3 Controversial Tips for GREAT Low End

Get a big, powerful low end that sounds good on ALL speakers with these 3 mix tips.

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[leonkloosterman]

A few years ago I bought an 7 dollar ebook of you, it’s still the best mixing course I ever bought. Love that your advice is consistent over the years.

[syzerx]

I don't think I've ever had such substantial improvement on my mixes from any YouTuber's advice than yours. My mixes now compared to a year ago just following what you say has dramatically improved my sound and workflow.

[trevorbennett]

I’ve been watching YouTube mixers for over a year, but I found this channel a couple days ago, and I feel like you’ve immediately leveled up my skills more than anyone on here. You say so many things I’ve never heard that also make perfect sense. Thank you!

[albertoochoa]

A few weeks ago I listened to one of my mixes from 15 years ago, when I really didn't know anything about audio, and I was blown away. This video validated my impression. There was a point where I started following every magic trick, side-chain compression, plugins for the low end. and then I compared my "experienced" mix vs when I used to just use my gut and go for it without knowing "rules" or whatever, and although my mixes back then were mostly crap, The low end was excellent. now my mixes might sound better, but I'm always struggling with that low end, so purchased even more plugins and looked for more tricks, and it always resulted in a big pile of mud. Although I'm not a pro mixer yet and I'm striving to be better every day, this might have been one of the biggest revelations i've had in a long time. I appreciate you for sharing this! I look forward to continuing to learn from you. THANK YOU!

[Middlestepofficial]

Speaking of subwoofers in a studio, I can share some tips as I learned and kept using subwoofers always. 1st, it can show you if your room needs a treatment by using sine wave signals to pinpoint dead spots in low frequencies. 2nd, you can use a subwoofer to create a low end reference point from songs that you like how they sound elsewhere (your car, headphones, stereo system, etc.). By using reference tracks, you can balance the sound between your monitors and subwoofer to create a monitoring environment to hear low frequencies that are otherwise inaudible on generic speakers. Last but not least, helps immensely during mono mixing so you can see whether there is balance in the low end of your mix.

[mcpribs]

This is the difference between (a professional) EQing while the mix plays, and (am amateur) mixing in solo. Those amateur moves are great for learning and understanding, but the sooner one can hear how the moves they make affect the whole mix, the greater their mixes improve. Great vid, as always! Thanks!

[paytonandersonn]

I'm no guru in mixing but I think the most useful advice I've ever received is... "make the song work." If you want to boost something... boost it. If you want to cut something... cut it. Just make the song work. That all starts with a vision on how you want the song to sound and THAT is the most important thing, in my opinion. Great tutorial and definitely "controversial" but good to hear.

[marcusgarveyson]

You’ve made my mixes better with your advice . I use to spend hours on kick and bass now now I only spend a couple minutes and getting better result by focusing on the overall sound and vibe on of the mix and I realize that when I do this it makes mixing much more fun for me and more than that I make less moves than I did before because and now every move I make is to make the song better and not to make an individual element of the song sound good ..thanks again and I work in a complete different genre than you do which makes what you are saying so legitimate

[JWVLL]

You nailed it man. For a few years I would watch tutorials and take ideas and sort of catalogue them as TO DO's/NOT TO DO's in my mind. Though the past year or so I've broke free from that, and like you said, began to just use my intuition and my ears to guide my process. My mixes are ten fold better now IMO.

[MisterGribbles]

I came to the same conclusion through a different path. im the bass player in the band as well doing the mixes and I use to carve out my basslines to make room for the kick. So recently after years of going through a multitude of gear and setups and finally having found that illusive bass tone in my head, i sat down with a mix and went fuck it im not going mess with my bass tone. So i just slammed it together with the kick. It was a pure WTF moment because other than some mild pultec, compression and fader balancing, that low end was perfect.

[Brandon-RZ]

Listening to YouTube mixers literally wasted about a year of my learning. With the separating everything. Spot on.

[bakerlefdaoui]

People tend to forget that timbre is what makes seperation in first place. If a group of instruments share similar timbre than maybe carving out frequencies makes sense. But very often a kick and bass guitar will have very distinct timbres, therefore negating the absolute need of making space in frequency domaine. The density of the mix is the key here.

[kelvinfunkner]

wish I'd have seen this video like...15yrs ago...had to learn these things the hard way as well...especially the low mid tip...and totally true for vocals as well...so many times I would scoop out all the mid lows, sacrificing all the warmth and intimacy of the vocals for "clarity"...all it did was make the vocals sound thin and powerless...such great tips Jordan! Glad you're helping folks escape the pitfalls of YouTube and providing actual real world advice that works.

[jn]

I remembering reading an interbiew with Gordon Raphael about working on the first Strokes album. He said Julian kept begging him to take the bass out of the bass and turn the drums WAY below what was being played on the radio. Raphael said he kept saying "it wont work it wont work" until he finally tried it to humor Julian. t ended up being the sound that shaped their first two albums and had the entire rock world chasing still to this day lol. just do what works. no rules!

[lowstringc]

As an Orchestral musician/conductor, I've always been mildly confused at the "I need to hear this instrument separately" focus. In an orchestra, your goal is to blend and create different timbres by mixing different instrument timbres together to form the new, intended sound. Sometimes a part needs to come out of the texture and be prominent, but if that is the case, the composer crafted the music around it to allow that to happen (or chose an instrument with a timbre and register that stands out). Perhaps it's an idea in music today that everyone in the band wants to be a focal point instead of serving the music/song as a whole? ("I want people to hear how awesome I am in this song..." instead of blending to serve the music.) If the texture of a song is too full and overlaps, then trying to artificially separate out the constituent parts in a mix seems a bit futile and harmful to the music; the band needs to consider that in the writing phase, not expect you to deal with a bad composition in post. I always assume (often incorrectly) that the band intended to blend the things that overlap....

[BrofUJu]

CLA has specifically said he doesn't worry about the idea of carving out frequencies. It really depends on the source audio.

[brianholtzmusicsound]

Hey! I stopped cutting my low mids and my chronic back pain cleared up overnight! Also, now Im the life of the party and its girls, girls, girls! But seriously, this is great and very sound advice. And it works! In an ocean of same sounding, opinion-style advice, going against the current is well worth considering.

[jprnn]

Watching this video, it dawned on me what was ruining the low end in my mixes. Or at least why I struggled so many times. From now on I'll leave the 100-400Hz range alone, unless there's an actual problem goin on :D Thank you for this video!

[michaelobrist]

Yeah man. I've learned mixing mainly from Youtube and during the last three years I've obsessively watched so many clips about mixing and gained a huge knowledge about it. Still my actual mixes didn't really improve although I was applying all the tips and tricks I've seen on various channels. And have made an acceptable mix it had to do more with luck than anything else. UNTIL I FOUND YOUR CHANNEL! All those basic, somehow controversial concepts (focus on midrange, don't use reverb, compress and eq the hell out of your tracks etc.) you shared were just exactly the the problems I was facing but I didn't have the guts to simply change them, because, you know, Youtube told me not to... My mixes since then improved drastically and yet the steps were so obvious in retrospect. I don't blame other Youtubers and I wouldn't say that what they're telling is wrong but especially in hardcore and punk rock there are just other methods required than, let's say, EDM. So thanks a lot for your words of truth. They had a huge impact on me.

[herscarletletter]

Bro, Jordan, you deserve so much credit for everything you’ve given to the community man. You easily have the best mixing advice channel available on this platform. Hands down 💯

So thank you for all the growth & insight! This channel is a life-changer my guyyy🙌🏼🤍 🔊 🎶