Besides vocals, bass tracks are easily the most difficult to nail — especially if you want your mix to sound great on a variety of playback systems. And given the bass-centric nature of most contemporary genres, the last thing you want is a mix that thumps in your studio and falls apart when the club’s subwoofer kicks in.
So, how do we confirm that our bass sounds right? That’s where reference tracks come in.
A reference track is a professionally mixed and mastered song that you compare your project with while you’re building your mix. This allows you to regain perspective after you get lost in your own mix, and it ensures that your mix will translate across a wide range of playback systems.
In this blog, we’ll outline how you can use REFERENCE to build rock-solid bass parts that can go toe to toe with any pro-level mix.
Balance Your Channels For A Solid Foundation
Start by selecting a reference track that’s within the same genre as the song you’re working on. Choose a track with what you’d consider the definitive mix; one you’d like to emulate.
Then, listen closely to the reference track and use it as a guide for how your bass track should sit in relation to the other elements of your mix. Even if you’ve got a killer bass track, you don’t want it to overshadow the rest of your song’s tracks — nobody wants to listen to a lopsided mix!
Your goal here is to craft a well-balanced mix without EQ, compression, or other processing. While your mix will likely sound a bit rough (that’s why they call it a rough mix), it should still offer a cohesive sound that’s easy to listen to.
It’s also a great idea to check how your mix sounds in mono, as many of your listeners will consume your music on a low-quality smartphone or Bluetooth speaker. Listening in mono will also reveal flaws in your mix that aren’t apparent when you listen in stereo.
Plus, you’ll have a rock-solid center channel, which is where the bass resides in most contemporary mixes.
Eliminate Unwanted Resonances
Unwanted acoustic resonances make achieving a great-sounding bass track nearly impossible — they’re definite mix-wreckers. Resonances occur when a frequency in your mix interacts with the natural frequency of your room, playback system, or another element within your mix.
Resonances will give your mix a shrill or muffled character, and they’ll make your bass sound either weak or completely out of control. Either way, you’ll be tempted to overcompensate or under-compensate based on what you’re hearing.
Resonances will also wreak havoc on your mix’s dynamics and cause your mix to sound completely skewed — especially on other playback systems.
If your room’s acoustics or your playback system are causing unwanted resonances, you’ll have to deal with those issues physically using sonic isolation and acoustic treatment. But, if the issues are contained in your mix itself, our RESO plug-in will make locating and dialing out resonances a piece of cake.
RESO is a dynamic resonance suppressor that automatically finds and eliminates the problematic resonances in your mix.
And it’s a breeze to use. Simply instantiate it on your bass track, click the Calculate Targets button, and the plug-in will take it from there, supplying you with Target Nodes and helpful setting suggestions.
Solving resonance issues is a guaranteed way to achieve a clearer, more accurate mix that’s easy to listen to, and it will yield you bass that’s clear, solid, ………
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