Author: Solomon Sprenger

I remember messing with my kick drums for hours on end just to get them to cut through the mix a little bit better.

It doesn’t have to be this way.

I want to show you a simple technique to mix the kick and bass.

We want the kick to be the perfect combination of punchy yet glued with the bass track.

Now Presenting:

The Envelope Follower

wut it do?

We can use an envelope follower on a kick track to control another track’s EQ filter, such as a bass, to create an instant cut at the kick’s fundamental. This will only happen with the kick hits, creating space for it.

Throw this boi on the kick track. Note our kick’s fundamental frequency using an EQ, we’re gonna need it soon. In this example, it’s around 49 Hz.

Next, throw an EQ on the target track that you want the kick to punch through. Make sure there is a bell filter placed at the fundamental frequency of the kick we noted earlier.

Back to the envelope follower:

Note: Ableton Live 12 added a new mode (as default) to their envelope follower called “mod,” but just click this button to activate “remote” mode and it will look the same as the following description.

Next to the “map” button, there are two min and max percentage boxes.

Set the first one to 50% (this ensures that when the kick hits the EQ filter starts at 0 dB.

Set the second one to around 20% (you can mess around with this one later, this is how much cut is applied to the bass).

Select “Map” on the envelope follower and then click on the target track’s bell filter’s gain knob on the EQ.

Here is an example of a four-on-the-floor kick pattern triggering an envelope follower with the settings described above:

We can see that when the kick hits, the envelope filter triggers the EQ to cut a few dB off the bass track at the kick’s fundamental, creating space:

It’s kinda similar to sidechain compression but more similar to a dynamic EQ since it only affects a specific frequency range.

Adjust the Q on the EQ filter and the max percentage box on the envelope filter to dial in the kick-punch-through-ness😃

I often share new ideas about music production and mixing in my weekly newsletter. Sign up if you’re interested!