Bass and Drum Dialectics

What all this has led me to is the insight that, in multitrack recording, these two instruments can easily and very effectively be thought of as a single instrument, a meta-instrument,* if you will. In this meta-instrument, the kick provides a massive, sharp and punchy attack which drives the music ahead while the bass provides a sustained, powerful pitched decay that supports the harmony of the song. In mixing, the kick is so isolated from the rest of the drum kit, and so tightly linked to the bass, that it is usually more effective and powerful to treat it and the bass as one instrument than to work on them separately. In my mixing, I usually start with the kick, but quickly move to the bass track and integrate it with the kick before going on to the snare, toms and overheads of the drum kit. With synthesized drums and bass, the predisposition is even stronger: to my mind they really end up being part of the same patch.

I first began to notice this kick/bass relationship in the early 70's rock music of bands like Led Zeppelin. With the help of creative artists and technology, it has advanced beautifully. Listen to your favorite albums and pay attention to the kick/bass relationship. Almost any album available to the general public will do, but I have also provided a list of albums that are by most measures successful and also contain some really clear examples. Listen to their effective use of these two instruments - they are played musically and purposefully.

As a starting point, let's look at a textbook example of these instruments locked together. We'll go back to when The Cars brought their alternative/punk music into the mainstream back in 1978 (Remember 1978? Life before the DX7! Life before MIDI! Life before the Compact Disk! My 1993 freshmen at Berklee were just four years old!). Check out the fourth track: "I'm in Touch with Your World." This song has got some really wild stuff going on instrumentally, rhythmically, and lyrically (see the October, 1992 issue of H&SR). But underneath it all is this coordinated kick/bass figure:

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	Figure 3. from The Cars

For some other excellent examples I recommend Seal produced by Trevor Horn and Sowing the Seeds of Love produced by Tears for Fears and David Bascomb. These albums are successful musical efforts in part because of excellent production and engineering (the musicianship is also outstanding). In addition to having careful and intimate bass and kick drum interaction throughout, these albums provide some interesting and clear examples.

Listen to the intro of Tears for Fears "Woman in Chains," for instance, and hear the two instruments work together with this structure:

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	Figure 4. from Tears for Fears

Beats one and two of the second measure are not accidental. This intro is nearly rhythmless, but the careful - though limited - use of the kick in close coordination with the bass tempts the listener with rhythm, and the song unfolds. For a different effect, listen to Seal's "Killer." Feel the power of the bass and kick working together; feel the pull of the syncopated bass/kick alternation.

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	Figure 5. from Seal

On the Tears for Fears album, listen to "Advice for the Young at Heart." In this particular song, the instruments are so well aligned that they essentially act as a single instrument. I expect that most major artists and producers today are intuitively aware of the importance of bass/kick interaction. Michael Jackson/Quincy Jones, Prince, and those involved in the examples mentioned above create extremely clear examples. A musician/producer/engineer (that's you again) can learn a lot about a recording (including your own) just by focusing on these two key instruments. Is the band hot? Was that take a keeper? Are the EQ settings right? Some of the subjectivity of these rather vague questions is removed when the bass/kick element is studied. There is nothing like reevaluating a take that "feels" good and confirming that feeling, at least partially, by finding the bass and kick were playing intimately throughout the song. Recognize this as a benchmark for analyzing music and take it with you to every gig and session you attend.

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