OK i have been trying to figure this problem out for a week now, and I cant seem to get it right. If you listen to I Can Heal You......When it drops, I cannot get the synth and bassline to flow together to save my life. I have taken off every limiter, compressor, side chained em together, took the sidechain away from the snare, and it just isnt happening. It fades in and out behind the bass, and weakens the bass sound. Any help? The bass was made with Massive, and the synth with z3ta if that helps
I don’t want to be rude but I think the bassline versus synth is one of your smaller problems. The mix generally needs a new approach. I’ll try to keep it short and only name major issues.
- The mix is not very balanced, reset all levels to 0db and start over
Don’t mix trough any master bus compressor/ limiter or eq. In fact take of whatever you put on there. It made the mix sound raped and even caused slight clipping.
- There is too much harmonic distortion going on causing your high end to sound muffled. Hats, synth and bassline are fighting for space up there. I’d suggest using less distortion on all elements but the bassline. Or if you haven’t used any distortion; eq and compress the lead sound and hats to sound softer (I suggest a vintage compressor, if you need more details let me know)
- I’d gently roll of the bassline’s high end and re-eq the whole thing, adding subtly some low mids which are completely missing at the moment as well as some slight harmonic excitement (iZotope Alloy, PSP MixsSaturator..) in order to achieve some warmth
- Eq the lead sound to get rid of some harsh frequencies and add a tad of stereo reverb to widen the sound and to let it appear less dry
- The kick is too distorted and doesn’t provide any thumb (100 hertz and upwards missing)
The sub bass needs some serious limiting to control the dynamics (I’d suggest waves L2 if you own this, but pretty much any brickwall peak limiter could to the job)
- Stereo separation is a good key word to but I’m not getting started on this
- To get the sub bass and synth-line working together I’d process each one on its own first and afterwards route both channels together and apply some quality compression to make them glue even more (SSL Bus compressor is my favorite tool for this)
For all the plugins mentioned are demos available in case you want to try em. Make sure to read the manual and avoid heavy processing (subtle use, less is usually more).
Keep in mind that so many issues can be solved with the right leveling. Sometimes it’s the processing that fucks everything up. Knowing when there is nothing to do is the ultimate aim here, it’s very tough though.
Keep working.
This post has been edited 1 time(s), it was last edited by Gregg: 11-04-2011 23:02.
Preciate it guys. Especially Gregg....very informative for sure. Back to the drawing board to redo this ish....also could it have anything to do with the fact that the synth is gated? and is kind of fluttering the bass in a way. Also about the mixdown, I just had the volume all the way on the master for my headphones, and exported it with volume all the way up...it doesnt truly sound like that, but there are alot of elements fighting for space for sure. Thanks again
