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9. Finding the perfect kick/bass combo
1 Finding a killer bass and kick combination is always a great way to give a track a solid foundation, so let’s check out a few techniques for auditioning and selecting the ideal kick to fit with a programmed bass. Set your BPM to 105, and import Backing.wav and Kick.wav from the Tutorial Files folder. Firstly, we’ll add a solid bassline to our loop by creating a new instrument track with Bass Engine CM.
2 Select the 2010s Pure preset and turn the channel’s volume down to -9dB so the bass doesn’t dominate the mix. After this, import Bass.mid to trigger the synth with a pre-programmed bass part. Our kick drum doesn’t fit well with the bass part, as the kick and root note of the bass sit in the same frequency area, giving an unpleasant phase reinforcement effect – we can double check this using a frequency analyser.
3 Add Vengeance-Sound Scope (free with Plugins) to the master output, and solo the kick and bass channels. You’ll see visual confirmation that they both collide in the same 50-60Hz area too often. We turn to brunsandspork’s Grooove CM to find a more suitable kick sound. Mute the Kick channel, add Grooove CM on a new instrument track, and trigger it with Kick.mid.
4 Open Grooove CM and click the yellow folder icon to load KickAudition.grk – this preset contains a selection of kick drums we can quickly audition by opening the kick’s MIDI region and moving the notes up/down. Open a frequency analyser, solo the Bass channel and you’ll see a gap between the lowest and higher frequencies of the bass at 80Hz – an ideal place for our kick’s fundamental.
5 Open the MIDI region on the Kick channel, select all the notes, and move them up and down together between E1 and C1 to audition different samples while the loop is playing. You’ll hear how the kick drums sound in context, with the kick D# triggered by 1 sitting nicely between the low and high notes of the bassline. Solo the Kick and open your analyser to confirm that its fundamental is at 80Hz.
6 Although it has a very low frequency, we can still give the kick some low-end richness without muddying the mix. Add an instance of CM-EQUA87 to the Kick, turning its Lo Cut off and adding a 3dB Low Shelf at 60hz with a Q of 0.4 – this’ll give the kick extra depth. Finally, apply a -2dB High Shelf at 2kHz with a Q of 0.6 to subtly back off the high mids, giving the kick’s bass more room to breathe.