Kick and Bass Low End Mixing Tricks w Ulrich Wild, Cameron Webb & Warren Huart: Produce Like A Pro 

we are blessed that such a great mixer decided to open a RU-vid channel and share his amazing knowledge.

Wonderful clear, concise, original, not rehashed information from someone who does this for a living!!

Super super helpful! I love getting 3 different yet very complimentary views. I like how they we’re sequenced to build on each other conceptually. Thanks you!

Perfectly timed video for Me, Warren. I'll be tracking live drums and bass today, Wednesday and Friday! THANK YOU!

I am so glad I found your channel! Probably the best mixing info on youtube!!

This is the best video about low end, that i've ever came across in YT. Thank you, i really apreciate. Best Regards!

Thanks much Warren. Any lesson on low end is most welcome!

Great video as always. Being a drummer myself, I love the relationship between the bass drum, snare drum and bass guitar. I think these three elements are the most important part of a good rock song! I like to get these right in the mix first and having the bottom end worked out too helps me with mixing the rest of the song. Thanks for the tips, I'll be putting some, if not all of these ideas into my next mix. You guys all rock!

Best information out there on this by someone who does this for a living!

Amazing information! The cheat sheet rules!! Reading it now!!

A brilliant video! I love it! Thank you Warren!

Such good info here! Low end is so important and so hard to get right! Love these excerpts!

I didn't know Cameron Webb before knowing your channel, and I've got to say I really enjoy it when he shows up in your videos. He has a great sound and he's a great teacher too !

This was great Warren! On one of my favorite tracks of yours to boot! Bravo!

Thank you Warren, and Cameron and Ulrich, great useful info. I really appreciate the opportunity to learn how you all work.

really great video and well put together. tks

Great video. I am really glad that I found your channel. My approach to work on the low end is a bit different than the one shown in your post. My "secret weapon" is the dynamic EQ from Brainworks, the bx_dynEQ V2. I use the boom function of the EQ to emphasize the low frequencies around 60 Hz of the kick drum with a narrow Q factor. At the same time, I lower the octave band at arround 120 Hz with narrow factor to the same extent. On the bass track, I often set a low cut between 32 and 48 Hz with a 6db transition steepness. Then I use the DynEQ on this channel with a side-chain trigger from the bass drum channel and set the frequencies in reverse to the settings on the DynEQ of the kick. I'll tweak the 60 Hz and 120 Hz settings on both channels until I get the sound I want. I also often use a transient designer on the bass drum to sculpt the attack and the sustain. Works pretty well for me. That's my humble approach to getting the low end of a mix under control. I found out that the hardest thing in the world could be finding the right measure, not to be too be to boomy but still being fat enough at the bottom end. It's pretty hard for me to cut back the low frequencies once I've gone overboard a bit. It sounds pretty deep and fat if there's too much energy in the low end and it sounds easely to thin when you roll it back, even if it's the more reasonable setting. Every time I think I'm too loud at the bottom, I press the stop button, reduce the low frequencies to my personal best guess, and pause for 5-10 minutes before returning and pressing the play button again.

Awesome tips for the kick and bass guitar. They are a great refresher for me. Thanks Warren! I hope you have a wonderful day too!

Fantastic bite sized info infused session detailing kick and bass mixes from a variety of sources, thank you ever so much Warren.

Great vid warren! Also, i really love the snare sound in your first tune in the video, would love to see what you did!

Nice one. Bottom end mixing is always the tricky bit! Right, off to practice...

I appreciate your videos!

Heres another way to think: It does not work all the time, but its an other idea to think about it, even when mixing like the three guys showed. It comes before. Bassdrum usually has its foundation frequency at around 50-60Hz, as already mentioned. But looking at a FFT you see theres less harmonics. Very few dB at 100Hz, 150Hz in comparison and so on. And if, than you can lower them using EQ at 120Hz. (also as mentioned). Bass on the other hand has usually a quiter foundation tone at 40 Hz (E), but more power at first and second harmonics at 80 Hz, 120 Hz etc. Thats why, as mentioned, bass it strong at 100 Hz and bassdrum at 60 Hz. Bell filters will capture this. Even when the bass plays an E (80Hz) or A(110Hz) or B(90Hz). Now don't think in bell curves and a continues spectrum like in the mids and heights anymore, but in discrete tones. Assuming the bass plays from low B up to E or F# and stays more or less at the low range from B to F#. Deep death metal stuff. Not Alex Webster like. ;-) Than we have the foundation frequencies of bass at 30 - 45 Hz. The first harmonics at 60-90Hz. The second harmonics at 90-150Hz. And so on, but we look at the bass frequencies only here. You see theres a gap between 45-60Hz! If the bassdrum is tuned to around 55Hz its foundation note will fit nicely into it. And that gives room and clearity without EQ at the first step. On the other hand, sometimes this will not bring bass and bassdrum together, it can sound that both will not work together. Than it can work, e.g. when playing simple rock and punk riffs like A-F-G to tune the bassdrums to 55Hz exactly on the root note of the song or a harmonic intervall. Something to experiment. tldr: Think bass notes as discrete frequencies and look where they are and how they interact. Therefore to make bassdrum and bass work together try to tune the bassdrum. Or choose one. Or tune the sample.

This has been super helpful. Thanks, Warren!

The cheatsheets are very useful I find myself looking at them all the time when I mix !! Thanks Warren !!

Beautifully done warren thank you! Muy Bueno

I absolutely learned something, thank you so much!

freaking awesome.... so informative

Warren, my man! I don't even produce or mix any type of rock, but I always come back to your vids for inspiration/new techniques! Love the positive energy! hope YOU sir, are having a marvelous day

Again Warren, many thanks for sharing your time, experience, and personal resources with us. Many thanks also to these producers for sharing their knowledge in such a generous way. Very valuable information here.

I love Ozone 7 Adv. Thanks Warren for always sharing killer info.

Once more, Thank's a lot !!!

Killer! Thanks guys!

Thank you so much Warren!

Love the channel! When you multi band bass after the clean low/ clipped high trick, have you tried compressing the two halves separately with a standard compressor of choice? If so, how was the result different?

Thanks for a bunch of tips Warren! I'm saving this video for when I'll have recorded live drums for my new album. Will try my best to make it sound big. Though for my standards it already does even with programmed drums and very generic samples. Hopefully when I have the real stuff done, it will explode.

My man Ulrich with the Rocket 5's and the Yeti, doing some amazing stuff haha

Youre awesome man, i love this. :D

The spl attacker is one of my favs for my drums

Thank you so much Warren. This is without a doubt the biggest problem when you get it wrong and the biggest win when you get it right....It's what I fight with all the...every mix. There's a lot of good info....One reminder for everyone out there is to always keep in mind to mix with your EARS...What do you ears tell you.... Cameron wasn't afraid to boost the mids by +10db with such a wide Q. Thanks again. Cheers

This is the mixing topic I‘m dealing with a little bit more at the moment than anything else. I‘m trying to find a good solution for me … thanx for your video!

Nice one Warren! Been using an 1176, DBX160XT, and or an LA2a forver. Pultecs or a Neve to shape. Since ITB, added the Surfer EQ2 to tame those tricky freqs, and add a little limiting. Saw you use multiband a while back, and tried the Waves C4 which works pretty well for taming the low end. Thank you for the tips!

Brendon's music in Home Movies inspired me to learn guitar!

Good stuff. I will sub.

Hey! Love the videos man. You’re great! Is there a substitute for the transient designer?

Applied the tweaks warren shows on his mix to my kick and snare and hats coming in from Addictive drums II and presto my previously starved bassline becomes a driving bass line like it showed up late and changess the whole vibe of the song from so so and lacking oomph to a total jam If I learn nothing else from Mr Huart this video is the jewel of PLAP ...word

I still find placing the bass in the mix really hard. Lots of good infos on your channel, Warren, although I always miss examples that are not modern pop/rock/metal. There are so many videos over RU-vid regarding those genres, but try finding something for e.g. managing the low end/low mids for upright bass and several picked guitars in more singer-songwriter/folk/jazzy genres is next to impossible. Or even the classics: I was recently listening to Pink Floyd’s “us and them” for referencing, and man, what a low end! The kick is really so not modern sounding, but sits warm and round below everything and the bass just floats above it. What a great drum sound anyway, totally unobtrusive at first glance, but still present and supporting the song.

Beautiful.

Hi warren, great vid and excellent tips, thank you very much. also for the cheat sheet, be well my friend. Darren ross

This is probably one of your best video, completly usefull...no bullshit talking, I enoyed every second and learned so much...thank you mister Warren...

Awesome vid, super helpful. Just a quick note that waves have released smack attack, it’s another transient designer for less than half the price of the UAD one and it’s really really good, IMHO it’s just as good as the UAD.

Love the new bling on the wall, Warren!

I recognize it is harder for me to sift these sounds in general, but know I love Suzi Quatro for a reason, amongst others who utilize this end the most. My next plan is to listen through parts of my collection of those songs I have with the most low end, and then come back to hear this a fourth time. Thanks to all of y'all.

OMG THANK YOU !

What do you think about side chain compression with kick and bass. I've used it before and would set a fast attack and release to let the kick come through, but control the attack of the bass.

Love your videos! I’m not sure if this has been answered by you before. You mention the dynamic range of real vs virtual instruments. What about sample drums recorded with a live drummer on an trigger kit? Do you feel you can get enough dynamics vs a real kit?

Just watched a Fab Filter video about why Linear Phase EQ can often sound worse than regular EQ. Warrens low pass DI bass and high pass Sans Amp on the other hand would be a perfect place to use a Linear Phase EQ.

Hi Warren, fantastic video. With regards to virtual drummers in DAW's should you still go through and eq drums? For example would it be beneficial to eq a virtual drum tracks kick drum as you did in this video, or would that have already been done when creating the sounds? Thanks for your time.

Great job as always, Warren! Just one question; I noticed in Cameron Webb's segment he seemed to be overdriving and clipping a lot of the eq and compressor plugins... even some of his tracks were peaking. Where I come from that's a "No, No". Is it a matter of taste, or would u NOT recommend doing that in most cases? Thanx, Kahlid.

Hey Warren, great video. Just a question about when you’re mixing ITB. What monitors are you using to reference mainly in the video? You using your main monitors or the small pair in front of you?

Just wondered wondered Warren could this apply with the use of using electronic 909 kicks and bass synth?

Love this format of 3 great and different approaches to a same issue.

thanks again for great video. Im amateur, and learn this for fun and for improving my of recordings, so Im asking basic questions:) What confusing me is do you setup EQ for kick every time exact the same settings in different songs, or you use same shape, but slide everything until you get something that you like. Frankly I didnt hear much difference in the end of EQ-ing kick part. My problem is if I dont hear much improvement, I dont know am I doing it right. I dont like to copy EQ shape, and say thats good..but I dont really understand and hear that. I got lot a compressor, but to me they are all the same... All have stuff like: threshold, ratio, knee, attack, release, make up..gain and etc. In the end, I like the best Mixbus console compressor, where you have 2 knobs, and slider, and combination of those 3 I get really nice sound. And last, but not least from me, hope you will make a video of how to make "mix alive". When I mix all tracks and it sounds clen ok, I send like a snare, vocals, to a separate different aux buses where I have delays, reverb, reverb+chorus, and similar combination. Then I try to set up those combinations of effects, and send it to main bus effect, where I blend it with clean tracks, to have nice full..alive sound (dont know how explain it with words). Problem is that I sometimes hit with nice combination..and sometimes I get "boomie" and not so pleasant effect channel....and hole song dont sound good...

hey warren! thank u very much!! and dont forget... dont hassel the hoff😃

Hey Warren ! Maybe this question is for another video, but do we ever lock in the bass to the grid as well? Maybe not fully but at certain points?? I produced a pop song with a live bass and doesn’t sound as “quantized” as my virtual. And my musician is Amazing

hey Warren...trackspacer plugin is an interesting tool for easy sidechaining and ducking things from wavesfactory

Yupppp!

LIT

will hi pass the amp signal and lo pass the di signal cause the phase cancelation?

Signed up for the cheat sheet but still haven’t received it. Is it still available?

lol putting +6 db on 40-60Hz on a Techno Kick is going to completely ruin your track. Either way this has helped quite a lot, thanks for the insight!

When you put on a spectrum analyser at the end of a finished mix, what is the preferred curve in a generic metal mix? A flat line? A smiley? A bump in the mids?

at first when I stared mixing I didn't understood the relationship btwn bass and kick until I stared seen it like this...[we have 2 areas which makes the low end ...Sub freqs and bass freqs.] The mind set is who's gonna lead where. This mind set helped me a lot . btw.."Bark of the dog" from Boz digital lab(free) is a great plugin for control the low end. Waves R bass also. But before taking a look at plugins is best practice to take a great listen to whats going on with the raw tracks ...and what style of music are you doing. Very important cuz the kick and bass of a funk track doesnt have the same amount of low end as lets say a rock track or a hip hop track. Different approach different tone.

Does anyone hear that Transient Designer at about 6th min? Or is it my being on headphones (Audio Technica ATH-MSR7BK)? And, of course, thank you for the wonderful ideas here!

This is great as usual. I’m struggling tho to really measure/monitor bass from my HS7’s across diverse tracks, it’s still a huge guessing game for me...? I’m high passing etc but I’ve no idea really how it sounds until I reference on a hifi or in the car, a little annoying?

Are you using any binaural placement for the kick drum. I always come across a problem. I use the best high quality kick samples, but I miss the strong pop in the low-end like the kick hits right in the center of your head when wearing headphones. The signal of a kick is in mono but for example the new track of 5 seconds of summer named young blood perfectly represents the kick I want to make. Its tight, centered mono, but I'm convinced they are placing the kick more centered then the regular monosignal in the mix. Can you clarify this?

interrsting! thank u... and dint forget.. dont hassel the hoff😃

Exellent ;)

can you explain kick and bass multing mixing way

Do you know of any free multiband compressors? There isn't one that comes with protools :(

You can really be the greatest mixer, if you "only" watch this channel.

Oh warren it hertz so good. I want to have a deeply involved relationship with my kick and bass. Have a marvelous time in general!

I've been recording and mixing for a living for 30 years. My "Aha!" moment came the first time I did a project in an accurate studio with accurate monitors. It certainly helps to know what you're listening for, how masking works and what tools can help get instruments to play well together. But mushy low end is almost inevitable if you can't trust what you're hearing.

warren what would be your aproach on recording a bass cover over a song ... high pass the song ¿?

Warren: So without further ado... RU-vid: Starts Ad

so the trick that youve got from Tim Palmer was splitting the bass in two parts, isn't it?? I remember like 10 years ago getting some ROCK BAND video game stems from a song Tim Palmer mixed, and listening to the bass and saying wow... that's a very controlled bass sound, I figured out in the end something like what you show in the video but never thought at the time of multi-band compressing and equing both tracks... very good video, love both Tim and you. you should do a video with Tim if ever possible, cheers Edward

A smoothneth. 13:26

I feel like each segment could have led with a short sample of the finished songs or at least not with soloed tracks. It comes across as "this is what you do to achieve this" as opposed to "this is why you might do this".

I'm a bit puzzled as to why a regular compressor wasn't used on the low pass bass and instead there was a multiband compressor on the lows, which were already isolated.

MIXINGLOW END IS ABOUT APPROPRIATION AFTER DECIDING WITH ARRANGEMENT YOU NEED TO DECIDE WHICH PORTIONS OF KICK/BASS YOU WILL BOOST AND CUT ON EACH WITH MINIMALL OVERLAP

I'm a bit confused on what L2's and L1's actually are... are they leveling compressors? I'm always hesitant to use them because I don't quite understand them.

Why do you EQ the combined bass bus at 60Hz if you can just EQ the clean DI channel since that is the only channel with bottom end in it

Pardon my french, but listen to that goddamn snare, holy shit man.

and he is such a nice/kind "English gentleman".

Wow...That's a🔥 *HOT* 🔥topic💟

Can anyone comment on Cameron Webb saying to go into the box super hot with the bass to get a big sound?

DETHKLOK!

1st Song ***KICK*** 3:45 EQ cut 350Hz (mud) boost 60Hz (weight) cut 110Hz (build up) boost 7k (click) 5:20 Transient Designer ***BASS*** 6:30 duplicate track, add saturation 7:00 EQ duplicate: HP 200Hz original track: LP 200Hz 9:30 sum EQ HP 60Hz 10:06 Multiband Compressor crossover 250Hz heavy compression underneath 11:22 2nd Song 16:50 3rd Song

I know I'll sound like something I'm really not, but when you asked the rhetorical question about the bass tone, "you know what's interesting about that?" I couldn't help but immediately respond with that there was absolutely nothing interesting about that bass tone. That had absolutely nothing to do with you personally, I think you make very informative content, you obviously know what you're talking about, and I like you personally has a RU-vid personality, as you're definitely one of the guys doing what you do that is knowledgeable but doesn't come off like a condescending prick. Who am I? I'm Just a nobody that has played guitar for about 32 years and bass for 30 years, and been building guitars and basses for about 25 years for everybody except for myself. It seems that everywhere I turn on RU-vid everyone is creating the exact same type of bass tone in the exact same way: run the high-end with a high pass filter through some kind of handsome, overdrive, or distortion, or combination of the above, and some videos they even say make it sound like s***, and they do. Then they run the low end with a low pass filter out a DI or straight into the DAW or straight into the board, and compress the hell out of it. Then they brag about this consistent low end that's just so great. But when I first started playing bass guitar 30 years ago I was taught by professional bass players that played six nights a week, in multiple bands, different genres, plus studio sessions, and there wasn't a compressor anywhere to be found, and they sure the hell wouldn't allow someone else to add a compressor on their signal. The compression that they needed came from their right hand and their left hand, and amazingly enough, being able to completely control their volume, and the transient shapes, and any gating, with the right hand or left hand and occasionally a light move of the volume knob. That's how I learned how to play bass and I applied those lessons to my guitar playing as much as I could, and in 30 years the only compression has ever been on my bass signal is the compression that's built into the Ampeg SVT 4 Pro, and that knob has never been above 12 o'clock. Never. You see, one of the reasons why modern metal is so lifeless and dull is because you don't have great bass players not only allowed to be great bass players but expected to be great bass players . A great bass player should be playing bass lines that have dynamics. When you have a breakdown section during the song now, the bass is the as during the verse and the chorus on the low end, and when you have a cymbal crash with an immediate grab, a bass (and sometimes a rhythm guitar) playing a quick punched note and then muting out that note, dynamically that should be more powerful than the first note that they play in the next verse, and significantly more powerful than the melodic notes to follow. The emphasized notes should be, need to be, able to be clearly emphasized. A bass player needs to be able to put emphasis on certain notes, and our ears want to hear these dynamics. A bass player needs to be able to work with that drummer and create dynamics within the rhythm section. What makes a great rhythm section? Talent, skill, a good ear for harmony, an ability to use dynamics within a melody. A geat rhythm section is one that gets people paying attention, get them up and moving, gets them feeling the beat the rhythm, gets them to pay attention to the melody and the harmony, because there's something grabbing them on certain notes or phrases, and that's pulling them in, or grabbing them and punching them in the face or kicking them in the chest. If the lower end of the bass guitar is compressed to hell it's just as lifeless as snapping the drum to the grid and playing it all at 127. You've just done the same thing with the bass guitar. And as for distorting the crap out of the high-end, there are places when the distorted bass sounds great, and yes, a crappy distortion, or poorly set up distortion will cut off the bottom end of a bass. But believe it or not, a good engineer (listen up Glenn), and even more so, a good bass player can take a high quality overdrive, fuzz, or distortion unit and get a good distorted sound that does not lose the bottom end. I see this approach taken on every RU-vid channel when it comes to the bass guitar it's just sad. People keep complaining that there aren't original sounds but nobody wants to do anything different than put an sm57 on their vintage 30 speaker and run one of the three guitar amps through it and when it comes to base it's the same approach on every video. And the thing that blows my mind is the idea of using a high-pass and low-pass filter to split the high and low sound apart is treated like some Modern Miracle of engineering when this is what a piece of equipment called a crossover was doing in the 1960s and 1970s and 1980s and 1990s and there are a lot of good bass amps that have the crossover built right into it. I've been sending the low end of my signal into an 18in Electro-Voice speaker in one cabinet and the mids and high to another cabinet with a 410 and a horn oh, and at that time I was using a Peavey amp. Not even my Ampeg. So please, guys, women, let's start coming up with some new approaches to creating bass tone. Because well there are some of these cookie cutter bass tones that actually do some pretty damn good, where they're being used, there are a lot of them that sound like furry farts coming out of a hippopotamuses ass, and I know there are plenty of people out there I feel the same way I do, and there are plenty of people out there who can create a better bass tone then b123 Metal By Numbers cookie cutter approach that has been on every RU-vid channel for the last seven years. I have posted a similar statement to this on a couple other channels and all I got was arguing back and then challenging me to create the bass tone myself. And when I'm not working 20 hours a day building a small business, while raising two young children oh, I will start a RU-vid channel myself and put a goddamn bass tone on there that is not made the same way that all these other bass tones are made. I'm posting this comment here because I really think that the Brain Trust at this channel can and will do better. I'm hoping so. You guys do a very good job, I enjoy the contents and I I've learned a lot, even when I disagree with what is being said, what you're saying makes me think about why I am saying what I am saying. You don't throw things on your channel just for the sake of saying it you actually have a reason for saying it. And that I appreciate a lot I actually started this comment while watching a different video and was meaning to put this comments on a different video, but it still applies. I enjoyed this video too. Thank you.

3:48 kick 3:56 350 mud