The pro producer’s guide to BASS

It’s the bedrock, base, backbone and any other word we can think of begining with ‘b’. So you’ve got to get your bass right, right? Here’s how…

Adding bass to any track can be tricky, and sometimes even experienced producers can struggle when it comes to unleashing those all-important low-end frequencies. Part of the reason for this is that lower frequencies are generally harder to monitor than higher ones. Smaller speakers struggle to reproduce bass (you’ll find it impossible to hear sub-bass on laptop or cheap multimedia speakers, for example), and even if you’ve got great monitors, unless your room has been acoustically treated you’ll find that sub-bass notes of different frequencies can appear to have wildly different volume levels. Clearly, this can make mixing bass parts tricky, but we can combat these issues by taking a methodical approach to our bass and using spectral analysis to check that its pitch and volume level are right.

Making a bassline that sits with your beats correctly is an art in itself. Many novice producers have misconceptions about what bass actually is: some high-pass filter their bassline, cutting out vital sub-100Hz frequencies. Others will only use a low sine wave and miss out on the extra energy potential in the harmonics above the fundamental frequency.

These days, bass parts can take in a wide range of frequencies from the lowest octave up. Layered lead and bass noises can appear to be the same sound, but in reality you’ll usually need to employ multiple instruments to get the fullfrequency effect heard in so much modern dance music.

Over the following pages we’ll show you how to create a solid sub-bass foundation that will sit with beats. Then we’ll demo how to make a mix sound bigger by adding a bass layer to complement the sub. We’ll also look at pitch modulation to provide extra energy in the low end, and synthesise a bass noise that combines both subs and mids.

While most of our walkthroughs employ Ableton Live, the techniques will apply to whatever DAW you use. It’s time to go low…