And the kick and sub are incredibly smooth. I opened the song up and looked at the levels and spectrum and I don’t really understand how to do this. The kick has a massive freq going from about 100hz down to 20. The sub is sitting a little over 50 but there’s no interference or anything, the levels don’t move but it doesn’t sound like it’s being limited or anything.
Is he carving out a spot in the kick when the bass hits or is it actually being limited or just some mastering magic
yeah you have to mess about with the attack/release/threshold to get the desired effect, he may even have multiple side chains going on, maybe sub cutting out chords/vocal and kick cutting out everything
Also, what you see in the analyzer is most likely a really fast pitch shift. It looks like a brick of frequencies, but physically what’s happening is that the low end of the kick goes down about 2 octaves super fast. It’s basically the same movement that is the fundamental aspect for boomy trance kicks, just many, many times faster and goes roughly from 100Hz to 25Hz instead of 180Hz to 45Hz or something.
Yeah I know that it’s a crazy huge fast pitch shift. I was just more confused how it could use so many freqs and not fuck with the bass but now I hear that they aren’t hitting at the same time.
I actually tried bouncing the kick and the sub and then using FL studios crossfade between them (fading out the sub when the kick hits then fading it back in and the kick out) sounds pretty good actually. Added on a bit of side chaining just to really drive it home and it’s working pretty good.
Somtimes tuning the fundamental of thbkick to the bass allows u to sit one on top of the other without any clashing obviously it will peak quite high but if u scoop the kick fundamental out of the bass or vice versa that stops that problem
i been fucking around with subs and kicks recently and it could be a combo of pinpoint sidechaining(only using a tiny portion of the kick frequency to sidechain) and phasing. Sometimes whwn you reverse the phase on a kick or sub the frequencies add to each other instead subtracting ig. idk im dtill new to dis stuff
You can here the sub that supposed to be on the first beat, is actually just after the first beat… almost 32nd or so… before the kick comes in, you can tel that sub note on first beat is late… as if it’s attack is lengthened or even being s/c’d.
instead of using kick to sidechain, just use a muted track with a click (rimshot etc) in the same pattern as the kick. So much easier to fine tune ur sidechain this way compared to dealing with the attack and decay of a kick.
You can go the other way around instead of sidechaning - just saying.
which then can be much more complex and silly but it can be done. Like you make a bass out of the bits of the kick you dont need. Overemphasize part of the decay or release by way of an envelope or a reverb or delay or anything that will add lengt or prolong the sound itself. Then you cut those extra long decayed bits out and make a sequence out of them next to the kick. This means the bass and kick are essentially made of the same substance.
Another way to get a sub that is naturally ‘related to the kick’ which I like, that is rarely or almost never done, is to low pass the whole track with all its parts and set resonance and compression in a way that focuses that whole frequency area in a way that makes it act like a sub section. You need to have made a part of the tune first before you do this ofcourse - but any instrument with harmonic content can be used and even part of a snare or some drums or cymbals. And it will be in tune with the rest of the song automatically - because it’s just an extreme way of emphasisng contend that is already there. And on another level; bass below a certain frequency level does not have to be in tune because it’s mostly physically felt and not clean harmonics ‘down there’.
You basicly low pass all the way down to 150hz and then set the resonance so it adds to the 100-150 range … which is right about where the part of the sub goes from felt to heard… the first clean harmonic. Then you do like before and cut out bits that work together. But this time around the sub bits don’t just relate to the kick but actually fit under seperate points in the track. It’s like you have the whole track outlined as a sub.
But actually if the compressor is nuanced or finely tuned with the threshold setting and is capable it will behave drastically different with what you put into it even on silent. You can get it to react with any sound and you are right in thinking a short sound with a simpler dynamic is great to trigger it accordingly through out a track. Ghost track sidechaining.
But you can be super technical about it. Like if you use a lighter maybe even reverbed hipassed sound, you will notice the sub floor of an individual sound, or the underside of a two component dynamic with quick reacting hi and physically felt lo, is the thing that ‘moves’ the sidechain. Whereas the hi part of the sound will be the one to trigger it first (ofcourse) but stay with me here lol… if you put a quickly triggering hi sound with a slow reacting sub part - its a completely different shape than the square-ish shape we got from the ghost track sidechaining. It’s like an ellipzoid or triangle and it changes the reaction of the compressor accordingly. Also the slightly hi ‘tinged’ rimshot sound will force the threshold to be quite open which again changes the dynamics. So its good to trigger with a short rimshot because the decay is short and neat, but the lo part can be severely or ruffly cut short - again that can sound dynamic too.
On a complex level you could go through having regularly sidechained a track with ghost hits and then go to town and side -shape some bits one more time.
I use similar approach to cut and shape reverb tails of sounds. That way you can throw tons of stuff in and balance it more. (Tho I just like overly reverbed stuff so it doesn’t sound managed in my tracks but it is compared to how much reverb there really is lol).
it’s a crazy huge fast pitch shift. I was just more confused how it could use so many freqs and not fuck with the bass but now I hear that they aren’t hitting at the same time.
