expander? between drums/bass

[ikebrown]

Hi there

Any one know how to put an expander on the kick drum ..so when it plays it opens up the bass? for a solid rhythm section?



cheers

[albee1952]

What you are describing is usually done with a gate on the bass track, triggered by the kickdrum thru the gate sidechain input. Beat Detective might also work here by analyzing the kick track and applying its groove to the bass track(never tried this). I prefert to slice up the bass track and manually move the problem notes.

[miek07]

One trick you should try before Expanding it is to apply a 6/dBo or 12/dBo highpass at 80-120Hz into eather your Bass OR BD track, doing this to the drum track will make the bass stand out a little bit more and vice versa.

Secondly, expanding your Kick is essentaly gating it, because by applying an expander on it you loose out on the Kicks decay. Unless this is the effect you intend to use, I would not recomend it. Then again, you are always free to experiment.

Also dont forget to try to nuding the pan of the bass and drum tracks on opposate sides of the center. Doing this not only adds a little bit spacyness, it helps a bit with conflicting frequencies because pan offset trasnlates to LdB+RdB differece in amplitude to each other, while at the same time presrving the original Bass and Drum rms.

michae

[miek07]

One trick you should try before Expanding it is to apply a 6/dBo or 12/dBo highpass at 80-120Hz into eather your Bass OR BD track, doing this to the drum track will make the bass stand out a little bit more and vice versa.

Secondly, expanding your Kick is essentaly gating it, because by applying an expander on it you loose out on the Kicks decay. Unless this is the effect you intend to use, I would not recomend it. Then again, you are always free to experiment.

Also dont forget to try to nuding the pan of the bass and drum tracks on opposate sides of the center. Doing this not only adds a little bit spacyness, it helps a bit with conflicting frequencies because pan offset trasnlates to LdB+RdB differece in amplitude to each other, while at the same time presrving the original Bass and Drum rms.

michae

[LE692]

A tried and true method for blending kick and bass guitar is to notch out a hole in the bass guitar at around 50-65 Hz. This is similar to what Miek07 is suggesting with the highpass at 80. What needs to happen is for both instruments to occupy their own spot in the frequency spectrum. It also helps if no other instruments get down below 80 Hz such as rhythm guitars or keyboards. It's not hard for them to be crowding the lows and low mids.

As a last resort, I would send the kick to a sidechain comp on the bass and duck it every time the kick hits. Watch out for pumping or comp artifacts. Use a fast attack and a medium/fast release.