Kick and Bass

BACKGROUND:  An artist, musician, and engineer whom I greatly respect is giving me a hand with some mixing and mastering.  In a couple of my test mixes, he pointed out that I should carve out separate spaces in the frequency spectrum for kick and bass.  I had already done that to a certain degree, but he was correct that my treatment was not enough and I was not getting a clear distinction between kick and bass.  The kick was far more prominent in one song, and the bass was far more prominent in the other.  I made some corrections and the songs definitely sound better.  So far, so good.
 
QUESTION:  All that said, however, does anyone have cases in which they have allowed the kick and drum to share the same frequency space, giving the audible illusion that the bass has some percussive punch, or allowing the sounds to blend as one?  In many of my songs, the bass and kick play closely together.  I totally agree with the advice above, but was wondering if there is anything inherently bad about a blended sound in some cases, provided you don't burn up too much headroom in any particular frequency zone.
 
Example: I have a cowboy two-step in which the kick and bass play right together all the time.  I was wondering what it would sound like to keep them as one punchy sound, with half the low energy assigned to each.
 
THANKS!

Thanks, Johnny.  Although I know in my brain what the starting point is, I am really having a tough time with the details.  It seems like I go up one db and all I hear is the bass.  Go back down one db and I lose it.
 
Although I have been doing this a while 1-I am more of a songwriter than engineer and 2-although I am a pretty decent mixer, this is a very critical area to get right.  Unfortunately, most of the tutorial videos out there have examples of 808 kicks and MiniMoog-sounding basses, which does not apply to me at all.  I bought a Groove 3 series on mixing country, but the bass they use sounds like a very metallic slap bass--like Seinfeld fades.
 
This is really just a question of degree (e.g., how much 60 hz boost on the kick, how much—if any—300 hz boost on the bass, what corner freq HPF on the bass, etc.).

Hey.  Totally cool to like what you like, but I am using the Scarbee basses from Native Instruments (Rick, J-Bass, and P-Bass).  Being a bassist, you may have a different take, but I have recorded lots of honest-to-goodness real basses in the studio, and these Scarbee things sound really good to me.
 
The thing is though, the bassist playing the parts is the key.  You could probably make the Scarbee basses sound excellent, but it might take a lot more work than just playing it on your bass guitar.

Don't under estimate the value of a HPF or in this case (a couple of HPFs)..... if you have a bass and kick that step on each other, tuning a couple of HPFs can sometime separate them in a mix.  I know it sounds simple but give it a try.
 
Jim

Although I always hesitate to say "fix it in the mix" or "fix it in the master," in most pop recordings there's not a lot going on below 100z. If the kick and bass are in the right proportion to each other, within reason you can using shelving EQ in the mastering process to bring them up or down a little bit.
 
As to basses, I think the Scarbees are excellent. FWIW the Ric is what I used before I made the EB-5 Expansion pack. Between that and still having the EB 5 itself to play, I'm covered (although frankly, I use the Expansion pack more due to its consistency). 

Konradh, depending on the song, one way to distinguish bass and bass drum is to pan them apart.  Say, like 11:00 and 1:00 or 10 and 2.  Low frequencies aren't as easy to differentiate their location as mid and high frequencies are and tend to sound centered.  Yet, when spread out a little they become easier to separate by ear, and you don't have to cut quite as much from them.  Plus, by spreading them, you get more clarity from lead vocals and solo instruments.  Try experimenting with with this, and you may be surprised.

An alternative (or complementary to eq alone) approach is to put a compressor on the bass with the compressor  side-chain triggered by a send from the kick.
 
Set the attack so it's slow enough to duck the bass during the kick's impact and initial transients with a pretty fast release. Threshold/ratio need to be set to whatever it takes to get the bass out of the way for the desired time and sound. As with most compression the correct settings will depend on the job in question, the desired effect etc. so it's a case of using your ears.
 
If the kick is busy and the compression is too wallowing or pumping it can be worth loading a drums VSTi and setting up a kick-only MIDI track that triggers the VSTi kick on the main beats you really need the kick to stand out on. Use a pre-fader send on the VSTi audio track to trigger the compressor side-chain instead of the "real" audio bass drum. The VSTi track fader should be set to silent so the VSTi isn't heard in the mix at all, but only controls the compressor on the bass channel. With a bit of tweaking of the MIDI velocities etc. you can get quite fine control over the compressor, and have it duck varying amounts as required even if the "real" drum is a constant volume.
 
Another trick is to use a VSTi to double/layer the kick drum to it covers a wider audio range. Say a low, thuddy or boomy drum layered with a brighter one with noticeablehigher frequency beater click.

Could do with a bit more on kick to my ears (just listened to through laptop speakers and earbuds though)

Thanks for all the thoughts, guys.

Craig, I appreciate your time and advice.

You know I used not to worry about this so much, but standards are higher.

Here are links to some songs you might find helpful because they're for a genre of music that requires a lot of both kick and bass.
 
This first song is by Kassav, one of my favorite groups. It's a more melodic song so it places the emphasis on the bass, but you can still hear the kick because it's emphasized both below and above the bass frequency-wise. Also, the arrangement has a lot to do with it, because the bass is sparse  - it plays its notes and gets out of the way.
 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PoIMtOBim0M
 
Here's my latest music video, "Maladie Du Coeur" (the one where Paul P and joakes helped with making sure my French grammar was up to spec, thanks again guys!). The bass and kick will be dissected in my blog post that's scheduled for tomorrow. The main takeaway here is that the bass has a lot of highs, and scoops the lower mids to leave plenty of room for the kick and the guitars. The kick gets the really low frequencies to itself. It's also pretty obvious I don't slam the dynamics compared to other people, so feel free to crank up the volume 
 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fsp5hOxRX1M
 
Finally, here's another song by Kassav. This is more uptempo. It still has a sparse bass arrangement, but note how the kick is emphasized to push the rhythm.
 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRQJyQrpVQs

I listened to the clip, the bass articulation is fine...you don't need more highs on it. What needs work is the kick. I'd add a little more low mid on the bass, leave the ultra-low element of the kick, and work on getting more high-frequency kick definition. At that point you may or may not want to reduce the upper mids on the bass depending on where the kick falls.
 
Interestingly, in the next tune "All That I Missed" the kick has a ton of high frequency stuff you can work with...but that song doesn't really need it. I think both the kick and bass come through the way you want them to on that song. Both are clear and articulated.
 
The bottom line is that it seems there's a lot of variability with your material. This is NOT a bad thing, as each song can have its own character. It's not necessary for every song to have every element audible at all times. It's almost like your songs are mini-stories; stories have different characters and plots.
 
You might be better off embracing that rather than trying to resist based on "rules." Although you're asking for advice on mixing, I think the underlying issue here is about production. Mixing decisions follow naturally from production decisions.
 
The links I gave all involve music with a particular production style because they're designed for clubs and dance halls. Your music sounds like its home would be a playhouse. I scored a rock version of Midsummer Night's Dream once and found quickly that theatrical scoring is very different from creating an album, even a concept album. You may be in a similar situation here.
 
Perhaps your best option is simply to finish the album and send it off for mastering. Probably most of it's fine, and if there are songs that are problematic or don't fit into the overall concept, a good mastering engineer will communicate with you about that and possibly ask for a different mix or stems. I've done that with several artists and although some of them thought it was kind of a PITA to accommodate me, in the end they were all glad they made the suggested changes and took the extra time.

I think it sounds good. I like the vocals where they are. Vocals used to be mixed a lot louder and drums were down lower; that's changed over the years. As a matter of personal preference, I like vocals up...not as loud as they were in the 50s, though. Vocals create an emotional connection better than sampled strings ever will.  Give her the 15 minutes of fame! Let the vocals ring out to the back rows in the KonradH playhouse!
 
And finally, remember this: You can have 26 different mixes of a song that all are valid. The one that's most valid is the one that causes the greatest emotional impact on the listener, not the one with the greatest technical achievement. I think the coolest thing in "Ray of Light" was when Madonna went for a note and missed it. She had the good sense not to mix it out but instead let it add a supremely human element that in a fraction of a second, provided the perfect counterbalance to all those synths and technology.
 
All that matters is the emotional impact on the listener, and the vocal will be the prime carrier of that impact...not the balance between the kick and the bass. I'm not saying the rhythm section isn't important by any means, but if it's a little off while the vocals are spot-on...win.

Well the only really good advice I've given you is that mixing decisions follow from production decisions. 

A few tricks I learned are as follows:
 
1) To add a slight bit of kick punch to a mix without really changing the sound, try boosting the EQ with a really tight Q at about 60-80HzHz. Not boosted too much, but maybe 2-4 db.
 
2) Feed the kick drum into the side-channel of a compressor you're using for the bass track/buss. With a 25ms release time, you can let the kick pump through the bass a good bit without the audible pumping of post-compression. Your ears have a natural compression release, where, when a loud kick hits, your ears should recover in about the same amount of time without detecting the drop in bass guitar or MIDI bass. 
 
3) Waves Trans-X Wide. This is a very useful tool, but I recommend using it on a copy of your kick drum track. On kick, I may also add Waves MaxxBass with some tweaking. It does ok. I don't recommend it for bass, though. For bass, I recommend the tape saturation or tube plug-in in the Pro-Channel to bring it out a bit without adding super-low-end. Subdue anything below 30-40Hz on bass, then boost tape or tube saturation. Light use of a limiter is fun, too, on bass. 
 
4) Create a buss, called "Kick-punch". Add the Cakewalk TS-64 Transient Shaper to it. Set the output of that buss go to the Drums buss. Now, create a Send from the kick track(s) to this Kick-punch buss, and tweak the TS64 until you get the loudest, most ear-splitting punch from the kick. It takes some playing with. It doesn't have to sound good, you're only after the attack punch. You will adjust the amount to the real kick drum by adjusting the Send or the Kick-punch fader. This will mix the TS64 with the rest of the kit, blending it in with the actual kick sound. I use this trick on snare with excellent pop!
 
5) Search your project and get rid of ANY ruble or kick bleed into any other drum mics, if it's really bassy. Sometimes, low-end rumble will eat up valuable space in the low-end when mixing/mastering.