Professional Analog Mastering.
Professional Analog Mastering.
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Right now, the kick doesn’t sound horrible, but it sounds a little loose. If we take a close-up look at the waveforms, we can see they aren’t aligning properly.
The 3 recordings from the original kick are very similar but were recorded milliseconds off due to differing mic placements. So, it’s best to adjust them to align with one another manually.
You may have noticed these layered samples as well. In short, I found some live recorded kicks to blend in and adjust to help fill out their sound.
Aligning these is difficult since they’re not from the same instrument. So once you have your kick recordings aligned, align these as best as possible to align the peaks and troughs.
When the samples are muted, the original recordings lack punch, and when the original recordings are muted, the samples lack body and lows. Since your recording will be different, you’ll need to layer in samples that fill the gaps of what's missing.
Let’s listen with the kicks aligned and notice how we’re already achieving an impressive sound. I’ll also solo the samples so you can hear how it’s not just the samples that are creating an impressive sound but the layering of multiple live recordings to create a complex timbre.
Watch the video to learn more >
For lack of a better word, the original recordings have some flub - a kind of warbling effect that occurs right after the initial hit. For the boundary kick this is happening around 400Hz. For the mic in the kick’s port, it is around 160Hz, and the resonant or mic outside the kick is around 600Hz.
It’s different for each recording, but finding and attenuating these ugly sections of the kick is imperative to creating a balanced sound that can be built on.
Once you’ve found these and cut them, as well as accented what actually works for the kick using EQ, compress with settings that introduce some harmonic distortion. That is a faster attack and fast release, and about 5 dB of attenuation, give or take a couple of dB. Then, use makeup gain to increase quieter details.
Already, this is making a big difference—let’s listen to how the kick sounds now that the original recordings have some processing.
Watch the video to learn more >
With the kick in a better spot, let’s work with the bass and start finding spaces for both instruments.
If the kick and bass overlap too much, I can almost guarantee the issue is the bass’s fundamental frequencies. Instead of trying to attenuate each note with a bell filter, a low shelf with moderate attenuation will help significantly.
Another aspect that will help differentiate the kick and bass is the bass’s overtones - the bass is thought of as just a low-frequency instrument, but so much is happening in the high mids and even the highs that we can amplify to make it easier to hear.
The first thing we can do is bring up these quieter overtones with a waveshaper - this free Melda audio plugin is a good choice, or you could use the Oxford inflator. Either way, we’re amplifying the quieter details of the performance, which, for a bass, is typically these higher frequency overtones.
Then, I like to create a send or parallel track from the bass and isolate the high mids with a linear phase EQ. Then, I compress them to make them dense before adding some transient expansion. This lets me balance the bass's frequency response with the original signal and these isolated and processed high frequencies.
I’ll send both to a collective bus so I can control the level of the overall bass.
To tie everything together on this bass bus, I’ll add some subtle saturation and very subtle low-frequency reverb.
Let’s listen to the bass now that it gives the kick some more room and now that we’ve emphasized its high mids and highs using this parallel channel.
Watch the video to learn more >
Next, I’m going to group all of the individual kick tracks together and process them collectively with some compression. Personally, I like this omnipressor but use whatever you see fit. Also, just like with the bass, some very subtle reverb will tie everything together - just be sure to use a different reverb type than the bass so that the 2 don’t overlap too much.
Lastly, I’ll group all the drum tracks together and add a little maximization to glue all the instruments together.
With everything in place, I can adjust the levels of the overall kick or any of the individual tracks, as well as the bass and its high-frequency send.
This mix still has a long way to go, and I’ve overemphasized the kick and bass a little for the sake of showing you these ideas, but let’s listen to the final result and compare it to the original.
If you have any questions or need some help with mixing live drums or bass, let me know in the comments.