Drumsound & Bassline Smith

“What we’ve learnt over the years is that it’s all about your choice of content – knowing what works and what doesn’t work in your mix. If you’re making a kick-and-snare-driven DnB track, you need to make sure the kick and snare poke through the mix at around 100-200Hz. You can achieve this by choosing the right samples from the start, or by using a little EQ. You could also use parallel compression/EQ on the send bus so that it doesn’t interfere too much with the original sound.”

Three of our star guests reveal specific tests to gauge how well kick and bass are interacting…

BONTAN: “I’m constantly touching the cones of my speakers to feel the vibrations of the low end. When I work with other producers, they give me funny looks because I’m always stood up feeling the speakers.”

MAR-T: “When I work with Luca Donzelli, he is constantly holding his hand on the speaker cone – I mean every five minutes! He also uses headphones. I prefer to listen to the mix at a low level or even go out of the studio and have the track volume at a certain level, knowing how it should sound outside, and then compare.”

BTK: “I work with a pair of Genelec 8030Bs in my home studio. These monitors roll off at about 50Hz, so they don’t output a lot of subbass. To cover the gap, I’ve been working a lot with a Subpac. I love it! It allows me to reference my subs and kicks without relying on the speakers. “My favourite trick is to turn my speakers off and crank the volume on the Subpac to reference the lowest frequencies of the tracks that I know sound good in a club.”