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Best Bass Sound

This tutorial will help you achieve great bass sound in any situation on any system. The factors that make up great bass is your monitoring system, the mixing room, the bass patch, effects, compression and EQ.

Monitoring: Make sure your speakers are flat – meaning there are no eq curves, additional frequencies added so that what you hear is what you get. This makes sure your translation from system to system is accurate.

The Mixing Room: Because of technology, the room doesn’t matter anymore – and this is why.. If you are using nearfield or loud speakers, listen to mixes at conversation level. The sound will not bounce off the walls and give you an inaccurate misrepresentation. This will also keep your ears fresh for longer periods of time and will yield accurate results faster.

Bass Sounds: Using presets or building your own bass patches doesn’t matter as much as that your bass sound goes ‘WOW’ when you hear it. Either the bass will be a sub bass sound or a punchy sound. How do you tell? Frequency range. Sub bass sounds are in the 30hz to 100hz. Punchy bass can be between 80hz to 120hz. Once you choose which type of bass sound, you can get into the sound design of the patch. Depending on what hardware or software unit you’re using, start with the Attack, Decay, Sustain, Release settings to adjust the tone and depth.
Now add the bass in with your beat then further design it in the pocket of the beat. After you have the general setting, now play with the other knobs of modulation, effects, oscillators, filters, etc. – just play your way into a great sound.

On a side note, its important to choose the opposite type of kick in comparison. An example is if you choose a sub bass then choose a punchy kick sound and vice versa.

Bass Effects: Distortion, chorus, flange, phasers are great effects for bass that help enhance the initial bass patch. Use these sparingly for the final touch of your patch.

Bass Compression: Use compression to make the bass stay strong. Start with a ratio of 10:1, fast attack and slow release. Once again, play your way into a great sound. When doing this you’ll start noticing the settings that work best for your favorite patches.

Bass Eq: After compression, the last thing is EQ. A rule of thumb is never add or boost EQ. Ever. If the sound needs to be boosted, it’s better to choose or design a different patch that fits in the pocket of the beat. As a guideline, EQ is used only to cut the frequencies below 40hz. This gives the beat more headroom and dynamic capabilities. Use a low shelf EQ or hi pass filter.

There are tons of ways to approach the bass in a mix. Keep an eye on the clock during this process. Time management is essential to making great bass sounds and beats. Indecision is still making a decision. Use the outlined approach in this tutorial to enjoy the process of getting great bass the moving on quickly to finishing your beat.

As always, make sure to apply this article to your music production. Set aside some time to work on your sound design technique before or after the creative process. This will give you a chance to train your ears and also get instant results in shaping the best bass sound you are after.

Bass Drum Compression; Compressing a Kick Drum Tutorial

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The purpose of bass drum compression and compressing a kick drum tutorial is to make the ‘meat’ of the drums louder and to reduce the transients / peaks at the same time so that the kick can be punchier.

This tutorial is going to focus on compressing the Kick Drum and starter compression settings and will help you unlock using compression for any process.

Your typical compression parameters are Threshold which determines when the compressor starts to work. Attack is how fast or slow the compressor reacts once it starts working. Release is how long the compression is held. Ratio is how much compression is applied to the signal. Gain Reduction shows you how much of the signal is getting processed. Using a DAW, you will want to use compression with a plugin on the insert of the track.

When compressing a kick drum, you are listening to the fatness or the punchiness of it. Either the kick will need to be bassier or it will need to be punchier to cut through the mix so as not to interfere with a sub bass instrument (if present). By increasing the attack time, the kick will be bassier. By decreasing the attack time, the kick will be punchier. This method will affect any instrument the same when compressing. If you want to squash it so it will hit harder, set the threshold so the gain reduction is -5 to -12 and set the ratio to 5 to 10:1. When setting the threshold this way, you will need to adjust the output. Make sure the output is the same level as the input before the signal was processed (use the bypass function to check this).

Make sure to tweak the compressor ‘while’ you are listening to the entire mix. This will ensure you find the sweet spot for the kick in the mix with the rest of the track.

Kick and Snare Compression Settings:
Attack: 1-5ms, Release: 0.2s/Auto, Ratio: 5 – 10:1, Knee: Hard, Gain Reduction: 8-15 db
General Compression Settings:
Attack: Fast, Release: 0.5s/Auto, Ratio: 5:1, Knee: Soft Gain Reduction: 8db
General Mixing Compression Settings:
Attack: Fast, Release: 0.5s/Auto, Ratio: 2 – 5:1, Knee: Soft Gain Reduction: 2-9db
Vocal Compression Settings:
Attack: Fast, Release: 0.5s/Auto, Ratio: 2:5 – 6:1, Knee: Soft, Gain reduction: 5-12dB.
Bass Compression Settings:
Attack: 2-8ms, Release: 0.4s/Auto, Ratio: 7 – 12:1, Knee: Hard, Gain red: 5-13dB

Tutorial: Compressing a Kick Drum:
1) Import a Kick Drum Audio Sample into your Audio Sequencer. Also Load up a Software Sampler with a Kick Drum patch.
2) Load up to 3 compressors on the Audio Track’s Insert Channel and on the Software Sampler’s Insert track.
3) Experiment with the Compression Settings and the different characteristics of each compressor.

Using your own equipment, apply this kick drum tutorial until your ears begin to hear the subtleties of compression.
If there is anything we can help you with, setup a free training consultation below.

Vocal Recording Tips and Techniques

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The best vocal recording tips and vocal recording techniques are not what you may expect.
Because of technology, it doesn’t matter where you are recording vocals.

I have recorded vocals in the middle of a room, in a hallway, bedroom, practically anywhere and always end up with great results.
Here are some Vocal Recording Tips and Techniques that will dramatically improve your vocal recording quality and give you the same results:

The secret is having a hardware preamp, hardware compressor and a condenser mic. They don’t need to be expensive. From there, have a popper stopper about 2″ away from the mic and make sure the vocalist is always an inch from the popper stopper. By using this method, you can record vocals anywhere so that you capture that great performance. This gives you the option to be creative and inspired anywhere the creative vibe chooses you. After everything is recorded, then you add compression, maybe some limiting and EQ to boost them just right.

The goal is to make sure you get the hottest recording signal level without clipping or any vocal distortion. Many clients who sent us their project to mix have vocal recordings that are distorted, noisy or clipping. Something ‘just wasn’t hitting’ but they couldn’t explain it. The goal is to have the preamp input set to where no clipping can happen on the input, through the compressor and into the recording system. Once that was explained to the client, they re-recorded the vocals and the mix and master came out great.

If you use a mic directly plugged into an interface, you don’t get enough volume and end up with a lot of noise. When the signal gets compressed after recording, more noise is heard while increasing the volume of the vocal.

When using a preamp and compressor while close miking the vocals, you’re getting nothing but voice. In most sound proofed rooms, they don’t close mic but instead get the room sound in the recording with the vocalist sometimes a foot away from the mic and many others in the same room too. This works and sounds great but its not the only way to get a great vocal sound.

On a final note, I do not recommend USB mics. While having a USB mic is a great advantage, if the mic doesn’t have an XLR connection to use with the preamp and compressor, don’t go for it. The limitation is not worth the investment. For the condenser mic, what to look for is a mic that has the hi pass filter on it and then the 3 recording modes – Directional, Omnidirectional and Figure 8. Getting a mic with all these features will give you advantage in any recording situation to get the best results for minimal price.

Presonus makes some of the most affordable and great sounding mic preamp and compressors for next to nothing. These are great to start with at any level. I also recommend Art too. The main difference between inexpensive and overpriced compressors and preamps is this: inexpensive units do their work. They process the sound, boost it, add warmth and are very transparent – what you hear is what you get. Expensive units add a ‘sheen’ to it. They ‘color’ the sound in a way that only that specific piece of gear can. At the end of the day, having that ‘sheen’ is great but really, if the vocals are crisp, clear and the performance is on it, thats all that matters. Music is getting released way too fast to get hung up on validating your music by what equipment is used..

Here are a few inexpensive options to start practicing this vocal recording tutorial.

Single Channel:
$100 PreSonus Comp 16 mic compressor
$100 PreSonus TubePre mic preamp

Dual Channel:
$179 ART TPSII 2 Channel Preamp
$289.95 ART MPA Gold Mic Preamp (2 channel digital ins and outs)
$399.95 DBX 1066 Dual Compressor Limiter Gate (2 channel)

Tutorial: Vocal Recording Tips and Techniques
1) Research a hardware mic preamp, mic compressor and condenser mic in your price range. You can always upgrade later down the road but having this combination will make a HUGE difference at any level.
2) Benchmark your mic recording setup. Test the settings, tweak the preamp and compressor with one vocalist until you get a good solid sound consistently. Afterwards, test 1-2 different vocalists to make final tweaks.

If you need specific details on vocal recording and settings, setup a free training consultation below.