Note: This post requires a basic knowledge of intervals, which you can acquire by checking out my post Keith’s Crash Course On Intervals for Self-Taught Musicians. If you are not familiar with solfege syllables (do re mi fa sol), also read our Solfege Syllables To Intervals Translation chart.

 

 

 

This article comes as a response to a user question left in a comment on my article on modes. The question is:

Why (supposedly) can’t we hear Locrian mode?

Of all the seven modes derived from the major scale, Locrian is the only one considered to be a “theoretical mode”–one that our ears cannot actually hear. While there are supposed examples of Locrian mode, naysayers can argue that while these songs appear to be Locrian on paper, we hear them as a combination of chords borrowed from different parallel modes (“modal interchange”) or as being in a relative key.*

First, let’s explore what makes this particular tonality so interesting. Locrian is the only mode with a tritone interval and no perfect fifth (relative to the root note, not between the other notes of the key–in other words there is fi but no sol ^{[see solfege chart]}). This means that the root chord of a Locrian song is a diminished triad, which is comprised of the root, a minor third, and a tritone (the tritone would be called a diminished fifth in this context). It is this tritone that makes a diminished triad inherently unstable. While root chords are supposed to sound like a point of resolution or finality, tritones are so unstable that some say our ears can usually only hear them as going somewhere; we cannot hear a I diminished triad as ‘home.’

The most common place to find a tritone is in a V7 chord (V dominant 7), one of only a few seventh chords regularly used in classical music, and a chord which almost always resolves to I. The reason is because of its tritone. In my Intervals post, I explained that only intervals between the root and other notes are considered essential to a chord, not the relationships between the other notes. Tritones are the exception. This interval is so dissonant that it stands out in any context. The V7 has a tritone interval between its major 3rd and minor 7th. The major 3rd of a V7 chord will always be the leading tone (major 7th of the key or solfege syllable ti) and the minor 7th on the V7 chord will always be fa. When we listen to a V7 chord, our ears hear a strong pull from the leading tone up to solfege syllable do (root of the key) and from fa down to mi (major third of the key). Put do and mi together and you’ve got the I major chord.

Example: in the key of C major, a V7 chord is GBDF. B is both the major 3rd in this G7 chord and the leading tone of C major. F is the minor 7th and fa.

Technically speaking, there are several characteristics that are unique to a tritone. For one, it is the only interval which inverts to itself. For example, if you take the tritone interval from G to Db and flip it you get Db to G–another tritone. Secondly, it is the only interval which is not considered major, minor, or perfect. (It just is, man.) The tritone is in a league of its own.

Each of the 13 possible intervals are considered more stable (“consonant”) or less stable (“dissonant”). The tritone is one of the most dissonant. Played alone, a minor 2nd is more dissonant and jarring. This interval, like a tritone, is in neither the major (Ionian) nor minor (Aeolian) scales. In the context of a chord, however, a minor 2nd can sound quite pretty. In a major 7 chord, for example, the distance from the major 7th up to the root is a minor 2nd. But since we hear the major 7th interval going in the opposite direction, it sounds dissonant in a colorful way. Tritones always sound a little jarring to me (and yes, I’m including dominant chords). In the case of both intervals, our ear wants to hear perfect intervals (a unison and a perfect fifth, respectively), but they fall slightly short.

The latest pop song to come anywhere close to Locrian lately is Ciara’s “Like A Surgeon,” which features fi as the second bass note during the chorus (G in the key of C# minor). You could call this a borrowed chord (bVmaj7 from C# Lydian), but perhaps another brief flirtation with polytonality a la “Single Ladies” (both songs feature the writing and production of The-Dream and Christopher “Tricky” Stewart) because she sings minor 2nd (called a b9 tension in this context) over it, which is not considered an available tension on major 7 chords.

Most common examples of Locrian are riffs (short melodies which are repeated), not songs. The reasons why our ears tend to drift astray when hearing Locrian only apply to chords and harmony. Riffs are not like chords. They are more flexible. Because the notes are not occurring simultaneously (in the case of many rock riffs), our ear does not hear all of the same tendencies that intervals might suggest. All this being said, it’s hard not to hear YYZ as Locrian with the lead riff constantly reinforcing the root.

Earlier I defined the mid frequencies as the ones between 600 and 1200 Hz.  These would contain higher portions of the harmonies, higher melodies, and a whole bunch of harmonics.

 

For most of music history, solo singers who could sing very high were coveted.  Coloratura sopranos and castrato singers were great assets because their voices could soar audibly above the rest of the orchestration.  Their vocals pierce because the sit above the normal range for the rest of the instruments.  This frequency bandwidth aligns pretty well with the upper reaches of the soprano voice and the high-flying notes of 80s lead guitar.

 

Now accompaniment instruments such as guitar and piano might also play in this register in band situations, however in this range the emphasis tends to be on notes other than the root or melody.  This allows the soloist or lead instrument to have the spotlight in this frequency band.

 

This is also the register where the frequency range starts to increase.  Previously, we were dealing with relatively small increments between notes and registers, but here we have a gamut of 600 Hz as opposed to the low-mids which were only 300 Hz.  This allows much more room to play with sonics using EQs, harmonic exciters, and other effects which is great because this section houses most of the lower order harmonics other than the fundamental.

 

As mentioned in the primer, harmonics help us distinguish one instrument from another.  Even harmonics give a warmer, organic, and natural sound while odd harmonics impart a more harsh and metallic sound.  Smooth guitars through tube amplifiers have rich even harmonics while harsh distorted heavy metal guitars have more odd harmonic content.  Brass instruments have more of an emphasis on odd harmonics while strings have more even harmonics.

 

So now going back to bass instruments like the kick and bass guitar, another good way to distinguish them from each other is by treating their harmonics in this range differently.  This range is better for this kind of treatment because it avoids putting the changes intended for emphasis in the frequency band with a lot of build-up like the low mids.  This range contains mostly harmonics and solo instruments, so there isn’t a lot to get in the way of hearing these subtle alterations and they are still low enough to be significant to the fundamental sound.

 

So if we have a bass guitar playing mostly root notes down in the key of A, we’d know that the bass is playing notes in the frequency range of 55-110 Hz.  This would mean second harmonics from 110 to 220 and third harmonics from 220 to 440.  These are great to try and treat, especially if you are dealing with sparse mixes, but they aren’t really helpful in densely orchestrated tunes because other instruments will be taking up those frequency bands.  The next harmonics would be from 440 to 880.  These harmonics are in this frequency range, so a nice wide EQ centered at 660 and subtly boosting around might give the bass the audibility you need and it would be nice and smooth since it emphasizes the even harmonic (4^th).  You could also try and emphasize the next batch of harmonics which would be 880 to 1760.  This would put the center right at 1.2 KHz, right at the top of our range.  And this would impart a more harsh and aggressive tone.

 

You might de-emphasize those frequencies in the kick drum or even choose to emphasize frequencies that fall on the outskirts of bass guitar’s harmonic ranges.  If you find that the bass rarely sounds harmonics in the 900 range, it’d be a perfect place to emphasize the kick drum and maybe carve out the bass there.  All you need is a little spot in the mix for your ear to key on and you’ve got audibility.

 

Now the bass guitar I’ve used in my example is 1-2 octaves below the other non-bass instruments I’ve talked about in my hypothetical mix.  That means that treating these instruments in the mid-range will be emphasizing lower order harmonics and can really alter the instruments’ sounds.  But you do have a nice wide range to work with, so treating each instrument individually with a different portion of the bandwidth for emphasis can help benefit audibility.  Plus, this is where many of the sounds intrinsic to specific instruments exist, so emphasize the frequency band that makes a trumpet really sound like a trumpet can help to keep it audible but prevent it from overtaking the lead vocal.

 

One thing I want to emphasize here is that most instruments play a range of notes, not just one note like a kick drum.  In the bass guitar example, you saw how wide a range a bass guitar’s frequency content can have from just playing in one octave.  I didn’t give any specifics about the tune other than the key, we don’t know how often it plays what note or which note, we just know the key.  Many experts and magazines will like to give you helpful frequencies to try when mixing.  Bear in mind that these are only guidelines and could not possibly be a one stop fix for all mixing needs.  If somebody tells you to cut 450 in every instance to make a mix better, it would really be a shame for songs in the key of A whose mid-range instruments would be getting de-emphasized when they play the root note…

This Solfege Syllables to Intervals Translation Chart was designed to help self-taught musicians follow along in future FYM Blog posts, particularly our Compositional Analysis series. This guide uses intervals relative to the root note of the key going up in half steps. Also be sure to check out Keith’s Crash Course On Intervals For Self-Taught Musicians.

Text (For Copy & Pasting):

* do – Perfect Unison (Root)

* ra – Minor 2nd

* re – Major 2nd

* me – Minor 3rd

* mi – Major 3rd

* fa – Perfect 4th

* fi – Tritone

* sol – Perfect 5th

* le – Minor 6th

* la – Major 6th

* te – Minor 7th

* ti – Major 7th (Leading Tone)

* do – Perfect Octave (Root)

For example: in the key of C, C# is called ra, G is sol, Bb is te, and so forth.

 

 

Also note that some of these intervals can have a different solfege name in certain contexts, but these are the “default” names and they are all you need to know in order to understand our song analyses.

 

This post is #2 in my series of music theory lessons. My feeling is that music theory resources on the internet are fairly scattered and typically not for beginners. Theory lessons shouldn’t make anyone run away screaming or scratching their heads, but good luck prying through Wikipedia’s music theory knowledge base, which explains things in thorough, but often highly confusing ways. Much of what I talk about in my Compositional Analysis series requires a basic understanding of theory, but anyone who is interested should be able to read along. I will be using these posts as references for that series. If anything is not clear, feel free to leave a comment.

The distance between two notes is known as an “interval.” Each interval has it’s own name, and these names are useful for analyzing, understanding, and talking about music. I’ll explain why in a moment. But first, here are the 13* basic note intervals in order, with examples starting from C:

• Perfect Unison (C to C – must be identical pitches, no octave displacement)
  
• Minor 2nd (C to Db)
  
• Major 2nd (C to D)
  
• Minor 3rd (C to Eb)
  
• Major 3rd (C to E)
  
• Perfect 4th (C to F)
  
• Tritone (C to F#)
  
• Perfect 5th (C to G)
  
• Minor 6th (C to Ab)
  
• Major 6th (C to A)
  
• Minor 7th (C to Bb)
  
• Major 7th (C to B, a.k.a. the “Leading Tone”**)
• Perfect Octave (C to C – displaced by an octave up or down)
  

Listen to these intervals.

As you can see, each of these intervals are classified as major, minor, or perfect except for the tritone. In a simple world, it would follow that major intervals come from the major scale, minor intervals come from the minor scale, and perfect intervals are present in both. But it’s slightly more complicated than that. You may notice, for example, that the major 2nd is present in both the major and minor scales and the minor 2nd isn’t in either scale (I’m referring to intervals from the root, not intervals between the other notes in the scale).

In order for an interval to be considered “perfect” it must meet two requirements:

1. It must be present in both the Ionian (major) and Aeolian (minor) scales.
2. When inverted***, that interval must be present in both the Ionian and Aeolian scales. Though the major 2nd interval is present in both Ionian and Aeolian scales, it is not considered perfect because it inverts to a minor 7th–an interval which is only in Aeolian. Calling it a major 2nd works out nicely because it means that all major intervals invert to become minor intervals and vice versa.

So who cares whether an interval is major or minor? Why not just have a unique name for everything? Why not just call them 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 […] 11, 12, 13? The reason is because chords are built in stacks of thirds and the types of thirds which make up a chord determine its very essence.

There are two main types of chords: triads and seventh chords.

Triads

Triads consist of three notes stacked in intervals of thirds moving up from the root.**** Check out a G major chord: G, B, D. That’s a triad. From G to B, there is a major third interval. The interval from B to D is a minor third, however note that only the intervals from the root to the other notes determine a chord’s quality.†

When someone says “play a G chord” they’re referring to a G major triad by default. When someone says “play a G minor chord” they’re referring to the G minor triad. There are other chords other than triads which are based on G, but if someone refers to a chord, they mean a triad unless otherwise indicated by additional words or numbers (other than major or minor).††

Seventh Chords

All seventh chords have four notes: a triad with a seventh. If we add the next third from the G major scale (F#) on top of our G triad, we have a G major 7 chord.  There are four different types of seventh chords: major 7, minor 7, diminished 7, and dominant. I won’t go in depth on these chords for now, but know that if you keep building in thirds on top of a 7th chord, all additional notes are called tensions. Tensions are not considered functionally essential to a chord but are said to add color.

*Inversion means you flip the interval. So a minor 2nd inverts to a major 7th, a perfect fifth inverts to a perfect fourth, etc.

**Only known as the leading tone in the context of a scale or key signature, not in the context of chords. So the major 7th on the chord would not be called a leading tone unless it were the Imaj7 chord.

***If you have ever looked at a jazz chart or tried to learn songs out of a guitar magazine, you’ve probably also seen 10ths, 11ths, etc. These are called tensions. They’re all based on the 13 basic intervals but have additional octaves in between them.

****There are also suspended triads, which use a major 2nd or a perfect fourth to take the place of a third.

†But if you really want to get crazy when thinking about chords, think of the relationship between every note in a chord and how this might subtly effect its impact on a listener. The spacing between the notes of a chord (the order in which you place notes, the octave registers you put them in, and the number of instances of any given note in a chord) is known as the chord’s “voicing.” Certain styles use certain types of voicings, and most instruments can play certain types of voicings more easily than others.

††For example, suspended (sus), augmented (aug), add 9, major 7 (“maj 7”), etc.

As previously defined, the low-mid portion of the audible spectrum runs from about 300 Hz to 600 Hz and contains mostly the fundamental frequencies of non-bass instruments.  This is the comfortable middle range for vocalists, the standard range for guitars, horns, strings, and other instruments.

 

It also is the range where the first few harmonics for the lower frequency instruments sound and give character to those instruments.  In more sparse mixes, these upper frequencies can be altered to help separate the bass from the kick and so on.  However this is also where a lot of build up will occur due to orchestration, so don’t bank on these frequencies helping to bail you out in dealing with the bass problems in a dense mix.  I’ll speak more at length about harmonics and how they can help you in next the mid-frequency article.

 

For the voice, most of the power and audibility comes in this range since it is the portion that contains the distinct vowel sounds which vocalists latch on to.  While this is an important range in dialogue and speech, it is also vitally important in music since vowels are what allow singers to elongate words.  Think about it, when you want to hold out a syllable, it is almost always the vowel sound that is held out.  It’s pretty difficult to lengthen a P or D sound.  Holding out an S just sounds sibilant.  So for clear vocals, it is pretty important not to muck up this frequency band.

 

This is easier said than done.  A lot of indie rock musicians have problems with this range.  Being a self-professed indie rock snob, I say this without any intended slight:  most indie rockers are not necessarily the most virtuosic musicians.  You can hear it in Caleb Followill’s vocals and Nick Drake’s guitar playing and Meg White’s drumming.  It isn’t that they are bad or they don’t write good music.  I love their music and they get the point across.  Let’s just say they aren’t necessarily in the realm of Yo Yo Ma or Mozart.

 

The truth is that most musicians who don’t perform a bunch of acrobatics like to stay squarely in this “comfortable” range when playing and that can really cloud the mid-range in a song.  If an untrained keyboard player lays down a keyboard track, changes are they’ll circle middle C.  And weaker vocalists might also stick in this comfortable range as will guitar players and trumpeters and string players, etc.

 

That’s another reason why solo musicians doing all the tracking themselves at home can struggle with their mixes.  They know that the bass is played way down on that end of the midi-controller and everything else kind of sits in this middle range.  If you are using midi for everything, then most people will play all their midi instruments in the same way. 

 

Being in studios for so long, you start to develop a knack for feeling out musicians.  Horn players behave like horn players and therefore sound like horn players when they play.  Drummers behave like drummers and usually sound like drummers when they play.  Singers and string players and harmonica players and everybody else roughly kind of act in the same manner and have a certain personality that is evident in their playing.  If a horn player is programming all the different instruments on a midi keyboard, he might find himself in a rut because all the instruments are playing parts like a horn player would instead of all these different personalities bouncing off each other.

 

The upshot is that if you are doing everything yourself at home and you aren’t well versed in orchestration or how certain instruments sound and play and how they do that in relation to other instruments, you might end up with a big pile of mid-range instrumentation that obscures the vocal as well as the other instruments.

 

So it is important to bear this in mind while writing and try to compartmentalize various parts to certain parts of the frequency range so that they don’t interfere with each other.  Keep the horns high and the guitar low and the vocal all by its lonesome.

 

Of course this isn’t always possible, so to address it you might emphasize certain frequencies in this band in some instruments and not in others.  For instance if a guitar is playing rhythm chords and a piano is chucking along as well, you might boost the guitar at 450 and then do the opposite in the piano.  This doesn’t need to be a drastic EQ, just enough to relegate each instrument to a certain portion of the range.

 

Much like the bass, we are dealing with a limited range of frequencies to do that with, so you might also want to try treating the upper harmonics which will give you much more room to play with.  These will come into play in the next portion of the audio spectrum:  the mid-frequencies.

The audio world can be a frustrating one for many reasons.  From buzzing headphones to crackling pres, our world is rife with little nuisances.  However, the most frustrating thing for me by far is how inexact our nomenclature is.  As a profession, we have really done a disservice to ourselves by not having a standardized and precise language for our trade. 

 

Oh, how easy it would be if someone would walk into one of my mixes and say “Yah, it sounds good, but there is a little too much 2.7 kHz, can you back that down a little?”  Instead, we are left with inexact jargon like “It’s a little harsh, can you do something about that?”  Of course most of us aren’t skilled enough to know exact frequencies without the necessary equipment, present company included.  So it would be ridiculous to say that we should all speak more precisely from now on. 

 

Instead, I will compile a list on this site, over time of course, that enumerates the various inexact terms I encounter in my career and what I would do to remedy them.

 

The first list here is for bass register terms.  Some of this comes with the help of Bruce Bartlett’s Practical Recording Techniques.  Feel free to respond back with more if you can think of them and I’ll try to include them.

 

Ballsy:  Emphasis on frequencies below 300 Hz, but only on mixes with distinct sounds between the bass instruments so as not to be muddy.

 

Bloated:  Emphasis on frequencies below 300 Hz, but with indistinct sounds.  Muddy with low frequency resonances.

 

Boomy:  Too much bass at 125 Hz.  This is often caused by sudden sounds that cause large excursions in the woofer reproducing the sound.

 

Boxy:  Low frequency resonances like being in a box.  Mainly resonances in the upper portion of the bass register from 200-300 Hz since boxes are too thin to adequately hold in low-lows.

 

Chesty:  This obviously refers to recordings of vocalists.  The chest is where the low frequencies reside, especially the native resonances.  It is relatively easy to address because humans are roughly the same size on average, so a simple eq trimming the frequencies somewhere between 120 and 250 Hz should do the trick.

 

Dark:  This usually is a term used in comparison to the upper frequencies.  As such, either decreasing the lower frequencies including the fundamentals or increasing the upper frequencies with an emphasis on harmonics can remedy the problem by evening out the response across the board.

 

Dull:  Along with dark, this usually means too much low register content in comparison to upper frequencies.  The upper frequencies are where you get words like “lively” and “bright” so again, the problem can be remedied by de-emphasizing fundamentals and low frequencies in comparison to the upper harmonics.

 

Ground Noise:  Constant hum between 50 and and 70 Hz, but can be extremely broad spectrum.  If possible filter it out, but it is often best addressed in tracking by using a ground lift or isolation transformer.

 

Muddy:  Too much competing low frequency content in the bass register.  Try etching out portions of the spectrum on each instrument and cutting unnecessary frequencies in other instruments in the bass range.

 

Rumble:  Relatively constant sound between 25 and 40 Hz.  Often caused by AC or other environmental sounds.  Easily addressed with a high-pass filter.

 

Thumpy:  Similar to Boomy–sudden excursions more of an emphasis between 20 and 50 Hz.

 

Tubby:  Low frequency resonances, like boxy, but with more bass collection (since bathtubs are more reverberant than boxes and contain low frequencies better due to density and thickness).  Try equing out low frequencies or using a high pass filter.

 

Warm:  As it pertains to bass, having good bass response without overpowering higher frequencies and without being overpowered by them.  On a scale: dull/dark, warm, bright.

As previously mentioned, the bass portion of the audible spectrum runs from 20 Hz to about 300 Hz.  Setting aside the previously discussed sub-bass portion of this frequency band (frequencies 45 Hz and below), we can say that the bass portion of the spectrum should be reserved primarily for the fundamental frequencies of the roots of the chord changes in the song insofar as tonal content is concerned.  Of course this range should also incorporate low frequency sounds such as kick drums, toms, and even room tones.

 

Many of the biggest problems people encounter in tracking, mixing, and mastering occur squarely in this region.  Terms like muddy, boomy, and woofy all deal explicitly with the bass region.  We all want “big bass” with lots of thunderous kick drums and thumpin’ bass lines, but unfortunately the arithmetic is not so simple as “turn them all up.”  As many of you following along at home might have already experienced, turning up all the bass instruments in your mix is a recipe for a muddy, distorted mess.

 

So how do we properly address these issues to get a decent sounding mix?  Well, first we need to take note of the frequency band that encompasses the bass portion and see how it compares to the other bandwidths:

 

Bass from 25-300 Hz

Treble 2.4-20 kHz.

 

Look at that again.  That says that the bass range has a bandwidth of about 275 Hz while the treble range has a bandwidth of almost 18,000 Hz!  No wonder we run into problems of indistinct bass but not indistinct top end.

 

In composition, there is something called the Lower Interval Limit.  This is a commonly held set of rules that say, based on the frequency of the first note, how big the interval must be in order for that interval to sound clear and distinct.  For instance, if we were to use the 440 Hz A as our base note and play the C above that to form a harmonic interval of a minor third, we’d have a difference in frequencies 83.25 cycles per second (C5 is 523.25 Hz so 523.25-440=83.25 Hz).  This is a difference that our ears can distinctly hear without hesitation and we perceive as a pleasant albeit sad sonority.

 

Now imagine that we started with A four octaves down.  This A has a fundamental frequency of 27.5 Hz.  The minor third above that is a C with a fundamental frequency of 32.70 Hz.  This provides a much tougher to distinguish difference of only 5.2 Hz.

 

Furthermore, the difference between that A and it’s next closest upper neighbor A# is only 1.64 Hz.  So even in a melodic context, it can sometimes be difficult to properly distinguish the two notes.

 

As an aside, here is a handy-dandy list of the lowest notes generally accepted in order to have a properly sounding interval.  Bear in mind that these are only commonly held compositional standards and are free to be broken at any time:

 

Interval	Lowest Pitch	Second Pitch
Minor Second	E2	F2
Major Second	Eb2	F2
Minor Third	C2	Eb2
Major Third	B1	D#2
Perfect Fourth	A1	D2
Diminished Fifth	B0	F1
Perfect Fifth	C#1	G#1
Minor Sixth	F1	Db2
Major Sixth	F1	D2
Minor Seventh	F1	Eb2
Major Seventh	F1	Ed

 

The first column is the desired interval.  The second column is the lowest note from which you can build the desired interval.  The third column is the co-responding note needed above the lowest pitch to complete the desired interval.

 

In my mind, muddiness occurs when we have too much bass information going on simultaneously that creates a big mess of sounds too close in frequency content.  This contributes to a washy indistinct bass. 

 

Generally speaking, the most common problem is figuring out how to separate the kick drum from the bass.  It is important to remember that even though the kick drum is often regarded as an atonal instrument, it still produces tonal frequencies and especially distinct fundamentals.  So if the bass and the kick drum are sounding in roughly the same range, our ears will be unable to distinguish the two sonorities.

 

One way to address this is by making sure that each instrument emphasizes different portions of the bass frequency band.  Ideally, these portions would follow the Lower Interval Limit.  For example, if the kick drum is tuned so that its fundamental sounds at about 60 Hz (which is roughly a B1), the bass should play no lower than D#2.  This way the fundamentals adhere to the lower interval limit theory and are reasonably sure to be clear and distinct sounds.

 

While the Lower Interval Limit theory  is not explicitly intended for this purpose and often it is meant to be used for harmonic intervals (notes sounding at the same time, generally on the same instrument but not necessarily), the point is that creating distinguishable sonorities is all about being able to distinctly hear differences between sounds.  We want to refrain from confusing our ears with sounds that are too close together that muddle distinction.

 

This will obviously not solve all the problems.  If you’ve ever seen a waveform for a kick drum, you know that its spectral content is very broad and not relegated simply to its fundamental frequency.  As such, it is further beneficial to deal with frequencies beyond the fundamental, however most of that will be dealt with as we move up the audible spectrum into the mid ranges.  For now the focus is on what we can do specifically in the bass register to prevent problems.

 

That aside, there is always a big collection of frequencies that sound in the bass register on a kick drum.  This is due to many resonations that aren’t perfectly in tune:  the beater head, the shell, the resonant head, not to mention all the nodes between the lugs on the head that yield very dense and complex waveforms.  These frequencies can be so broad that they can encompass a very large portion of the bass register and make the aforementioned solution pretty impossible. 

 

One way to address this strictly in the bass register is to eq out whole sections of the kick drum so that it creates space for the bass guitar.  If you know the key of the song, you can determine the lowest note the bass player might play.  Your job then would be to carve out a nice chunk of the kick drum sound, not only cover the register that the bass plays, but also below it to create enough space that the two sounds are distinguishable from each other by the Lower Interval Limit theory.

 

Another aside:  doing these things may seem drastic, but bear in mind that your ultimate goal is NOT to create the best kick drum sound possible and the best bass guitar sound possible and add them together.  Instead, your goal is to create the best sounds for each instrument that work together so that they sound good together in the mix as a whole.

 

Another issue that crops up is when there are a whole bunch of overdubs that play in the same area.  It is difficult in the bass range for a bass guitar to sound distinct from a bass synth and then have both of them stand out from the kick because you only have about 225 Hz to work with.  Layering a bunch off overdubs can lead to muddling if you do too much layering in the bass region.  One example that comes immediately to mind is an 808 kick drum and trying to make that audible against a bed of kick drum and bass guitar.  The easy thing about 808s is that they are basically sine waves.  So it is easy to determine the note that the 808 is sounding, and game plan the kick and bass around it.

 

But for more dense things like synthesizers, it can be more problematic.  As I mentioned in the harmonics primer, there are a whole bunch of other frequencies that sound at any given time from any instrument.  Some of these occur in the harmonic series, but many others like formants and native resonances do not.  Sometimes these can occur in clusters around the fundamental note and when that occurs, the extracurricular frequencies from the bass and the synth and kick all roll up together and make a big muddy mess.

 

The best way to address this is to avoid excessive overdubs in the bass register.  Another way to deal with it is to find out what you can change easily, like the kick drum since it is static, and treat it in a way that keeps it out of the way of the bass and other instruments.  For instance you might EQ to emphasize the fundamental below the key of the song, and then eq out portions from the root up about an octave and a half to keep it out of the way of the bass and other bass instruments.

 

Next week, I’ll post some common terms associated with bass problems with some quick tips on how to address them.

 

Then, I’ll examine some issues in the mid-range and further delve into how to mitigate problems associated with the bass as well as those unique to the mid-range.

If you read music news blogs you know that the music industry is going through an identity crisis trying to find “sustainable models” and other funny business terms. I just came across an online music store which seeks to capitalize on the “I knew about XYZ artist before they got big” phenomenon. Their slogan is catchy–“Popcuts.com: Buy Music. Make Money.”

They sell downloads for independent artists and it works kind of like a legal pyramid scheme with social networking built in. For every person that buys a song after you do, you get a portion of what they paid. My assumption is that they’re banking on the idea that they’ll make it up in volume. In other words, by paying consumers even a nominal amount, so many more people will be buying music from Popcuts and so many more artists will be selling their music through Popcuts that it will more than pay for itself. Will this work in practice? Who knows. Humans are creatures of both habit and trust. They’re targeting serious music fans, most of whom probably already have a routine way of buying music. And frankly the offer seems too good to be true. But they’ve thrown in an added incentive: the bragging rights of being able to verify that you did, in fact, discover an artist before all your friends.*

It’s an interesting concept, but in my view the sink-or-swim question is how much money? The artists get to choose any percentage of their money to give back to the fans, so that answer remains unclear.

One thing I like about Popcuts.com is that they target the consumer. The ad I clicked on featured a collage of childhood photos of music stars and the text read: “You knew about them before they were cool. Show it off.” This provides a stark contrast to the multitude of budding online music retailers who cater exclusively to the artist, which screams, “I know some rich dude who wants to put his name behind the Next Big Thing even though he has no understanding of the music industry whatsoever, which is why I was able to swindle him and his rich pals with this shortsighted idea,” or even, “I heard chicks dig entrepreneurs so I figured I’d give this a shot!”

Popcuts, on the other hand, has attracted some legitimate attention with Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist John Frusciante selling his solo work along with indie rockers Piebald.

UPDATE: Just checked out Popcuts on Twitter (@popcuts) and saw they’re also selling a record Phil and I worked on, Break The Silence by American Idol finalist Jon Peter Lewis.

Buy Break The Silence on Popcuts.com

Will Popcuts become the new CDBaby? Leave your thoughts in the comments.

*Ah, high school.