Audio Ordeal

Music Production, Podcast, and DJ Tutorials

How to Get a Strong Bass

4 min read

The first thing most people want in electronic music is an excellent powerful, tight bass. This is often, to the inexperienced, only achieved by turning up the bass EQ or having lots of bass elements in the song.

This isn’t the case. Following that logic and progression will result in a muddy, horrible mix where the only audible elements are the bass frequencies themselves. What a mix really needs is the right balance, through which the bass will really penetrate.

The first thing we want to look at is the sensitivity of human hearing, if you look at the image below, you will notice that the main sensitivity of the human ear is in the mid-range as well as the upper-mid/lower-treble section. As the frequencies go out with this range, they are harder to hear.

 

This is good news for everyone as most device speakers only really play the mid-range and above (think tinny sounding cheap speakers). The essence of the song will almost always be in the mid-range as proven by low bandwidth playback on old radios and television.

While this graph represents much older models, you get a good idea of the limited frequency response of the small speakers on portable devices.

The point I’m getting at here is, firstly, you want to ensure the mid-range is good. If you’re going to compromise the mid-range for more bass, the whole track will suffer. This is going to sound worse than a track lacking in bass most likely.

 

If you consider the above, you may realise that it can be used to your advantage, consider dubstep, a bass-heavy genre where the “filthiest” drops are usually really bassy. Or are they?

 

If you actually look at the sounds the bass make, it is often quite distorted, occupying much of the mid-range in upper harmonics as well. Because they are harmonics, we are still aware of the fundamental frequency even if it isn’t through the roof in relative volume. 

 

In fact, this is why dubstep can sound filthy on most sound systems, only because of the mid-range energy. While there are still sub-lines, they are usually just for low-end power on big systems and the main sound is present without them.

 

So next time you write a bass line, consider making one with a lot of harmonic content, so it fills the spectrum more, making it appear more than it is. All you need to top it off is a sine wave sub-line an octave below for the sub feel in your chest and instantly heavier bass.

 

If your track is set for the clubs, remember at high volume the bass is perceived as louder anyway and so in your low-level mixing environment, always allow for that consideration. Figure out what tracks sound good in a club and use them as reference tracks, refer to them frequently and match the mix levels. Look at the spectrum of the song and see what appropriate levels of frequencies are.

So what can you do?

Separate the Sub from the Mids

If you are producing bass-heavy music, you should have a clean(ish) sub-line under the harsher mid synth. These should play together. What this means is that you have much better control over the lowest frequencies and can mix them separately (think sidechaining just the sub).

This is easy to do, just copy the MIDI to a new track and use a sine wave one or two octaves below the main synth line. Make sure the mid-range synth doesn’t have too many low frequencies or it can mess with the sub-line.

Saturate the Sub

A great way to boost the harmonics of low-frequency sounds is to saturate them. This shouldn’t be hardcore distortion, as this will ruin the sound. Just a small amount of saturation will work great and complement the mid-range elements.

 

One of my favourite plugins for this is Native Instruments Supercharger GT.

Sound Design

When designing your synth basses, consider the attack phase. If you think about a bass guitar getting plucked, it has an initial “twang” which is audible on lots of different speaker types.

These are the higher harmonics being accentuated by the pick. We can mimic this by using an envelope with a filter. Set the filter to start bright before narrowing down the frequencies to those that you need. This can be done with a fast envelope (short attack and short-medium decay).

The same type of technique can be done with FM, where the FM amount is high at the start and gets lower in the sustain phase. The higher the FM amount, the brighter and more metallic the sound. Try using a similar shaped envelope on the FM amount to see what I mean.

A word of warning though, too much FM will sound terrible, so a small amount goes a long way.

Leave a Reply

Copyright © Tom Jarvis 2020 All rights reserved. | Newsphere by AF themes.