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It is rare that i use compression on my bass and kick at all, but i am wondering what your thoughts are. i make fast electronic music with a 4/4 beat.
in general, i avoid compression, maybe because i don't use it enough to fully understand, but more i think because i like the dynamics of the sound without compression. if any of you respond and feel like giving some ideas on settings that you use for this purpose as well, it would be much appreciated.
thanks to all, i would love to hear your feedback...
squee
in general, i avoid compression, maybe because i don't use it enough to fully understand, but more i think because i like the dynamics of the sound without compression. if any of you respond and feel like giving some ideas on settings that you use for this purpose as well, it would be much appreciated.
thanks to all, i would love to hear your feedback...
squee
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Portland
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Re: Ideas on Compressing bass and kick together
Wed, April 2, 2008 - 5:36 PMInstead of bussing kick and bass together and then compressing them, try routing them as sends instead (both to the same aux with a comp inserted on that aux channel). Its the same way you would normally (hopefully) set up reverb or delay. This in known as parallel compression and is a good way to retain the original dynamics of the sound. Sometimes I'll send all my drums out for parallel compression. Sometimes other things.
Another good one is to set the comp on the bass channel and then route the kick to the comp's sidechain input. Instead of keying off of the bass, the comp will "see" the kick as the signal that triggers its attenuation. This is a good way to get the bass to "move out of the way" of the kick. -
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Re: Ideas on Compressing bass and kick together
Wed, April 2, 2008 - 9:40 PMYeah, that sidechained bass compression is one of the most used tricks in electronic dance music... -
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Re: Ideas on Compressing bass and kick together
Thu, April 3, 2008 - 9:23 AMi know squee's music very well as I produce the same kind of psy-trance. You don't really need to sidechain, just remove the bassline note from your sequence every time the kick hits. Unless you want to get creative in a dropdown or something and bust out a long pitch-sweeping sine wave while having your percussion running.
i route my kick drum and bassline to a group channel. Depending on how snappy i want my kick, i usually just eq it a little, sometimes i'll add a touch of 2:1 compression with a fast attack and hard knee to give it more midrange slap. On the bassline, i'll eq a little then add a 3:1 compressor with very slow attack and medium release mainly just to catch any super sub freq's that can get hot when I sustain a note longer than 1/16th (or sometimes 1/32nd note, depending on the bassline). The main key in the bassline eq is using it as a notch filter to find the resonant frequency and pull it out with -18 db spike at the thinnest Q possible.
On the group channel, i'll just pop on a Vintage Warmer or Cubase's Quadrafuzz for a little tube warmth and harmonic distortion to glue the bass together as a cohesive entity. Usually I mix around the kick and bass with my other instruments. If you pull the low end out of your other synths and percussion, it will leave a very nice open "pocket" for your kick and bass to live happily and bouncily ever after, mud free. :-) -
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Re: Ideas on Compressing bass and kick together
Thu, April 3, 2008 - 2:58 PMthanks arahat, good tips. i have definately gotten quite used to dropping kicks where there is bass and i eq my bass and kick for sure. i will give a try on some of the light compression techniques and see how they work for me..
thanks all...
squee -
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Re: Ideas on Compressing bass and kick together
Tue, September 2, 2008 - 10:30 AMeh yo dudes. We here at the tomato farm have been eqing our kick to roll off somewhere around 40-50 if its a flat kick, and slightly higher for the pitched ones. we also generally have a little cut around 1400-1700 in our kick eq. we were cutting the thuddy freq's from the kick out of our bass pretty gently until we read tom's post, and now we do what he said about the more resonant cut because we think it sounds awesome. =)
compression wise, we like our sidechain setup to quiet the bass down just while the decay of the kick is riding out, but only enough so that the kick bass combined volume doesn't spike higher at the first bass note than at the second. we generally do not compress our kicks at all.
after that, we have been applying some light maximizer action to the kick and bass separately. that's about it.
Andy -
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Re: Ideas on Compressing bass and kick together
Mon, September 15, 2008 - 1:52 PMcompressing kick and bass together... it's useful for music with a constant thundering sub end.. like tribal techno or house... when the kick is separated into low and high, the low kick and sub bass can be compressed together after sidechaining for a big rumble. Not sure how effective this is in psytrance which is much cleaner production-wise.
A trick people are using in electro house is to compress the kick and snare together...
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This post was deleted by Jory
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This post was deleted by Jory
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This post was deleted by Jory
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This post was deleted by Jory
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Re: Ideas on Compressing bass and kick together
Thu, April 3, 2008 - 4:19 PMit's funny how Fruity Loops has become a term of derision in the audio world... -
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Re: Ideas on Compressing bass and kick together
Thu, April 3, 2008 - 5:40 PMI love Fruity Loops... !
Sometimes I like to use individual multiband compressors. Using them to scoop the kick and bass together almost like a soft crossover. Usually the kick dominants the subs, sometimes the bassline... -
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Re: Ideas on Compressing bass and kick together
Fri, April 4, 2008 - 2:15 PMwhat's up with all the deleted posts?
I love the concept of your multiband trick MrOneness, i'll have to try that!!
i just downloaded TC Powercore's ver. 3.0 OS and they've included side-chaining on all of the processors (freakin finally!!) so i'm raring to try side-chaining again in Cubase for a breakbeat project i'm workin on. Bring on them 808 samples and big sine waves!!!! -
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Re: Ideas on Compressing bass and kick together
Fri, April 4, 2008 - 3:39 PM> what's up with all the deleted posts?
Personal attacks are not part of discussing Audio Engineering, so they have been deleted. -
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Re: Ideas on Compressing bass and kick together
Sat, April 5, 2008 - 11:51 AMahh, gotcha. i hope i didn't start a war by posting some tricks. apologies if they were retorts against me. I'm just a humble psychedelic trance musician :-) -
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Re: Ideas on Compressing bass and kick together
Sat, April 5, 2008 - 12:16 PMHonestly, I don't know or care who the flaming was between or about. So long as people conduct themselves appropriately, I don't have to delete anything. Which is how I prefer it. -
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Unsu...
Re: Ideas on Compressing bass and kick together
Fri, September 26, 2008 - 1:07 PMAbout the kick dominating the baseline.. It seems that most people would never want to give up the loudness of a kick especially with dance driven music.. Just an idea here... If you use you side chain on the kick with a enveloping filter "for example" attack the 55hz and down on the kick only when that space needs to be occupied by the sub frequency ranges. This way you don't get to much compression on that signal, unless you like that fade-in and out sound.
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Re: Ideas on Compressing bass and kick together
Fri, September 26, 2008 - 3:14 PMyour kick and your bass will either have to:
- occupy separate frequencies (i.e. your kick is either above or below your bass)
- not occur simultaneously (i.e. the bass is not playing when the kick is)
- not share the same frequency space at the same time (i.e. you have an EQ on the bass that responds to the kick, dropping out the kick frequencies while the kick is ringing)
- interplay using sidechain compression, which can be done subtly without obvious pumping artifacts -
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Unsu...
Re: Ideas on Compressing bass and kick together
Fri, September 26, 2008 - 3:28 PMThank you for elaborating.. I'm to lazy to go into detail about the obvious to some logistics, and yes of course there is two different Frequencies that need to be occupied. "Kicks" unless trying to do something completely out of the ordinary usually should be boosted around the 60hz range that also should of course tapper off in the 20-15hz range... Sub frequencies sound best to me in the boosted in 40hz range down..
So let me again say that your side chain enveloping filter simply moves the kicks frequencies width range over from the 15hz rang up so you still maintain the punch with out occupying the same space.. Let me know if I need to be more clear on annything...
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Re: Ideas on Compressing bass and kick together
Sat, November 15, 2008 - 5:20 PMcompression has to happen either in the mix or in mastering so it is essental to understand it
compression is about limiting the dynamic range of a track...
no real reason to compress bass and kick togeher...better to use sidechain so kick triggers bass compression
in other words the input of the compressor of the kick is also used as the input to the bass compressor
that way the kick and bass hit together (not so important if everything is quantized (timing wise)
I put some compression on every track of one kind or another....saves the big squish compression on mastering and gives a more natural sound
also allows for mixing to be less heavily automated as things tend to cooperate better...
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Re: Ideas on Compressing bass and kick together
Sun, November 16, 2008 - 11:02 AM"also allows for mixing to be less heavily automated as things tend to cooperate better... "
its interesting how much of an art mixing really is, as I have recently begun to compress less and automate more. Horses for courses eh? -
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Unsu...
Re: Ideas on Compressing bass and kick together
Mon, January 5, 2009 - 6:29 PMDefinitely automate... Personally I prefer moving the frequency of the kick over just long enough to let in the bass lines. I hate that whole side chaining thing and how much it limits a good continuos grove nothing against electro house or anything hah.. -
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Re: Ideas on Compressing bass and kick together
Tue, January 6, 2009 - 12:27 PMjust to keep it real - a compressor is doing nothing other than essentially moving the volume fader up and down. so there is no difference in principle between using a compressor and manually automating volume changes.
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Re: Ideas on Compressing bass and kick together
Fri, February 6, 2009 - 10:49 AMCervantes - I had a lot of trouble with Sidechaining for a while, because (as you've noticed) it can very easily become that house/bad-trance "oo-wah-oo-wah" pump, which I loathe.
To get a pump-free sound, I set my threshold @ -18 db, 2:1 ratio, attack @ 10 ms, hold @ 0 ms, and release @ 100 ms, and I sidechain using a softsynth drum track that duplicates the kick, but isn't necessarily the actual kick used (so you can tweak the compression trigger separately from the actual drum sound if for any reason the kick sound you like doesn't die down fast enough.
Personally, I also prefer the Slim Slow Slider VST to the Ableton compressor, but that's just because I personally find it easier to get the sound I want.
The perfect example of good usage of sidechained compression, as bizarre as it may be, is the soundtrack in the preview for the Disney "Earth" movie - www.apple.com/trailers/disney/earth/ when the drums kick in over the cheesy orchestral music 3/4 of the way through. In my personal opinion, the compression is set just a little too drastically, because the hold/release is set just a little too long, and as a result is obnoxiously noticeable, but I feel that this is the reason it is a good example - you actually *can* hear the compression triggering with the kick as a result of the exaggeration, even though there is no "pump" effect. -
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Re: Ideas on Compressing bass and kick together
Fri, February 6, 2009 - 11:02 AMAlso, I should mention that unless I'm working with an especially muddy track with lots of lush pads or orchestral sounds, I either a) only have the compression effecting the bass track or b) have the compressor effecting everything below 200 Hz or so. Having a compression free high end can go a long way towards making a bass+kick that sounds over-compressed on its own, simply sound cleaner in the mix. Also, dividing the bass into low and high, and leaving the high bass and the snare uncompressed can create much the same effect if you're only working with the drums and bass.
I don't know if other people have had this problem, but for a long time I thought that when the kick was not audible, there should be no compression applied at all. As a result - you guessed it - the undesirable pumping sound, for the attack and release being a) too fast and b) too drastic. When the settings are correct, at 132 bpm or so, the compression shouldn't drop below about a quarter. While it may seem a bit counter-intuitive, I've had much more success this way.
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