There’s two ways you can learn if they are clashing or not:

1. Listen. Seriously, if you have trouble hearing the kick or the bassline when both are playing together, you have a problem. Always trust your ears over any other method, this is music after all.

2. Look. Get yourself a copy of the free plug in “Inspector“. Look at the frequency spectrum of both the kick and bassline seperately, this is the default view of Inspector BTW, so it’s very easy to do. This way, you can easily see what frequencies are present in both instruments, and if they are clashing/peaking at the same time.

Once you start doing this more and more, you’ll learn what to listen for and won’t need to rely on looking at a spectrograph.

-rEalm
Inner Portal Studios
http://www.soundclick.com/innerportal <- For MP3’s

Try this:

(turn your monitors down when you do this!!!)

Take either track and solo it. Engage a parametric EQ. Set the Q high, and the gain fairly high as well, then sweep the frequency.

Certain areas will jump out when you do the sweep. Depending on what your ears told you (what is “right” and “wrong” about the sound in question) you will be able to pinpoint the troublesome frequencies (or range of). You might want to write them down. If both the kick and bassline are hitting at say 60-100hz, then one of them needs to be NOTCHED out to allow the other to occupy that space in the spectrum

SO…once you’ve identified the problem areas and decided what to do, set the parametric EQ to that frequency, back off on the Q a bit (again using the data you’ve collected) and knock the gain down by 5-10 dB or whatever is necessary.

You can also do this to find a spot in the kick to BOOST (or the bass, whichever) as well.

I was really glad to learn this from someone. It has helped immensely!

- Influx1

P.s. DONT FORGET TO USE HIGH PASS FILTERS!

and it’s going to take some hacking about first, but the plan is to have a section where registered users can post their music production tips & tricks.

In the meantime, if you have something to add to what will be an ever expanding list please use the contact form to email me and I’ll post it up as soon as I can.