Bass is so easy to get wrong, with all the complexity in modern bass design, the processing, variables in the production techniques, and the individual conventions of the genre you find yourself in can really make it all feel overwhelming. So when it comes to having a hardhitting low end, I think it really comes down to thinking about the lows from four separate perspectives.
In today’s edition of Sound Advice, we’re talking about these four areas so you can make sure you bass bangs hard every single time.
While there are so many different layers and moving pieces when it comes to working with the low end, i’ve found compartmentalizing these into broader high level concepts makes it so much easier to internalize. From the minute a bass sound is created or recorded, to the point where it’s finally mastered, most of the problems that hold our songs back can be found within these four buckets. By really paying attention to Songwriting, Phase, Frequency and Character we can help our tracks sound massive and more coherent in more places than not.
Let’s get into our first, which is songwriting.
1. Songwriting
There’s a lot about the songwriting itself that dictates how deep and grounded our track can feel at that finished point.
The song’s key itself dictates just how low in pitch we can actually get.
We have to remember that frequency and pitch are intertwined. A low D note sits right on the threshold of being able to be reproduced on most playback systems, around 36 hz. While a low A note, sits higher around 55 Hz and by contrast has a fundamental that sits naturally higher on the frequency spectrum.
This isn’t a hard fast rule but I found that there is a key range that gives you better overall results. Songs in D through G# tend to be able to extend a bit further to the lowest audible pitches while staying in key, this produces tracks capable of really weighted and rich lows. But deep lows can also be a pitfall wich we’ll talk a bit more about in perspective 4, the downside being these deeper pitches may not be heard because many consumer systems can’t reproduce those deep sub frequencies accurately. But there are ways to mitigate this that we’ll talk about shortly.
Tempo also sets a few rules with bass.
Bass frequencies tend to oscillate slower and take more time to actually resonate and be heard as a pitches. At higher tempos, eighth notes are going to feel much quicker and have less time to ring out and oscillate. With a combination of fast repetitions of sub notes and higher tempos, they might not resonate long enough to even associate a pitch or we can get an unstable inconsistent movement in our low end.
This leads into the managing the low end ecosystem, where we have to think about what elements need to occupy the lows. The way I like to think about it is creating a space for all low end elements to coexist. Whether the song is kick dominant, bass focused or a balance in between, the kick and bass are always working in synergy for your intention.
Next is Phase.
2. Phase
When talking about the relationships between elements in the low end, phase relationships can play a huge part in the final sound. Whether it’s the kick and bass relationship, multiple bass layers, or other low frequencies that have to coexist without cancelling each other out, when phase relationships are out of whack, transients and low-end percussion can go missing and feel less impactful. Notes from the sub or lower bass frequencies can feel like one second they’re super strong and impactful and then the next they disappear altogether.
Phase isn’t something you should be scared of or entirely worried about but it’s a specific type of problem that rears its head and causes low end dynamic and frequency problems. And because these can show up in the beginning processes, like production and sound design, its important to know waht to look for so these problems won’t hold you back.
When dealing with phase, it’s more important to trust your ears over what meters tell you. While there are tools out there to help you align the phase of your low-end elements, that perfect correlation doesn’t always equal a better resulting sound.
We always want to trust our ears.
If you’re layering multiple bass parts/low-end elements into your music and you notice a lack of impact, weight, or substance after playing the layers together try nudging the waveform slightly later or earlier to align the phase (or we try flipping the polarity altogether) then do a proper A/B test on the sound so we can trust the move we’re making serves the music.
Next is Frequency.
3. Frequency
Managing low-end frequencies becomes easy when we mentally break our bass into three separate zones:
- The sub, from 20 Hz to 60 Hz, which is more felt than heard.
- The fundamental, sitting around 60 to 120 Hz. This is where the kick’s body and bass root live.
- Your tonal section, from about 120 Hz to 400 Hz, where the bass’s harmonics and warmth exist, but also where oftentimes there’s mud building up from all of these sounds interacting with each other.
Based on those three zones you need to figure out which element leads each of those zones. Some sounds, like kick and bass, can have great areas of overlapping frequencies. Each element could have some level of importance in one of these three zones but typically there will always be one element dominating that zone.
These clashing frequency problems instead of cancelling out, mask each other and sum together to create imbalances in your low end. I find the tonal bass zone needs the most control because it’s here that mud can start to become prevalent (as multiple low-end elements stack on top of each other or when some of the frequencies in these elements start to become too wide in the mix). The Tonal zone is where I do the most sculpting with lower frequencies.
Another important lever we can pull with frequencies is using midside EQ. There are many arguments why having a mono low end translates well to different playback environments but I think the contrast it creates is the more important bit. Creating a centered low end creates immense contrast in the mix. A mix can’t be wide without having a narrow point of reference to compare against. So I use midside processing to clean up side information in the sub zone while shaping the tonal zone to shape the stereo image and remove mud from lower tonal frequencies in the sides of my mix. This keeps the bass clean and deep, but also front, center, and present in the mix.
4. Character
Not choosing the right character for a bass or any low-end elements can really make it hard for your songs to sound great everywhere. Like we talked about before, you can pick a key in which you’re hitting some of the lowest pitches but on playback systems like phones, laptops, and Bluetooth speakers, sometimes those low frequencies can’t be replicated. As a result the bass doesn’t feel audible coming through these mediums. Adding new harmonics to a sound with saturation, helps our ears reconstruct the fundamental pitch even when the fundamental is completely gone like in our small speaker scenario. That’s why adding harmonics with saturation can be exactly what we need to give the bass presence and definition.
Saturation can be a double-edged sword.
Every saturator has a different characteristics in terms of the harmonic content they bring to the table. Plus, we have to also be aware of how each part of the low end, our sub, fundamental, and tonal sections respond to those forms of saturation. I’ve heard saturation make and break the low end more than any of these other buckets.
Again no hard and fast rules but I’ve generally found success with avoiding saturating my sub zone frequencies. I’ve found that when doing so it can make the sub feel a little bit more audible on speakers, but at the cost of feeling like all of the pressure and impact gets cut from the low end.
I tend to use saturation more freely on the tonal bass zone and a basses upper mid range to create more harmonic content that adds presence while also translating on smaller speaker mediums that favor the midrange. There are many different ways that we can target specific ranges of the frequency spectrum to be saturated.
Some of my favorites are:
- using multi-band saturators
- using parallel processing
- creating a multi-band split
Multi-band saturators are really convenient because you can add different types of saturation profiles to different parts of the frequency range and it gives you the maximum amount of flexibility. We could really focus on saturating specific parts of the audio, like the tonal bass area and the upper midrange, rather than saturating the ultra-sub frequencies.
Parallel processing gives you a lot of options to add the right character to your low-end sounds. Even multi-band saturators can be used in parallel, but what parrallel processing allows us to do is to drive the signal a little bit harder into the send fx to get more harmonics out of a saturator then mix them back in with the original track. Those new harmonics are added underneath original sound and blended to taste, giving us the best of both worlds by preserving the original dynamics of the bass while also adding character and perceived loudness through the parallel process.
Another way to get control of the processing of our bass is to actually perform a multi-band split, separating the sound into different parts of the frequency range, which allows us more flexibility when processing those different ranges. You can have tools that target each of the zones: the sub, the fundamental and the tonal ranges of the bass without any of those processes affecting the other zones.
There are many different ways of going about this and there are some plugins that make this process very easy. One of the simplest ways to do this is to clone the track and create your own multi-band split by using a combination of high-pass and low-pass filters on the copies (each one isolating the frequencies that you want to process). When doing this type of processing it’s also a good habit to use linear phase mode on your eq or multiband split plugin so that there are no phase rotations at the crossover points that can cause subtle transient smearing at those points. This gives us a bit more advanced capabilities when processing isolated frequencies in our bases.
Look to these 4 Areas
I’ve found that when it comes to issues that keep your low end from hitting as hard as it could, it tends to fall into one of these four camps:
- The issue happens somewhere in the songwriting itself, where you maybe didn’t think about a song’s key and how that affects the pitches you can play, or maybe you didn’t select a tempo conducive to the rhythms in your low end ecosystem.
- It happens when trying to layers elements or squeezing bass sounds together that all need space to play at the same time. This can cause things to phase cancel out and feel weaker the more misaligned elements you actually add.
- It happens when the individual elements in our 3 zones are masking each other or when one element tries to dominate all the three bass zones: the sub, the fundamental, and the tonal section. This causes overlapping issues that can create a lot of mud in your bass and your low end stereo image.
- It happens because we didn’t choose the right character for our bass sounds. Often we can choose a type of character that gives us the opposite of what we want, either ruining the weight of our low end or not using the harmonic character to enhance the bass and make it more audible.
Thinking in these four perspectives while working with your low end will be easier for you to diagnose problems and create more music that hits hard. As you work on your next project really pay attention to these 4 areas and your weight of your tracks will definitely improve.
