if the bass goes out of that red zone does that mean it clips?

When it >hits< the red zone you are clipping. Clipping is not sought after and is, in fact, something bad:)

Your master fader handles all the channels of your mix and even though you may be below or even at 0 in the individual tracks, the collective tracks signal strength is at the master fader and must be treated as a track fader. Pull it down until it does not clip.

I'll try to explain a bit. Correct me if I'm wrong on anything :wink:

You do want to get a healthy level on all individual tracks to use the available bits. This helps with the S/N ratio, and gives a better representation of your recorded signal.

After you do that, though, you want to bring everything down, because as Space mentioned, the summing of everything has an additive effect to push it over.

The added benefit of bringing things down is that any background noise also goes lower, as the signal is brought down at the output. (I smell a debate coming about this statement...output vs. internal mix, maybe? Actually, I may start a thread somewhere about this, later.)

On a hip-hop thing, usually the most prominent elements are the bass and the kick, and maybe a snare or other percussive sound. You might want to try to just bring all the tracks down, and then get a good mix at a healthy level on those two or three things. You still don't want to mix right at "0", though. A bit less than that. Probably right down the middle of the stereo field. Make sure the bass and kick, especially, work together, EQ and level-wise. Bring up any hi-hat, cymbal, scratch, Hi-Q or other rhythm-type thing or noise, left and right. They'll probably be lower in level or don't have much sustained output energy, and shouldn't add much stereo bus level.

You MAY even want to experiment with replacing or mixing in other sounds for the bass and /or kick. Something like TR-303, TR-808 type sample stuff. There's all kinds of programs to create this stuff, or samples that can be found to use as just MIDI-tiggered WAVs or manipulatable VSTi's, etc. Maybe just slide one of these under what you have to get that trunk-rattling, window-cracking, redneck-frazzling big bass sound?

Or, maybe you're already using some of that, but the bass is getting lost in your speakers? Maybe the lows are too low? Add something that'll get up above the low frequency cut-off of a non-subbed speaker system. If you have thoughts about any of that, probably best to add that BEFORE you start mixing in other stuff, because that stuff can peg the levels pretty good, and easily unbalance a mix.

Then start bringing up other elements, possibly lead vocals first. Get them to come out well, then start adding other stuff left and right, probably the "mood" elements. The synth hit or lead samples, etc. Perhaps snippets of samples of another rapper's samples of another artists record? :shock: Those will probably be lower level for your type of music. From what I've heard, most of this is stuff that just kind of pokes out here and there, while never really getting close to the level of the bass and drum.

Also, you'll have to do a bunch of mixes and maybe sacrifice some CDs to test in other systems to get an idea of what it should actually sound like through your monitors. Basically, as has been said many times around here, you have to "learn" your monitors. I've finally figured out pretty much just how much bass I need to hear in mine to sound good elsewhere. I need them to sound a bit bass-light, or they are bass-heavy on everything else. They can definitely reproduce pretty good, clean sounding bass on their own, it's just too much for everything else when THEY sound like that. My first dozen or so attempts made me cringe when I popped a CD into something else. YIKES!

Play something similar to the sound you want through your system, set flat. That should give you an approximation.

Just some ideas. Hip-hop without bass is like Remy without a wise-crack...it just doesn't sound right! :wink:

As always, anything I write is open to correction or debate. Anyone wanna learn me better, fire away. I ain't always right, but I try to toss the ball up to see if anyone else can hit it out of the ballpark.

Kapt.Krunch

Space and Kapt thanks so much for the reply you don't know how much this is helping me.

Kapt as you mentioned
You still don't want to mix right at "0", though. A bit less than that. Probably right down the middle of the stereo field.

You know hip-hop sounds are supposedly loud and if I bring it and make it healthy, is there any way to make the sound loud? Because I have tried mixing the drums way way way below the 0db because I kept getting upset that the Master track keeps clipping from the accumulation of all the instruments.

Is there a way to make the hip-hop sounds I make standardized? Because when I made my instrumental at a healthy level ex.(kicks and bass under -7db)

When I compared my cd to a cd such as timbaland's, my beats sound really low, and timbalands sound really strong and loud.

Thanks,
Stacy

You don't have to sacrifice any CDs. Most players that read burns read CD-RWs that are music (finalized if need be). After I found that out, I experiment to heart's content.

MadTiger3000 wrote: You don't have to sacrifice any CDs. Most players that read burns read CD-RWs that are music (finalized if need be). After I found that out, I experiment to heart's content.

True. My car doesn't. I, myself, have to sacrifice a few. Good thing they're cheap!

Rod, read up on compression/limiting. I'm no hip-hop guy, but I suspect they compress the living daylights out of that stuff.

Kapt.Krunch

I'm newer to this and i use fl studios as well. Kapt.Krunch your response was awsome and i'm going to sift it out. Though much of it seems as a forien language to me. This is my advice as an uneducated newbie! If you try this you might just get exactly what you want.

1st

A: Clone the channel of your bass sample/samples
B: Copy and paste your bass pattern or pian roll to the brand new bass channel that you cloned.
C: Set one channel's panning to the left and the other channel's to the right.
D: Put both on the same mixer insert. Then adjust your mixer track volume under clipping range.

The result is very nice.

other advice :if you try this it will change the sound of your bass sample, but it is very usefull for either this project of yours or another. Try this.

Use your Fruity Free Filter(set it on your bass's mixer insert)

Set it in 60 hz range and on low pass

play with the Q and the gain to get what you want.
this produces very, very low controlable bass.

if you try this i recomend scrolling threw the high pass, low pass, and those settings to find different sounds that you can produce w/ this plugin aswell.
i read this somewhere but not sure where.

hope you enjoy.