Small tutorial: Fattening up Kick and Bass

[Cybernetika]

Hey,

I just discovered a way to fatten up your kick and bass combo with the Waves Plugins. I hope this could be helpful to you. You can of course use any compressor/limiter for this but in my opinion, there is no easier and better sounding way than with the waves plugins.

 

So here we go...

 

First, route your kick and bass to different FX channels.

 

On the kick FX channel, use the Waves RVox and set the threshold to something between -5 and -15. You will notice the kick sounds "stronger" now. This isnt necessary per se, as most kick samples are already compressed quite well, but I think its always helpful. After that, you may need to boost the bottom of the kick a little, to give it punch. You can do so by applying the Waves RBass now. The trick is to boost the ~80Hz area now. Attention: as the RBass is quite heavy, you might get distortion, so you need to make sure to lower the "intensity" from the preset 0.0 dB by a few dB.

After that, you can use an EQ to adjust the kick's character a little.

 

Now comes the channel you have routed the bassline to. Most psy tracks nowadays have only one bassline providing both the sub frequencies (warmth) and the upper bass frequencies (melody).

So here is what you could do: On the bass channel, use the Waves RVox again and adjust the threshold to a relatively high value, this is used to make the bass really dominant in the overall mix. Then, you can optionally use the Waves RBass again. Boost at ~40-50Hz this time, this will be the sub frequencies. But again, go easy on the "intensity", too much bass intensity will mudden up your bassline, so lower the preset 0.0 dB a little again.

Now is the time to do sidechaining if you need to. This is only needed if the bass directly interferes with the kick, but I am also trying to solve this conflict EQ/Compression-wise: You can use an EQ on the bass now, and now you can reduce the bottom frequency you have previously boosted on the kick (here its around 80Hz), this might be needed to give the kick space to breathe.

 

Now on to the last step:

Now you have to route both kickdrum and bassline channels to one single channel. And there you apply the "Waves L2" (ultramaximizer). This tool will maximize your kick and bass while at the same time limiting the signal to a set amount of dB so that your kick and bass dont cause any clipping anymore. You have to experiment a little with the values and how they work with the overall mix. In my example, I set the "threshold" to -8.3 and the "out ceiling" to -4 ... in effect, that means any signal louder than -8.3 dB will be maximized to -4dB, but it largely depends on what suits the sonic nature of bassline and kick.

 

The settings used here are only meant as an example, it still depends on what type of kick drum and bassline you are using. Just trust your ears

 

Like I said, you can also use other compressors or limiters. You have to use a high ratio to imitate the RVox.

 

Hope this tutorial helped you a little. Good luck!

And any criticism on this tutorial is appreciated.. I know here are some that know their business way better than me, so feel free to tear it all apart

 

Also, big thanks to my friend Felix aka Airi who helped me a lot with this issue.

[jivamukti]

Thanks for sharing, got to try that sometime.

[Reznik]

rvox and rbass are Renaissance Vox and Renaissance bass or what?

thx

[Aeros]

Thanks man, I just tried this. Works better than what I used to do

 

Another thing that helps is if you're using FL to have all the FX on channel 1 for example, and then put the kick on channel 2 and link channel 2 to channel 1. I'm not entirely sure what this does but try it and it makes the kick much much louder (you may have to readjust volume and FX if you already have them). I think it has something to do with FL making the signal mono and then applying it as stereo... Someone who knows more than me should try it and tell me whats going on

[spacer]

http://forum.cubase.net/phpbb2/viewtopic.p...tereo+sidechain

 

:-)

 

http://www.psynews.org/forums/index.php?sh...hl=sidechaining