Weight watchers
Here’s a question for you: how much bass is too much? Well, the simple answer is that it depends on what style of music you’re mixing. For example, producers that make bass-driven music such as grime, DnB or reggae will be generous with the sub weight when mixing; whereas someone mixing old-school glam rock will keep the bass as light as possible to leave space for the inevitable triple-tracked guitars and stadium drums. So, if you’re mixing your track with maximum bass power as your number one priority, you’ll need to bear that in mind when slotting in the other elements of the track.
The first consideration is making as much room for the bass in the mix as possible. Using classic DnB and jungle as two genre examples, the drums are naturally pitched-up to give the rhythm track a light, funky feel, which gives the bass plenty of mix space to do its thing. Add to this the precise and clinical EQ applied to the non-bass elements of the mixes, and you end up with a mix with weight and crystal-clear clarity.
Another thing to bear in mind is that most genres with naturally weighty bass (such as reggae or hip-hop) utilise sound sources with plenty of low-mid weight – such as sampled bass hits or a live upright/bass guitar, as opposed to clean synth subs. While a pure sine wave has loads of weight on a big rig, it needs additional harmonics to ensure it can be heard on playback systems that can’t reproduce the lowest octaves.
Room acoustics and monitoring also play a huge part in getting a solid bass mix, as untreated rooms typically have a misleading bass response, making it easy to get your levels wrong. To get around this, test your music on as many sound systems as possible to make sure your lows are on point. The classic ‘car test’ is probably the most famous example!