Wow that's a golden nugget! Thx, helped me a lot..! So you start with the kick&bass after the first gain staging process, to define de fundamental balance of your track? After that you go ahead and use your method with SPAN(which is also a golden nugget)?
I use span more to check. After I get the low end right, I move on to the core drums, then the additional drums. Then I will add in the main hook element of the track, then bring in the other things one by one in order of most important to least important. So the main elements have the most space in the mix and the rest fits around them.
Hey, as an additional tip with setting the kick volume, remember, if it has a click on it that will influence the peak. So you may want to filter (low pass) the kick first, before setting the level, to be sure that the peak of the sub is setting your reference point and not the additional influence of the click. You'd only need to do this once if you already have a kick sound you're happy with. It's not super important but can become an issue if you're working with a loud click or especially one with a harsh transient in the high end. Alternatively, another way to do this without filtering at all is to use a spectrum analyser to level the kick instead, where you look for the sub of the kick to hit a pre-defined range (from the visual)
Mixing Theory is BY FAR the hardest thing in my music production to apply correctly often makes things worse. The biggest problem I run into is that it sounds (to my audio skill level) perfect in my headphones (BD 770 pro X) but when I play it on my Yamaha monitors it sounds too loud on bass. The same thing happens when I play in my car. The journey continues which I consider part of the fun. Your YT quality content helps but these things take time to get right.
This technique of isolating the elements to know the volume of each one with the Spectrum is amazing... thank you very much for sharing your knowledge!
I think you mention the importance of sample selection, this is probably the first thing I always do, instead of trying to make the kick and sub work, they should already be close to working. Also sidechaining can get complex with different kicks and sub patterns. Would love to see a deep dive on this
When you analyze a "reference track" please remember that this track is already mastered, meaning that maybe compression, multiband compression and limiting occurs. So the relation between bass and kick might be a nice starting point but after limiting etc, this relation changes. This is always my biggest struggle with A/B comparison. Because I compare a mastered with an unmastered track. In theory, if your kick is the loudest element in your mix and you give it a 3 db gain reduction on a limiter, the difference between the bassline and the kick, after limiting, surely isnt 3db anymore.
I realised that I used Saturator in a wrong way. Thanks for this Video, all tutorials on your channel were very useful during producing my tracks. Thank you and take care !
Another fantastic tutorial. I’ve paid thousands on music production courses and none of which have explained the process as well as this. Question: do you check for phase cancellation in kick and bass? How do you detect and fix if so?
DJ ready mastering... Add a limiter and push it to between -8 and -9 LUFS. That's what I generally do to quickly test something in a set. There is a free loudness meter from Yulean Audio
Could you PLEASE, do a tutorial of how twocolors does their classic slap bass baseline. They just do it so well so if you could go through how they achieve that sound, that would be amazing.
Never heard of twocolours or Slab Bass genre. I searched it and it's really not my thing. It sounds like pop EDM with some melodic techno influence to me. I only make videos about music I like and respect which makes the process of creating content enjoyable and sustainable. There are loads of videos on the genre though.
Hey, thanks for your kind words. I'm self taught, so never went to school for music production. But I would recommend it to anyone who has the opportunity. It will speed up the learning process a lot!
Excellent content as always dilby! The info you give in these free videos is top level! Two questions please: 1)When adding the slate tape machines, you get an overall gain increase on the channel. Do you make sure you bring that gain down again or you leave it as it is?(also do you tweak the bass settings maybe on the plugin to bring the level back down? 2) can you PLEASE recommend some headphones that would be able to carry out professional sounding mixes if mixing on headphones? Which ones do you use? Many thanks and keep em coming! Also, you should consider creating a full course😁
Hey bro, the as you bring the input gain up on the Tape Machine it also brings the output gain down. It may add a couple of db, but I always tweak everything by ear in the end (point that out in the video). The db levels is just to get a close ballpark super quick. Headphones I use are Sennheiser HD650. I have also used Beyerdynamic 880 Pro. I'm pretty sure there are some good ones from Audio Technica too but I haven't used them.
Ok, the magic seems to be referencing and metering comparison... Never done that before... But i am not sure if it will solve my issue since i have this topic with every track... In the end the low end is a little bit too loud... I think i will need to start comparing more 😅🍻🐣
Very nice tutorial. Really like that bass sound too, could you possibly do a video on it? I have Diva and have checked out the Minimono preset but it sounds completely different.
Yeah, I made it. It's one of the template presets, which are a good basic starting point for sound design based on classic synths, in this case the Minimoog (and the mono means it's monophonic). Write me in IG and I can send you a pic of the the patch so you can remake it.
Yeah, I use a similar plugin called Smart Compressor. It does the same thing but it's a bit more precise than Trackspacer. White Sea Studio does a comparison I think.
Nice! I use the same bus routing for my low end, my weapons of choice being a dusting of Decapitator and SSL G Bus 👌. In this example the bass is not overlapping the kick, but do you often have to use eq as well to make them work better together?
Actually there are 2 bass notes happening on the kick over the bass pattern. I normally try to avoid that, but it worked OK here. I would say the main thing to try and avoid is having a bass note with the same fundamental frequency as the kick playing at the same time.
Anything is possible. In my experience this sounds shitty in the club with no definition in the low end. But there are plenty of tech house tracks like that.
Regarding the method of analysing the amplitude difference for both fundamentals of kick and bass. In a mastered track, would that relationship not be tighter? Overall compression and limiting would bring both sounds closer together in level no? I imagine this would be even more the case due to the dense nature of these elements in a mix?
They are being limited by the same amount, so the volume increase is relative. But there could definitely be some displacement in relative volume. But the point is to easily find a starting point that is very much in the ball park. And my experience is that this method does that.
The difference in amplitude between two elements in a mix is dynamic range. That’s exactly what compression/limiting is reducing. The effect is likely far less relative than you imagine. If a burst tone plays solely at -6db and then later at -3db and then you add compression, and then on top limiting time bring both to 0db, do you think the difference is still 3db? Limiting by the same amount doesn’t mean anything. The whole point of this process is to increase RMS, which does the exact opposite of what you’re suggesting. If everything remained with the same relative level then you haven’t used any form of compression. Let alone what is being used for most commercial dance music (a lot).
I’m not saying it’s a bad technique, I haven’t tried it but I don’t see how a relative level can be maintained when the whole record (being a dance music record) would be going through what is essentially a hell of a lot of compression.
Hi from Russia👋 ! Thank you for the great content . I really like it! But there is a question - your kicks on the loopcloud are already with master processing, with a level of 0 dB. How to solve the issue with the headroom? And is it worth using the general processing of drums with such barrels? Thanks!
Samples are generally normalised to 0db. This is good for comparing them to one another, but as you note, it's impractical as they are too loud. Any loops or samples I use I will always reduce the clip volume by 5db.
@@dilbydj that actually makes a lot of sense.. when I started doing this with splice samples It just made everything sound cleaner with my master chain.. something so small but so huge.. I start getting distortion and u can figure out why.. thanks for that
Great video, really helped me out with this. I just have one question though, I get the +7db for headroom bit, but why do you level the kick to peak at -4db? Is it because when you take the 7db off it will be at -11? or have I miss understood?
No, it's just that by trial and error I have figured out what works for me. the +7 adds headroom for mastering. The -4db leaves enough headroom in the gain plugin that when I have all the elements in I shouldn't be clipping inside the gain plugin. If I set the kick at 0db inside the gain plugin I will go over 0db when I start to add other elements.
I'm just getting a relative volume between the elements. the metering method is irrelevant really. I'm not a huge fan of VU meters tbh, but that's just my preference.
i dont see what the plugin you have on the video)Because half of the display - your video, not plugin - and also don't understand why you need 7db plus...
I add 7db to increase the volume and I work to 0db output. That creates plenty of headroom so I never get too hot and can just turn that off and export a premaster. Pretty sure I explained that in the video, and if not I have done in plenty of other videos.
To be honest, guys i am not joking what this learning shapes my passion you can check my talent on timemp3records a youtube channel my last track fade (rutvik rao music) i totally learn from dilby and see how it sounds like the perfect shapes of whole track. All credit goes to my friends @dilby #guru love from india dear. Your videos are my routine dose to get some new tips and tricks to work on new project 😊🎉
