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Hello and welcome to another mixlessons.com video quick tip. Today we’re gonna address
the issue of the bottom end of the mix. If you ever wrestled with it like the rest of
us do, heres a quick and simple little technique that is gonna drastically improve the low
end of your mixes. Have a listen to this piano for a second here. Im gonna bring out the
piano here in this track. This is a track by the way from the new confusion. And I’ll
have a link to where you can check out more of their music in the description on this
video. But have a listen to this piano part. What we have there is a nice full, round fat
piano part. And if this was a solo piano piece, that would be fantastic. But its not, there
are other tracks in the mix. So what we wanna do, as a general rule of thumb, I recommend
that every track in your mix, with the exception of at perhaps one, either the kick drum or
the base line, whatever you deem to be the more important bottom end feature in the mix.
Every track, every other track, should have a high path filter or a low cut filter, it
means the same thing. And what I mean by this is, is roll of the low end on every track
of your mix that is not the bottom end instrument. And you should choose only one. There should
be only one. So what I’m gonna do on this piano part is im gonna do just that. So have
a listen again and I’ll roll off the bottom end and you’ll hear what’ll happen. That’s
the original track and heres with the bottom end rolled off. I’ll just toggle that for
you. So you might think, Dezz but then the piano sounds thin and week and its not as
impactful as before. Well, I’ll tell you, in the mix it doesn’t really have that effect.
Have a listen when I bring in the rest of the instruments. Okay? Now listen to the piano,
I’m gonna roll off the bottom end. And if you can hear that, what basically happened
there is that the piano still sounds just fine in the mix but it all of a sudden opened
up a little extra head room, a little extra space for the baseline to sit in. Have a listen
one more time. You notice it does barely anything to the piano’s tone in the context of the
mix but it does open up some room for the rest of the bottom end to take its place.
Theres an interesting little quick tip for you and if you want more like this, check
out mixlessons.com
(as mentioned, mixlessons.com is part of the techmuze academy. To learn more about the
techmuze academy or to subscribe to the techuze podcasts, visit www.techmuze.ca)