Kick and bass.

[brine]

I need a way to make my kick drum on the same level as my bass so they sound closer.

Also how can i avoid the beats and percussion being swallowed up by the bass?

I currently use acid pro and alot of samples can any one point me in the right kind of direction?

[nospin]

one way to keep percussion away from the bass, is to use sounds that are in different frequency ranges from each to start with. dont use a lot of boomy 808 kicks, and have a bassline in the same range. also EQ to help things that have to overlap. if you have heavy sub, and middle bass frequenies from your bassline, you'd be surprised that you might not need real lows in your kick. also try to find the punch, or snap of your kick sample, and cut the bass a little around that frequency.

sometimes you might want your kick to keep those lows though, for pressure or whatever. thats when you use sidechain compression to make the bass duck down a tad, just when the kick hits. lots of tutorials on that. i think even a couple on youtube .

i'm not sure what you mean by making your bass and kick sound closer. but a dry sound (no reverb or delays) will sound up front in the mix, and a wet sound (reverb or delays added) will put those sounds "further back" in the mix.

--if a mix sounds too muddy, find the frequencies that sound bad. (turn up the gain high on an EQ and sweep through the frequencies, to find the bad sounding ones) and then cut subtley at those frequency. unless you are going for an effect, try to cut when EQ instead of boosting..

---also remember, the only thing that matters is how it sounds in the mix, if you solo a sound, and it sounds wimpy, that doesnt matter if it holds its own in the mix.

i'm very amateur at this as well, but i think these tips hold pretty true, maybe someone else has better advice

[Sharmaji]

turn EVERYTHING down and turn your monitors up-- if you see no red at all in either the channels or the stereo outs, your mix will have a ton more headroom. since bass stuff tends to make up like 60-70% of the energy in a tune-- you gain a lot more space to work in. you can limit/compress/overdrive it all to make it sound louder, later.

also-- it's all about getting sounds that work together before anything else. you can use sidechaining, sure, but it's more suited to making a mix pump around the kick than tucking the bass back.

[vadarfone]

Kick and Bass is probably the most logical part of all electronic music production..

Start with decent source sounds.

Kick: You need to generate the heart of your kick in an Audio Editor. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. You need a pure Sine wave with a pitch bend at the start to make the transient punch.

Doing this in an Audio Editor (Sound Forge is the best for this) will mean you have a pure thud with a hell of a lot of energy. Shape it how you want it and make it as short as you can get away with. You can do this destructively or use an envelope in your sequencer.

Sub: Do the same but obviously just leave the wave standard with no bending.

These two bad boys will form the heart of your low end.

To this, you can start layering samples of distorted shit you have made yourself or acquired. When Eqing the kick, make sure you use the Synth kick you generated as the control and eq everything else around it. Same with the bass.

Sidechaining definitely will work with the Kick and Bass just so long you make the release really short so you dont get too much Trance style ramping which will give cheesy pump and pulse.

[dr.benway]

You need to generate the heart of your kick in an Audio Editor. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

Yes Boss....

a pure thud with a hell of a lot of energy.

And you've shot your self in the foot.... If your eating up volts with yr kick, then when u try bring ina sub - yr in trouble. Even with very diff freq ranges you only have a finite amount of energy you can use at any one time.

Minimal Voltage - Maximum illusion. You can't just pile loads of HUGE sounds on top of one another & expect it to sound big - all about contrast yh.

[vadarfone]

All good mate.

If you check out what the Mastering engineers do during the stem mastering phase you will notice they replace the guts of the kick with a synthetic one generated in house to fit the track. You can control any dynamic you want to when you make you own, so if you have the right approach (which you would have to if it is what you do for a living) you can make a solid kick for all occasions.

You can try it for yourself to test he results.

I am not sure if you are using slang when you refer to Volts and the kick. Seperating will sort this to an extent, and sidechaining also.

Obviously you need to think about the Sub and Kick within the context of the mix, so I agree that overdoing with will kill the headroom.