Limiting can crush the life out of basses but for subs, it can be just what's needed. One of the common problems I tackle when I'm mastering tunes is dealing with subbass frequencies which vary wildly in volume and fly all around the place. There are exceptions...
There are a million creative and technical things you can do with auxiliary FX send tracks. Sends are most commonly useful for blending in reverb and compression to tracks or drum busses when you want to keep the original signal dry....
Back when I started producing it was important for me to get in those 3, 4, 5 hour blocks of solid producing down in one go but as time goes on you get more efficient at it. If you have just 15 or 20 minutes in...
A lot of times, taking out those boxy, nasal-sounding midrange frequencies from kicks will open up your whole mix and allow the kick to punch through much cleaner. You might not even realise how muddy the area is until you scoop some muck out. Just don't...
One of the biggest red flags I encounter when mastering projects for people is the presence of big holes in the frequency spectrum of their songs. Luckily, having someone else (like a mastering engineer) listen to your song will mean these issues should be quickly...
In bass-heavy music like drum and bass, the low mid area (about 150-500hz) is crucial for providing pressure, weight and thickness. It can also be a nightmare to control and requires very careful listening to produce a tight low end. "Muddiness" or "boxiness" is what too...
It's real easy to get caught up (especially in drum and bass) with making tracks aimed at your dream labels and constantly feeling pressured to produce tunes that will make a splash but ironically, you will have much more success and fun if you just...
During my time studying Composition at university, this is one of the few things that really stuck with me and was something a great composer told me after I showed him one of my early productions. Treat your music like it has a life of its...
Send all your synths, drums and mids to it for a nice, full-track ambience. Mix it in to your track so that it's barely audible on headphones and doesn't detract from power or punch and acts only as a subtle space-giver. It should give your...
Distorting and saturating drums is key to getting them present and powerful enough for the modern standard of drum and bass but overly distorted transients and fundamentals can ruin your drum hits. It can often pay dividends to keep the fundamental harmonic of your drum hits...