Workflow Wednesday with Headhunterz: Low end

By Hard News 06 February 2016

Headhunterz is very active on Instagram and he likes treating his fans to daily updates. While he isn’t as active in the Hardstyle scene as he is on Instagram, he has been giving extremely valuable studio-tips for a few weeks now.

‘Workflow Wednesday’ as he calls his tips are something that a lot of our readers will find interesting, because many of them have an interest in pressing buttons and turning knobs. That’s why we’ve decided to publish them on our website whenever he decides to deliver a new one. Yesterday he explained something about ‘Kicks’. Read and learn!

“I wanna start talking about low end a bit. This is quite an elaborate topic so here’s the first part. I’m gonna start off with a statement: Sub is overrated. Sub is just the icing on the cake. And it’s quite easy to add sub. Forget about sub and get the rest of the mix great first. It’s all about harmonics, especially on the lower half of the frequency spectrum.

Instead of focussing on sub, focus on the upper harmonics around the 100, 200, 300 hz range. I usally don’t have a lot of 100hz in my bassline, instead my kick is pushing through more at that range. But 200 and 300 are very powerful points for bass. Find out the root key of the track. For example F is 44hz in the sub. Then 88 will be 1 octave up, 176 another octave and so on. Try boosting and/or cutting the bass in these areas. Another very useful thing to give a bass more presence which is often overlooked is that 7th harmonics can also be used and often work very very well. Instead of eq-ing, go in your synth and add an oscillator playing 7 notes up on top. This might give the bassline more presence in the low mid range. Cut off to about 90 hz on the bassline to make sure you’re not fooling yourself, the energy must be coming from higher up. Sub can be added later.

By the way I mostly use fm8 for sub. It’s very easy to get a good sub in it and good for adding subtle harmonics on top if needed. For my bassline I mostly use either spire, fm8, sylenth and sometimes even a nexus layer lol. By the way, for low end, never forget to use reference. Using reference is key! Just check the peaks in an analyzer of good mixed track and compare them. Your ears can trick you sometimes so keep checking. Hope this helps!”

Check out some other tips that Headhunterz gave below and follow him on Instagram here.

#1. Workflow Wednesday | Mixing
#3. Workflow Wednesday | Kicks