 + 1 = 2) bass signal. This is why most djs will turn the bass eq down on the live track as they bring in the cue track--if they don't, the bass will kick twice as hard and this can cause distortion, and even speaker damage depending on how loud it is.

The second case occurs when the two beats are out-of-phase. This occurs when beat 1 is at +1 when beat 2 is at -1, and vise-versa. When this happens, then the waves still add, though 1 + (-1) = 0, and you have cancelation--you will hear no bass beat. This is the problem that you are inquiring about.

So why you ask, do you hear a beat that is just reduced in volume and not none at all, and also how do you go about fixing this?

First, you hear a bass beat reduced in volume for a couple of different reasons. 1. it is very hard to get the beats "matched" as far as truly and completely matched goes. Your ears, however well trained, can never (unless you're lucky once or twice) ever get two beats perfectly matched. The speed of sound is about 760 miles/hour and varies with temperature etc. You CAN however, get them matched enough so as not even the best trained ear can distinguish them (if you're good. The second reason you hear only a reduction in volume is because more than likely, the bass beat of each track was not made by the same instrument and hence doesn't have the same frequency range as the other beat. Take forinstance, beat 1, with a frequency range from 40Hz to 45Hz and beat two from 43.5Hz to 54Hz. While each beat has its own frequencies, and each one overlaps a portion, there is still part of the beat that is not effected. Beat 1 will have no (very little at intersecting or overlap nodes to get technical) cancelation effect between 40Hz and 43.4Hz while beat two will have no cancelation effect between 45.1Hz and 54Hz. This mean that you get a parital bass signal, but reduced in overall volume due to elimination of certain frequencies.


One thing to note, not to confuse those who use programs like winamp and soundforge. In Soundforge, you can zoom up on the wave of an entire track and it appears to be one single, continuous line. This is not really an accurate picture. If you have winamp, and you have the spectrum analyzer on peaks instead of wave/oscilliscope, then you see all the frequencies of the track being displayed (supposedly each frequency per bouncing line) at any INSTANT in time. Think of this as a frontal view. Soundforge, however displays the side view, so that you can travel along the wave in time, though you cannot see any individual frequency, you can only see the sum of all of the frequencies. You can only perceive the entire waveform in 3 dimensions.

you are a veritable fountain of good information flesch!

i knew, MOST of that alredy, but you explained it completely and clearly, thanks for that.

i wish DJ mixers had 3d displays of sound waves, one in one color, one in another, like yellow and blue, then in the middle they mixed and made green..

that would be wicked. and i'm going to build it.

quote:

Originally posted by JohnSmith you are a veritable fountain of good information flesch! i knew, MOST of that alredy, but you explained it completely and clearly, thanks for that. i wish DJ mixers had 3d displays of sound waves, one in one color, one in another, like yellow and blue, then in the middle they mixed and made green.. that would be wicked. and i'm going to build it.

Well, thank you very much It's nice to know that my long-ass posts are read by at least one person I'll tell you, though, I majored in Chemistry in my BS with a biology minor and physics and math concentrations, and especially the physics concentration has helped me quite a bit in figuring out how to dj better. Also I know a lot about stereo setups and electronics, and that helps me enormously too!

me too buddy.

well, i didn't major in chemistry, but i did take math 11, 12, and physics 11, and 12, which was all i could get.

I also took some mathematics and college classes in college.
it's all just numbers!

I have a diploma in computer science, that has helped immensly with my DJing too. I plan on building many things with my knowledge, including hopefully my dream mixer, 4 channel quadraphonic, parametric EQs, 3d displays for each channel and main channel, as well as integrated looping, sampling, and control of visual elements, and not just beat counting, but beat keeping.

ah, my head is getting in the clouds again.. back to my tech12m3ds and vestax PCV275 i guess for now. :P

Dj Flesch, that is some helpful shit.

Regarding volume

I have a Vu meter only for the playing track

A good rule of thumb i use is that vinyl with 2 tracks on one side are always quieter than a 1 track one side record,

so if you're mixing into a 2 track one side record boost volume
and vice versa

also a 1track one side record will be louder in 33 rpm than 45

if this is confusing e-mail me
peace

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