Mixing your drum and bass tracks is one of the trickiest aspects of the entire process. This is namely because the kick drum and bass in the mix share a very similar frequency. This can result in one or both getting drowned out while they’re fighting for the same frequencies. With that in mind, here is how to mix drum and bass tracks so that you have a clean low end in the mix with both tracks asserting themselves.
How to Mix Drum and Bass

There are roughly half a dozen things you can do in how to mix drum and bass together to make them sound their best. Many of these involve getting them to account for one another, but before we get into that, there are a couple of other extremely important things which we can do.
High Pass Every Track in Your Mix
Getting into the habit of dropping a high pass filter on every single track in your mix isn’t just good sense as it relates to mixing drum and bass/getting them to sound their best, but it’s one of the keys how to get a clean mix in general:

You can generally get away with high passing +90% of the tracks in your mix around 100Hz, and this instantly goes a long way to cleaning up either audible or inaudible noise or nonconstructive and unwanted sounds.
Aside from cleaning up your mix and creating more mixing headroom, this frees up the low end for the tracks in your mix which actually need them, namely your kick and bass, making them sound a lot better before you even touch them.
Boost Your Kick’s Transient
A lot of why the kick can disappear in the low end is because it’s not asserting itself enough in the mix.
An effective way to draw your listener’s ear to the kick is to ensure that its transient – that high frequency percussive clap of the beater on bass drum skin.
There are multiple ways to bring out your kick’s transients.
The most obvious is to simply add a little boost on your kick’s EQ in the 3-3.5k region where that percussive sound’s fundamental exists (as I discussed in my complete overview on how to EQ kick drum).

If this isn’t bringing out enough of that transient click, or if boosting here is doing more harm than good to the overall tone, you can artificially but easily simulate your own transient.
This essentially just involves adding some white noise, putting a noise gate on that track, then sidechaining the gate’s behavior to open when the kick itself plays.
Refer to my tutorial on how to add transients to any track for the full and detailed explanation, but it’s extremely effective at drawing your listener’s ear to the kick and can add some life to a poorly recorded or poor sounding kick.
Sidechain Your Bass to Your Kick
Arguably the most important thing you can do in how to mix drum and bass tracks together is sidechaining.
Sidechaining in mixing terms refers to tying the behavior of one track to another track.
One of the most popular and common uses of sidechaining is to sidechain the volume of the bass to drop/duck out when the kick plays.
This essentially moves the bass out of the way so for that split second, the kick has the complete low end to itself to get the full and unimpeded kick to ring through.
We drop the bass when the kick plays rather than the opposite because the kick is the more infrequent of the two, playing short hits while the bass is the more constant and sustained of the two.
There are two different ways to sidechain your bass to your kick to achieve the results we want.
Sidechaining Via Compressor
First, we can sidechain a compressor on the bass to compress and consequently turn down the volume of that bass whenever the kick triggers/plays.
Taken from my overview on how to sidechain bass to kick, this illustrates the process:

Simply drop your compressor of choice on your bass track. Access the sidechain area of that compressor (I did an entire tutorial on sidechain compression in Ableton Live) and set the target as your kick.
Now the behavior of the compressor is tied to that kick track. The threshold you set is related to the level of the kick, so simply set this low enough so that even the quietest instance of that kick triggers the compression.
The ratio will affect how aggressively that compression will be enforced. 4:1 is a good place to start; if you want the bass to be turned down more, you can turn the ratio up, or conversely down if you want a more transparent compression.
The beauty of this method/setting the ratio is that you don’t have to completely remove the bass altogether if you don’t want when the kick triggers; you can pull it down a few dB to give the kick a bigger spotlight or conversely you can seriously crank that ratio to make the bass disappear when the kick triggers.
Find that sweet spot where it’s to your liking and just like that, the kick and bass are no longer at odds.
Sidechaining Via EQ
With some exceptions and as I mentioned in my comparison of sidechain compression vs sidechain EQ, I tend to prefer sidechaining via a dynamic EQ when sidechaining bass to kick because it’s more transparent.
Instead of ducking out the entirety of the bass, we’re just pulling out that lowest end frequency that the kick’s fundamental/the conflict exists.
As I demonstrate in my overview of sidechain EQ, you need an EQ which is capable of both sidechaining and dynamic cuts like my favorite plugin, the FabFilter Pro-Q 3:

To do this, you drop an instance of your dynamic EQ on your bass and create a dynamic band at the fundamental of your kick which is typically in that 50-70Hz region.
Now access the sidechain controller for that EQ and once again tie it to the kick.
The controls are very similar to the sidechain via compression we just did; once again we’re setting the threshold based on the level of the kick. The difference is, whenever that kick triggers, back on our bass the only thing which will be pulled down is that band we created.
In other words, when the kick hits, the 50-70Hz range on the bass gets pulled down so that range is left entirely to our fundamental of the kick’s body.
The rest of the bass goes through unchecked, resulting in a more transparent and surgical adjustment.
Note that a multiband compressor can do a similar thing as a dynamic EQ. I prefer the relative precision you get with a dynamic EQ over a multiband compressor, but it should be mentioned you can also use a multiband compressor in a similar band specific targeting sidechaining fashion.
Make a Complimentary EQ Cut on Your Kick
While you’ve got your kick’s EQ up to enhance its transient as discussed earlier, make it a point to create a small cut for the bass.
As I covered in my kick drum EQ cheat sheet, I like to create a cut in that 150Hz area to opens things up a bit for the bass:

You don’t need to do as many dynamic cuts on your kick EQ because the tone is always the same, so a static cut in that 150Hz range will create a little more space for your bass.
I mentioned 100Hz as a general starting spot for high passing most tracks in your mix earlier; you can high pass a lot of tracks even higher to create a more open sounding mix. Just sweep up on every track with that high pass filter until you can hear a change or thinning of the track, then back it up 10Hz or so.
I talk more about how to mix drum and bass tracks together in my complete overview on low end mixing, so refer to that for more tips on getting your mix’s most difficult frequency range sounding its best.
Also check out my complete overview on how to mix bass as well as my drum EQ chart, my drum compression chart, and my drum panning guide for in depth and full tutorials on getting these anchors of your mix sounding their best.
How to Mix Drum and Bass Tips
- Making drum and bass tracks work together in the mix is all about carving out space for each of them on one another as well as the rest of the mix to get your low end to sound its best.
- High pass virtually every track in your mix starting around 100Hz. Sweep the high pass filter up until you hear the track audibly changing or thinning, then back it up 10Hz or so for a conservative yet effective approach for creating low end space.
- Boost your kick around 3-3.5k on its EQ to bring out more of its transient punch and keep the listener’s attention drawn to it.
- Sidechain your bass to your kick via EQ or compression to duck the bass out when the kick triggers to give the kick its own real estate for each split second it plays.
- Create a complimentary cute on the kick for the bass around 150Hz to create a little more space for the bass’ fundamental, as well.