FXpansion BFD Premium Acoustic Drum Module Mixing with BFD User Manual
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Mixing with BFD
One technique that often works well is to remove some extreme low-end (up to 60 Hz)
from the bass guitar to leave room for the kick to do its thing. If you use EQ to increase
bass on the kick, try cutting by the same amount at the same frequency on the bass
track. It’s all about defining ‘pockets’ for each sound.
You can also try using a sidechain compressor with the bass and kick, to duck the bass
when kicks occur.
The faster the tempo of the song, the tighter and more defined your bass end should
be. You can get away with a much heavier low-end on slower, simpler songs with fewer
elements.
Fast rock or metal songs don’t tend to have a huge amount of low-end on the kicks or
bass guitars - it’s more about the mid and high frequencies. Keep that brutal ‘click’ on
the kicks in order to ensure that they cut through the wall of double and triple tracked
distorted guitars.
It’s good to filter out low frequencies from tracks that don’t really need them. Their
presence can lead to too much energy in the low-end, risking muddiness or distortion.
If you can’t hear something properly, try to resist the urge to use EQ boosts on it. The
chances are that there’s another track in the same frequency range which is stopping it
from cutting through.
Try to use subtractive EQ if at all possible to limit the frequency ranges of tracks which
are taking up too much of the spectrum or clashing with other elements. This means
that EQ-ing won’t eat into the headroom as much, and the mix will often translate better
to other systems. It will lead to a cleaner mix - boosting everything will result in a mess
which is more prone to distort.
When mixing lots of tracks together, it’s impossible for everything to be HUGE. You have
a finite ‘workspace’ in which to fit everything, so some compromises have to made. If you
are going to boost a frequency range on one of the elements, you may have to ‘make
room’ for this boost in the frequency spectrum by cutting elsewhere on another track.
4. Compression
There are two ways of approaching compression. The main use for a compressor is to
even out the dynamic range of an instrument. You can also use compression in a creative
way, as an effect - but this point in the mix process is not the right time. The main thing
you want to concern yourself with right now is to compression to ‘tame’ problem tracks.
For example, does the bass player have poor dynamic control? Or perhaps the vocalist
has a less than stellar mic technique?