Sidechain and low end: kick vs bass in house

Kick and bass fighting? Fix that first.

everything house · Next step · 2 min read · updated 17 Oct 2026

Kick and bass carry most of the low end, so they fight for the same space.

1. Arrangement first

Play bass between the kicks. It's a time-honoured dance trick. Long note under every kick? Shorten it.

2. Tune the kick

Re-pitch the kick until it sits with the bass without clashing. Use the fine-tune in cents, not just semitones.

3. Sidechain compression

Compressor on the bass, kick as the sidechain source. The bass ducks on every kick.

• Fast attack.
• Release is the key control. Small changes shift the groove. At 126 BPM a quarter note is 476 ms and an eighth is 238 ms.
• Just enough reduction to hear the kick clearly.

4. Ghost trigger

Use a silent copy of the kick pattern as the sidechain source. It's separate from the audible kick, so you can reshape it or keep it running when the kick drops out.

5. Duck only what clashes

• Turn on the compressor's sidechain EQ so it reacts only to the kick's low end.
• Trackspacer carves the bass with an inverse EQ of the kick.
• ShaperBox draws the duck as an LFO or triggers it from audio.

6. Mono and clean

• Keep kick and bass centred. Many club systems sum lows to mono.
• High-pass parts that don't need low end.
• Flip the bass polarity. If the low end gets fuller, they were cancelling.
• Check on small speakers and against a reference.

Live's stock Compressor and EQ Eight do all of this. Trackspacer and ShaperBox are on my plugins page.

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