chiragkotak Posted January 15, 2005 Share Posted January 15, 2005 hi... does anyone know any general guidelines to eq and compress a psy trance bassline... stuff like parasense,psychomicro,azax,digitaltalk... where the kick and the first note of the bass play together...and the bass fills all the notes... + + + + kick ================ Bass i use fruity loops 4 and so far i have got best results when i follow this procedure - sequence the kick and bass in piano roll...assign fx channel 1 to kick and 2 to bass where each can be eq'd as necessary...load a compressor in aux send 1.. send kick channel and bass channel to compressor in required amounts... i am not sure if this is the way its done...also i'm not sure what to do first eq or compress... any help would be great... thanks chirag Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spindrift Posted January 15, 2005 Share Posted January 15, 2005 There is no general guidelines. Whats the problem with your bass sound to start with? First thing I would recommend is to look for more sources for kick and bass that you do not need to process to make them sound good. EQ and compression is really tools for fixing problems with source sounds and not the key to good sound. Some synths might give a bit varying amplitude on different notes or have inferior envelopes. Then you will need to compress them. How depends on what you think is not right with the sound. If you want more of a transient in the attack of the sound compress with a fairly high attack setting and a longish release, ie opposite to how you would adjust the envelope on a synth. If the sound is too transient and need to be fatter use a short attack and a short release. The main frequencies for bass and kick is somewhere between 70-120 hz. If your source sounds do not have enough energy in that area add a mild peak with the EQ to boost it. Many times you then need to compensate for bleeding of frequencies into the nearby frequencies by reducing a bit around 200-250hz and 40-70hz. To find what different frequencies actually do for the sound, try sweeping around with a narrow q boost. Routing both bass and kick thru the same compressor does not sound like a good idea to me. Normally you would use the compressors induvidually on kick and bass as inserts. But most of all, try to tweak your bass sound using the envelopes, notelengths and filter to get it as good as possible. If you are not happy with something about the sound, try again. Then try another synth if you still can't get it right. Now if you have something you is fairly happy with but know what you think the sound has too much of or is lacking, try EQ and compression. Same goes with the kick sound. If you are not happy with the sound you have, look for other sources. On many sample CD's the kicks is finetuned by good engineers and it's quite common it seems that people compress and EQ for the sake of it and actually degrade the sound rather than improving it. Also, fruity loops is not great sounding when it comes to mixing. There is people who will tell you otherwise, despite tests that have been done to prove it and the testimonies of loads of experienced producers. Most producers I know who use fruity end up mixing the tracks in another sequencer. It can make a great difference to especially the bass region when you have a few tracks playing at once. I would recommend to at least try for yourself if you can notice any difference when rewireing or exporting to logic or cubase. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chiragkotak Posted January 19, 2005 Author Share Posted January 19, 2005 wow... thanks...thats great information.... i was under the impression that in order to make a bass line sound tighter or fatter you must compress... so its possible that initially a bass and kick may sound great and need not be compressed or eq'd at all... also i was under the impression that either the kick or the bass contains low frequencies and not both..and the same frequencies must be eq'd accordingly..so that only the kick or only the bass had the lower frequencies... also i'd like to know a little more about sidechain compression on a psy trance bassline...is it possible in fruity using the fruity compressor?? or maybe a vst compressor i can get... thanks.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spindrift Posted January 21, 2005 Share Posted January 21, 2005 i was under the impression that in order to make a bass line sound tighter or fatter you must compress...It can be hard to find bass sounds especially that will sound great with any treatment. But it should be the first priority if you like a fat clean bass. You can listen to my tracks on the site in my signature if you like and see what you think about the bass and kick sounds I use. Pretty much all tracks have completely untreated bass and kick. About separating bass and kick. Again, start with finding sounds that does not clash to much. It's very common nowadays to try to avoid having the bass and kick triggering at the same time to avoid problems. Most of the tracks by the artists you mentioned do not trigger the kick and bass at the same time. So the standard russian bass would be KbbbKbbbKbbbKbbb. If you like to have them playing at the same time you would many times get better separation by making a little peak in one, and a dip in the other. For example boost around 110hzin the bass, dip at the same freq in the kick. Then boost the kick around 70hz, and aagin dip the same frequency in the bass. I normally make sure the bass and kick sounds is not overlapping by ensuring that the sounds do not last longer than 1/16. If you do that you do not need a sidechain compressor. But by all means play around with one and try it out. You might like to get the first bass note after each kick to be a bit delayed or have a synth that refuse to make your notes shorter than a 16th (don't know if there is any synths like that, but anyway). I use sidechain sometimes, but then it only kicks in when i do kick fills where it saves me the hassle of editing the bass notes to avoid clashing. I do not know about the fruity compresssor really. From what I recall it is posssible to sidechain in fruity, but how someone else have to answer. Otherwise TC compressor is a popular choice. Insert the sidechainer on the kick channel and the compressor on the bass and there choose the sidechain input. Normally you have to use quite a low treshold and high ratio. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest .::E.P Posted January 21, 2005 Share Posted January 21, 2005 The basic rule is always to find a bass sound (on whatever tool your using - synth, samples ect.) that sound as close to the sound you want. As Spindrift rightly said EQing is not really the right tool to change the basics of the sound. But basic knowledge about how to program a synth (or software synth) is very good and in my opinion a must if you want to create your own Bass sounds or other sounds for that matter. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chiragkotak Posted January 21, 2005 Author Share Posted January 21, 2005 hey.. thanks guys... very helpful stuff... gonna go check out your tracks spindrift... thanks again... chirag.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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