Bass sounds

I had to address this because I know there are a lot of beat makers and producers who started off creating this mistake that I remember doing as well when I first started creating hip hop beats and rap instrumentals.

This is just a general tip, but I must say that it helps to create the overall mix sound better than anticipated.  The simple tip... don't EQ your bass on the deep end and don't overdo the bass mixing on your track.  There are so many hip hop beats, dirty south beats especially, that are composed or produced, that overdo the bass.  Okay, we all know that dirty south beats are supposed to knock hard, that's a given.  But, the more bass is added, especially on the lower end, the more cluttered the beat becomes clashing with the kick drums of the track.  No one wants to hear clipping as a result of bass and kick drums fighting on the produced track to see who wins.  All of the music sounds on the mix, bass included, should work in harmony with each other, rather than to create a UFC tournament of sorts to see who wins over the other.  And in tracks with heavy bass sounds, the bass almost always tries to dominate everything.  You can tell when you play it in your normal car speakers and you hear a hollow rattling.  You can also tell when you have a subwoofer in your car and you hear nothing else but the bass blasting in your car.

Quick rule of thumb... if you MUST add EQ to your bass, make it as subtle as possible, and don't lift up the EQ on the lowest end too high.  This will create that deep sub bass to elevate and overpower the track altogether.  You can add a subtle lift to your mix on the bass end of it with some compression on both the kick and on the bass.  Be sure that you separate kick drum from bass sounds on separate channels.  You can also add a bit of lift with some filtering.  If you use FL Studio, play with the Free Filter on the bass channel as well as the kick drum channel.  You'll find that there are tweaks you can create to bring an overall lift to your bass end without pushing everything to sound too heavy in bass.

Overall, don't overdo the bass thinking that the bass needs to be elevated so that it blasts out of your subwoofers.  Sometimes, the best bass is the more subtle bass in a track.  Hope this has been of help.