From mix to mix, bass management has consistently been the most difficult aspect. Most people have trouble taming this beast. I will offer a few tips to make your mixes more well balanced, while still retaining the rump shaking boom.
Instructions
1. Assess the way the bass travels within your mixing environment. Often, what you're hearing when you sit down to mix is clouded by bass buildup in your studio. Bass frequencies inherently move much slower than higher frequencies. In which case they tend to hang around much longer too. It's important to properly treat your room to absorb this excess of bass.
2. Once the room has been treated we can now establish a monitoring system to accompany the new room. Remember, that without having first established these two very paramount points it will be difficult to determine if what you are hearing is accurate.
For monitors I still use the tried and true Yamaha NS10s. Though for several years have incorporated a subwoofer into the chain. This sub allows me to accurately monitor frequencies below what the NS10s provide.
3. In terms of mixing, it is the song arrangement that most determines how I will approach the bass. If the song is a sparse rock song with only guitars, bass, drums and vocals, then I will have to treat the bass much differently than say, a large pop song with loops, samples and huge background vocals.
4. The key and tempo of the song make a huge difference in how the bass is mixed. If a slower tempo is used, then I tend to allow it to sustain longer and resonate more freely. Though with a faster song I'll use a compressor to control the release time so that it will keep the bass from sustaining too long.
Knowing the key of the song will give some direction as to which frequencies to alter. There are pitch to frequency charts available that show how these are synonymous. One of the best things to remember is to generally avoid altering the fundamental note being played. It's common practice to add or subtract EQ above or below the fundamental relative to the note being played. Of course, there are no hard or fast rules, so use with discretion.
5. So my usual treatment in the mix would be to apply EQ to the bass track as an insert. I typically roll off everything below 40Hz. I then scoop out a judicious amount of the lower mid-frequencies between 200-300Hz. It's not uncommon to boost the upper mid-range near 1kHz to bring out the throatiness of the instrument. Once my EQ is in place, I then move to a compressor to control the way the bass is working dynamically with the other instruments. I often like to apply a fast attack to the compressor to allow the kick drum to penetrate more. This attack time will soften the transient attack of the bass and allow for the kick drum to provide it. Conversely, this will assign most of the bass information to the actual bass instrument.
6. Once many of the other elements in the mix have been treated and blended I may discover that balancing the bass frequencies and retaining the characteristics of the bass guitar have become disconcerting.
I often create a "mult" of the bass. A mult is nothing more than a duplicate of the original instrument's track. On an analog console, the engineer would send the track out to another open channel so that he now has two of the same tracks to work with. He would then treat them much differently, also "flipping the phase" on the duplicate track to ensure that these two tracks do not phase each other out. With a DAW we can accomplish the same effect by just simply duplicating the original track.
The mult will allow you to retain all the inherent characteristics of the instrument while treating the duplicate differently. I usually take the multed track and roll off the hi-end down to 120Hz only allowing the subfrequencies to be apparent. I then roll off the low end at 40Hz as well. I'll then apply a compressor to create a "pumping" effect to the bass. The song's arrangement will dictate which subfrequencies we'll need to add. This is often achieved by taking one frequency control on your EQ and sweeping it to find the most appropriate bass frequency for the song. This will create sort of a "subsonic pulse" that will be more felt than heard. From here I'll add a limiter to smash the mult to oblivion ensuring that it does not move from a predetermined place. We basically want to create nothing more than a pulsing sine wave to blend with the original bass. Now we can continue making the mix come alive with more confidence than ever.
