Remember: Create space in the low end By: DAWsopenat7 No comments

Whether you are mixing 10 or 100 audio tracks you will certainly have multiple instruments fighting for their own space and also claiming unnecessary space. For the purpose of this post, i’m going to talk directly about the essential low frequency space.

Generally speaking, all frequencies can be problematic at some point but none more than the low end frequencies. The majority of your audio tracks will have low end content and in the context of a mix with multiple instruments, there simply isn’t room for all of it and you need to prioritise the sounds that you want to occupy that space. To keep things simple, i’ll say the bass guitar and kick drum are most likely going to be chosen to occupy the low end. This means the snare, hi hats, overheads, room mics, rhythm guitars, lead guitars and any other audio tracks need to make way for the kick drum and bass guitar and let them be heard and felt in the way they were intended to be.

The quickest and easiest way to deal with this is by grabbing an EQ, setting a high-pass filter and sweeping all the way up to 100-120Hz. You may not need to be quite this aggressive with all your audio tracks, but for the instruments i’ve mentioned above, you aren’t filtering out any of their important fundamental frequencies, you are allowing the fundamentals of the kick drum and bass guitar to occupy their own space without interference from any other sources.

If you’re a guitar player like me, when you first start mixing you will focus on this instrument first and it is very tempting to keep the low end of your rhythm guitars in a mix because lets face it, we all love the sound and feel that we get from a 4×12 cabinet on stage, but the reality is that in the context of a mix, the low end simply isn’t needed from guitars and they work much better by allowing other instruments their own space. You can look at it as a compromise or sacrifice but i can promise you that it’s a positive move to cut. Try your next mix with two versions, one version with cuts made to the low end to make space for the bass and kick and another version without and see which you like best. I’m very confident you’ll prefer the first version.

One important thing to take into consideration is that when you solo the instruments , they may not sound as good with the low end cut, but listen to the mix as a whole and appreciate the context because your goal should be to get all the sounds working together in balance.

The topic of low frequencies is much larger than the size of this post but i wanted to highlight the importance of creating space in the low end for two of the most common sources, the kick drum and bass guitar.