Free Lesson 1
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How I Made and Mixed the Kick and Bass Part in My Winning Entry in Victor Calderone's Roll Remix Contest
Here Are the Kick and Bass Stems in My "Roll" Remix
Part 1 Finding a Sound That Will Work
First thing I did was go back to beatport and see what key the song is in as some sort of basis for what musical key to start with. Turned out Dm (D Minor) was a fit. And it happened to be that using the note A, part of the Dm scale worked for the bass part. Looking back now I see that the kick drum peaks at 48hz which is the note G, so my using A seemed to work at least by my ear.
Listen to just the kick drum
Now that I knew the key, it was time to find the right sound or synth patch. I use Native Instruments Maschine and Komplete so at this point I muted Vic's original bass part and started going through presets.
"Lately Bass" which is a preset in the Prism synth is a favorite, I tend to use presets and tweak them to my liking versus starting with a blank slate.
Part 2 - Playing a Part That Will Work
I thought the kick was just fine so I kept it. This kick is very well rounded and was likely made combining 2 or more kicks into 1 that has enough low end, mids, and a little grit on top to stand out in the mix.
Since this kick is on the heavier side, that means I can't really play low end notes on the same beat as the kick. The notes would have to be places between the beats.
Roll Remix Kick and Bass Screen Shot
As you can see, the bass notes only overlap slightly. This little bit of overlap is nothing to worry about, and didn't need a side chained compressor to duck that little bit of bass that plays when the kick does. Listen to the bass line solo'd.
Listen to just the bass
Part 3 - Processing The Kick and Bass
Look once again at my screenshot and if you're familiar with Ableton you'll notice that my kick and bass are grouped or bussed together. Pretty sure any DAW gives you the ability to make mix groups. A group for drums, guitar, vocals and so forth that are grouped from many faders into one bus or low end bus in this case. Click the button below to hear the parts together with the UAD Studer tape emulation.
I didn't always bus my kick and bass together, but lately it's been working very well. Another reason is that I'm a big fan of the Univeral Audio's Studer tape emulation plugin which to me sounds fantasitic 90% of the time for things like busses, or even on every track if you can afford the DSP. Grouping the kick and bass together allows me to use 1 instance of the Studer plus I can control the level of the low end with a fader for any mix adjustments.
Lastly I added an instance of UAD's Legacy Pultec plugin just for a little bit of extra character. I'm not boosting or anything, there's a slightly noticeable difference just running a signal through it that often sounds good so that's how I did it.
As far as introducing the bass part, I used a hi pass filter to roll off a lot of the low end of the bass line for the first 32 bars of the remix, and then the bass drops at bar 33. The "drop" was just automating the hi pass filter to turn off at bar 33.
There you have it.
Here's a link if you'd like to purchase my remix.
Stay tuned for more lessons like this.