Low End: The Definitive Guide For Producers eBook by Eddie BazilWhile a great bass end may not guarantee you a hit, failure here will scupper your chances, particularly if you’re working in urban, pop or dance styles. So bass, the bottom end, the low end — call it what you will — to craft a successful pop, dance or urban track, you need to get what’s happening in those low frequencies bang on.
Samplecraze’s latest eBook Low End: The Definitive Guide For Producers takes on this vast and much misunderstood subject. Author Eddie Bazil, the man behind Stretch That Note, has poured decades of dance and urban sound-design experience into this epic exploration of the bottom end, and the result is far more than a book about mixing.
Eddie covers everything from choosing classic sound sources like the classic Roland TR808 and 909 drum machines, to programming parts with a real feel — and parts that won’t cause problems when it comes to the mix. There’s plenty of practical advice on sound-sculpting using filters, both creatively and to remove ‘mud’ and avoid masking. There are also tips on dynamics processing and ways to add ‘warmth’ using tube, tape and analogue gear emulations. All of the production tricks you’d expect to see in dance, pop and urban genres are explained in detail, from layering different sounds and parallel processing, through side-chaining your gates and compressors for pumping and other effects, triggering sub-bass synths, and modulation of various synth and effects parameters, to the many different ways you can use automation to your advantage.
The main focus is on the practical skills and tips that you need to make quick progress, and throughout the book Eddie demonstrates techniques using what he calls ‘Sound Design Remixes’, where he takes a real-world project and reworks the bass end textures and timbres to illustrate exactly the effect he is explaining. This is also backed up with plenty of theory that should help you keep learning and experimenting for years. Head over to the Samplecraze website for a chapter-by-chapter breakdown.
Why an eBook? There’s no other publishing format that can really do this subject justice — this virtual tome weighs in at almost 300 pages and is packed with illustrative pictures, screen captures from the latest plug-ins and production software and audio examples. And of course, the savings over paper and printing get passed on to the customer: you get all this for only $25.
Give this eBook a try if you want to make your bass tighter and punchier. And if you’re still not sure if this one's for you, then head over to samplecraze.com, where you can check out the quality of the many free tutorials and find details of Eddie’s other books and videos, and Samplecraze one-to-one tuition packages.
