Music is perception, If the bass is booty no matter what you do to it, then you need to filter frequencies of the other instruments untill the bass SEEMS to have more "weight". you dont need to make the bass better, you need to "lighten" up everything else.
I've been having trouble with this lately. Maybe you can help Unorthodox??
You know I stay digging in those crates, so most of my beats use samples from vinyl records. I'm using Logic on a Mac, I usually use HPF, LPF, Phase EQ's, and Limiters, Compressors and so on. (I have the Waves collection, feel free to suggest good plug-ins I usually ONLY fuck with the L1, L3, SSL, and R plug-ins, anyways...)
So here's how the process usually unfolds: 1) I find a track I like with some nice robust grooving 2) I chop it up, mess with the pitch if necessary and 3) throw it on a sampler (EXS24+MPD16) and come up with a melody. Since I've been reading and posting here I've come a long way with my mixing skills, but I'm still not there completely.
When I finish the melody, I do what I've heard called "the low end theory"-- basically I have two sampler tracks, on one (using L&HPF's) I cut 315Hz and under and on the other I do the opposite. Then I go back on top of those now filtered tracks with a Linear Phase EQ and get rid of what muddiness I can.
I keep the melody chops track in Stereo, the bass chops track in Mono along with my Kick which is on another track of course. Unfortunately as you all pointed out to me some months ago It's really hard to get the kick out of the original vinyl bassline while maintaining all that thick/fatness of the bassline.
So what are ya'lls tricks if you're cool enough to share them? Obviously different basslines hit at different frequencies but SHIT yo there has GOT to be a way to make this easier...I spend all fucking day messing around filtering these samples and usually I'm not satisfied with the sound. The only tracks I'm truly satisfied with have open bass hits and stuff like that.
I've been fucking around with taking the send on my mono Kick Track, sending it to an auxiliary track and the turning the output off so that the Compressor on my Bassline is the only thing still listening to it (called side-chaining, right?) trying to cut out some of the kick in my bassline but all the videos I have watched have been oriented towards Techno and I'd love some advice on using the technique with Hip-Hop, because the times I have gotten it to work it's like fucking magic getting those kicks out of my vinyl bass. I'm not really conscious of what I'm doing with this-- a lot of it's trial and error and running with that. Anyone got any suggestions?
PS - Tell me this isn't the sickest sampled/filtered vinyl bass ever. This is my goal right here to get my bass this smooth!
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bo-1vd_ElU0"]YouTube- Alchemist Tic Toc instrumental[/ame]