Put the first two tracks out of polarity with each other, fade them up to equal levels, and adjust the timing offset between them to achieve the strongest cancellation. If judging things visually is tricky, hunt for transients, which tend to be more easily identifiable. Sort out any obviously polarity-inverted waveform first - by either processing the audio region or hitting that channel's polarity-inversion switch - and drag the audio regions to line up better. With multi-mic/DI recordings, a good way to start is to zoom in on their waveforms and try to match them up as closely as possible, so that phase and polarity differences are minimised and you get the strongest reinforcement. If you're unlucky, the phase/polarity relationship between a pair of similar signals can result in tonal carnage when they're combined, and you must tackle such issues as early as possible. Phase differences are caused by one signal being delayed relative to another and polarity differences are caused by one waveform being inverted relative to another.
In fact, they can cancel gruesomely at certain frequencies if there are polarity or phase mismatches - so you need a clear understanding of phase and polarity! There's an in-depth article on the SOS web site ( /sos/apr08/articles/phasedemystified.htm) but I'll run through the basics. Such shenanigans give you tremendous power to refine your sound, but also enough rope to hang yourself, because the layers don't always reinforce each other when mixed. Cancellation InsuranceĪ bass 'sound' is often a combination of several similar signals: for example, electric bass can be multi-miked a DI signal may be captured and you might introduce MIDI-triggered layers to fill things out further. In this article, I'll help you make sense of all that, whatever instruments or genre you're working with. Each can perform many musical roles, and every genre has different conventions for low-end sonics. When it comes to instruments, 'bass' can mean (at the very least) guitar, upright, drum or synth. How do I mix bass? It's a simple question, but compare a dozen records picked at random and you'll see that there's no simple answer. Avoid all the low-frequency pitfalls and learn to achieve the perfect foundation for any mix, with our bass-mixing masterclass.