Reply To: Q/A with State of Mind..
stateofmindnzUnfortunately I’m touring right now so can’t check your track in the studio or comment really on perceived width but on headphones it sounds pretty good! Look its a tough question. There isn’t a magic bullet I’m afraid. 1-3Khz Thats the upper mid range into high end. I guess you know that. I would normally consider that area to be the ‘presence’ as opposed to impact. I guess because the human ear is sensitive to that range, in many ways that is the hook area of your tunes. It might be a vocal, or a lead, or a bass with a high spectral content in that area, but its often the bread and butter of what makes a track memorable.
Here’s my simple answer. If your bass tracks lack in that area turn then up that area…
Ha maybe thats a bit simple. You say you split your basses off. Great. You probably have mid layers with filtering etc, a sub layer and its all going to a bus to sum it? Sometimes i find myself in your shoes. You have a track and when you play it it sounds kinda flat or scooped. Therefore, not as loud or catchy an impressive as other tracks. Well i find instead of chasing your tail and making small adjustments, simply push the bass group up by a few DB, then bring you sub component back down to the right level. Voila. The mid layers will be more upfront. Its a crude and fast mix adjustment, but sometimes thats the best way. Alternatively, if you have a bus for your mid layers only, drive them with some bus distortion before your side chain compression. I quite like Sonnox Inflator for that job.
Look at the end of the day if you want them to be more up front, just mix them more upfront! You might find you need to eq back a bit on the 1-3 kHz area after you do that to minimise honk. I actually prefer to use a multi band eq in that freq range. It will duck the peaks without scooping it all.
