HOW TO RECORD AND MIX DRUM CYMBALS (PART 2/2)

CLICK HERE FOR THE PART 1/2 OF THIS TUTORIAL!

Once we have seen how to acquire our cymbals sound, we sould now find ourselves with Four mono tracks: two for the Over Heads (Left and Right), one for the Hi Hat and one for the Ride, therefore now it's time to start mixing.

- Overheads: the idea is to Pan those two tracks very wide, often 100% left and 100% right, to give to our Crash Cymbals as much space as possible, then we need to Hi Pass and Low pass them, in order to give to the tracks a proper frequency range that will not make them fight with the others.
First off we should create a Group Channel track where to route the two single tracks, and then we can start off by loading on the Group Channel a Hi-Pass Filter, taking away everything below 100hz to 500hz, until we find the spot where the bulk of the drums disappears (unless we don't want purposely to retain some spill on those tracks too, to beef up the global drum sound), then we can Low-Pass around 10/12khz, to avoid the sound to become too harsh.
Now the only thing left to do is to start manually to pin down the Resonant Frequencies (which are, if we look at the Spectrum of our sound, the frequencies that produces the highest and most annoying peaks), and see if our cymbals are Eq Masking the frequencies of other important tracks (Vocals, for example).
If this happens, it's a good idea to scoop a bit around the 3/4khz area to clear some room for Vocals, and if needed we can also take away something around the 500hz area too, to eliminate a bit of "Room Mud".
The last thing to do, if needed, is to Compress the sound just a little, in order to soften a bit the hardest hits.

- Hi Hat: This cymbal is seen more as a part of the snare sound than an ambient cymbal, and therefore shouldn't be Panned too far from the snare: someone sets it straghit to the centre of the soundstage, someone else pans it slightly to the left (about 12.5 left), as if it's heard from the drummer's perspective.
We can Low-Pass the sound, as for the others cymbals, until most of the snare goes away (300 to 500hz, usually) and then Hi-Pass it at about 10khz, eventually taking out some other frequency if the general sound feels a bit "gongy". To add some brilliance we can boost a little around 6khz.

- Ride Cymbal: this cymbal should be Panned usually somewhere on the right area (like 12,5 right), and its particularity, compared with the Hi Hat, is a usually stronger low end. In order to make the ride sound brighter we can Hi Pass the sound to about 3/500hz, then we can boost a couple of dbs at about 10/12khz to add some air and sparkle. Watch out for resonances on this track too!
Similarly to the Hi Hat, if we feel that there are some frequencies that are fighting with the Vocals ones, we can scoop around 3khz.

We can also route the Hi Hat and the Ride Cymbal on another Group Channel Track to add a little bit of Compression, just to peel off some of the peaks.

Very important: If we're using Compression (and usually it is suggested for hard rock songs, up to the most extreme metal, not for softer genres), we must keep in mind that the settings should be very very low, since it's really easy to create an unnatural effect with cymbals! Same is for Reverb: usually it's not suggested, but in some cases, when the overall drum sound is very dull and lifeless, if we use a Plate Reverb on "homeopathic doses", it can add some body and room to the general sound.

CLICK HERE FOR THE PART 1/2 OF THIS TUTORIAL!

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HOW TO RECORD AND MIX DRUM CYMBALS (PART 1/2)

Pic. 1

Hello and welcome to this week's article! Today we will talk about How to Record Cymbals!

There are many ways to record Cymbals, and the technique has evolved greatly throughout the time: from the early recordings, at the beginning of the 20th century, with nothing but a condenser microphone in the middle of the room to catch the sound produced by the whole band, to the most complex combinations of close miking of any single drum piece with other microphones to take care of the global room sound. 

The technique we're going to show you today it's a compromise between the need to capture the life of the recording room and the flexibility of having two single tracks for Hi Hat and Ride.

This technique can be successfully used with a natural drumset as well as with a triggered one (or a drum with its signal Replaced), although with a triggered drumset, if properly muted, is even better: we will have "clean" cymbal tracks, reducing to the minimum any unwanted mic bleed from other drum parts, and this will help us greatly during the Editing Phase.

Some musician even prefer to record cymbals without using the drumset at all, using just the cymbals and their stands, microphoned: the drummer plays the cymbals as he would do using a drumset, following the song on his headphones. This method may feel a bit unnatural, but it's the "cleanest" way to record the cymbals signal with zero bleed from the drumset :)

Let's start talking about Overhead Cymbals (Crash, China, Splash...): these are the cymbals that are positioned above the drumset, and their sound can be captured with a couple of overhead microphones (Pic. 1), which can be dynamic, but it's very suggested to use Condenser Microphones (e.g. for our recording we have used a pair of Akg C1000), since they can capture many more details. They can be positioned with the X/Y method, as shown in Pic. 1, creating a 90° angle to one another, at around 3 or 4 feet of height (1-1.20 meter) from the drumset. This setup is good to record the whole drumset / cymbals area providing phase coherence (therefore less frequency cancellation). 

There are other methods too, if you want to try, as for example positioning the two microphones at the same height but on the left and right side of the drumset, pointing towards the center of the set, and this method is used to add a sense of width to the recording.

Pic. 2

Now let's talk about the Hi-Hat (also known as "Charleston"): this cymbal actually consists of two cymbals that are mounted on a stand, one on top of the other, and a pedal which can be used to clash and hold the cymbals together. This cymbal can be close-microphoned, since it's a very important part of a drum sound, complementary to the snare. We need to process it alone, if possible, so the Hi-Hat can be microphoned with a dynamic microphone, such a Shure Sm57 as shown on Pic 2, on the upper side of the Cymbal, at a distance of a couple of inches, at the opposite side of the Snare, in order to catch as less snare sound as possible. 

Pic. 3

The Ride cymbal is another important drum part, with a function similiar and alternative to the Hi-Hat, so it's suggested to record it with another dedicated microphone, which can be a dynamic one as well, but this time the right positioning is Below it, at about 2 inches of distance (Pic. 3), in order  to catch less bleed from the other drum parts.

These four microphones must be connected to four Microphone Preamplifiers, therefore we will need an Audio Interface with at least four Mic Preamps, or an external Mic Preamp / Mixer to be connected to our Audio Interface on a way that lets us stream the sound of each single microphone on a different track.

Ps. Thanks to Francesco Paoli and Cristiano Trionfera from Fleshgod Apocalypse for their help on recording the drums of my band! ;)

CLICK HERE FOR THE PART 2/2 OF THIS TUTORIAL!

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HOW TO USE REVERB WHEN MIXING (with free Vst Plugins Included) PART 1/2

Hello and welcome to this week's article!

Today we're going to talk about how to use Reverb when mixing!

Everybody knows what reverb is, it's the persistence of a sound that we create, as it reflects into an ambient. Fewer knows how to use it properly, as in a mix reverb is one of devil's favourite tools to create mud and make details disappear.
It could take a whole book just to describe everything about Reverb and its various uses, but today we will see only its function in the mixing phase, which is to let the single tracks to sit better in the mix and to smoothen a bit the Transient, making it a bit less "In Your Face", letting it "breathe" a little more.

First off, there are different kinds of reverb, the most importants of which are:

- Hardware Reverbs: This kind of reverb, such as Plate Reverb or Spring Reverb, was used on the early studios, and are based on the physical reflection of the signal, sent on a resonant ambient and taken back with a magnet or microphone. Today, Spring Reverb, for example, is still featured as a built-in effect on some vintage guitar amplifier, and there are many Vst emulators, such as the free Spring Reverb Type 4. A good example of Spring reverb can be found on many songs played by Jimi Hendrix.

- Studio Reverbs: Those are digital or transistor reverbs, that have been increasingly used since the mid '80, with the advent of digital rack fx processors, and are known for their cleanliness and linearity. Today studio reverbs are still used because they do not colour the original sound too much and are very versatile: they can be used with very low settings too, for example to add some depht and room even in the Mastering Phase, after the Compressors, in the mastering chain. Some good free Vst of this kind are: DxReverb Light, Magnus Ambience, Voxengo OldSkoolVerb, EpicVerb.

- Ambience Reverbs: Those are the reverbs that tries to recreate a real ambient, and are used mainly on single instruments (especially with sampled drums, or guitar Amp Simulators, DI Bass, and all those situations where you don't have a microphoned sound, so there is no natural ambience on your mix), in order to have a more cohesive sound, as if all the instruments were played in the same room. Today, ambience reverbs are often Convolution Impulse reverbs, which are reverbs based on the real response of a reverb captured by a microphone. We have already seen them applied on Guitar Amp Simulators on This Article, but impulses can be successfully used for any instruments. A great free convolution impulse reverb plugin is SIR.

The ideal use of reverb when mixing is on a Fx Track, so we can use a single reverb instance with a sound that will be coherent through all the instruments of our mix: this will have the double positive side of giving to the listener the pleasant feeling that the instruments are played live on the same room at the same time, and will reduce the CPU load, since reverbs are some of the worst "CPU hogs" among all plugins. As we've seen of the Fx Tracks dedicated article, with a reverb loaded on this track we can send the effected signal to the single tracks, as many as we want, using the same effect instance and adjusting the amount of effect to be sent to the single tracks via the WET/DRY  control of each track: this way we can decide for example to send more reverb to the Vocals track, and less to the Toms tracks, or to the Snare; 100% Wet means that the track is completely effected, while the Dry percentage is the amount of signal unaffected by the reverb.

CLICK HERE TO READ THE PART 2/2 OF THIS ARTICLE, with the explaination of how to set the Reverb controls properly!!

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HOW TO DO AUDIO EDITING (a guide for dummies) PART 1/2

Hello and welcome to this week's article! Today we're going to talk about audio editing!
Audio Editing is the single most important and time-consuming task to accomplish before starting mixing, in the Project Preparation Phase, and it consists in the correction of all the little mistakes that needs to be fixed on the audio tracks, in order to sound properly and not to draw attenction.

Let's start by saying that not every small error needs to be fixed: sometimes some slight acceleration or deceleration made by the drummer may improve the groove, sometimes producers even speed up the metronome of a couple bpm on purpose on choruses, in order to make them even more energetic, on a subliminal level.
Also the interpretation nuances of Vocals or guitar solos should be left alone, what really needs to be edited are the macroscopic errors done especially on the rhythmic side, manily by Drums, but also by Bass, rhythm Guitars or some attacks of Vocals and the other audio recorded instruments.

Today there are different solutions in order to help us on our editing tasks, especially for drums, Pro Tools has a feature called "Elastic Audio" that helps editing by marking the audio peaks and quantizing or moving them automatically, also there are other plugins called Beat Detection Tools, which are capable of finding the bpm and help you modifying the track, but we will today focus on the "Slip Editing" which consists into slicing and dicing the audio tracks and moving them, and is the only Free option among these.

- Techniques:  Slip Editing consists into cutting the tracks at the "Zero Point", which is the last silence (0db) part of an audio track right before the start of a sound, and moving the part forward or backward of a few milliseconds, in order to set it on perfect time. To do this many DAWs offers the "Snap to Grid" option, which helps us finding the right place, where the bar starts, if we set the right metronome and quantization for our project: this is very important, since many details of our mix are driven by metronome and quantization, for example the Delay Repetitions, so set this carefully. The metronome and the quantization of our project are MIDI driven, so the "Snap to Grid" option will snap the audio parts on the MIDI grid, which can be divided in 1/8, 1/16, 1/32 and so on, in order to be more precise for the positioning. 

When editing, thus applying a change in the continuity of an audio track, there is the problem of how to fill the gaps at the beginning or the end of the track that we have moved: usually if our track slips below another track that starts at the right time there is no problem, since the new sound will take the place of the old one at the right moment, but if we create a gap of silence, this is going to be noticed, so we will need to solve this problem with Time Stretching:
Time Stretching tools (like the Cubase bundled "Audio Warp") are plugins that helps us in widening or shortening the lenght of a sound while mantaining the pitch unaltered; his can be a solution for filling the small silence parts that are generated when cutting an audio part.
Another tool we have in order to "blend in" two parts that were originally distant, in order to make them less feel like one is replacing another, is Cross Fading: this technique consists into creating a quick fade out on the first track and a fade in on the new one, in order to give the impression that there's perfect continuity between the two sounds.
Luckily all the new DAWs and Audio editing Softwares features a Fade In - Fade Out tools.

CLICK HERE TO READ THE PART 2/2 OF THIS ARTICLE!

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HOW TO USE DRUMAGOG AND THE OTHER DRUM REPLACERS (free Vst plugins and samples inside)

Hello and welcome to this week's article! Today we're going to talk about Drum Replacement!

Drum replacement is a very common technique nowadays, and it consists in taking the peaks of a drum track (an audio track, or even a MIDI) using a level analizer, setting a threshold like we're using a Compressor, and every peak that exceedes that threshold is considered by the program a hit to be replaced with a midi sample of our choice.

This technique can be used to replace virtually anything with any sample, but it has been developed specifically for drums, because this is the application where it really turns out to be useful: to add the sound of an already processed snare, kick or tom to the original sound we have recorded and blend them, in order to give more punch, clarity and "professional vibe" to our songs.

Those plugins usually gives you the opportunity to "refine the search" of the peaks to be replaced, supporting Equalization filters and a volume fader, in order to isolate as much as possible the range of sounds to be processed, since it's a common problem to have replaced more sounds that we need, for example a long-tailed snare hit may be interpreted as more than one single sound so the plugin may add a double or triple hit on it. It takes some practice to set up the software so that only the sounds we need are replaced.

- The first and best drum replacement program around is Drumagog, it comes with some sample bundled sample and lets you use Wave files and the proprietary .GOG standard, which supports multisampling in order to assign the right sample according to the Velocity of every hit.

Another very interesting and useful feature is the "Blend" control, that lets you choose the percentage of original and triggered sound you want, mixing them.

- The second plugin I suggest is Slate Drums, which is a bit more expensive but comes in bundle with great samples.

- The third plugin in order of quality is ApTrigga, which is cheap, light, and very effective.

- Drumtrig, is FREE, and very easy to use. Similiarly to Aptrigga, Drumtrig has a clean interface, but with less controls.

- Boxsounds Replacer, is FREE and lets you load up to four sample layers.

- KTDrum Trigger is another FREE plugin that allows you replace sounds, and this one supports up to three different frequency bands, thus is possible to replace more than one sound at the same time (anyway is suggested to open a single instance for every single drum part, to avoid errors).

Now we must choose the right samples. There are many sample packs around, and among them a very good pack is LSD DRUMS, or the Slate Drums pack, but surfing the web you can also stumble upon some good free sample library, just try searching on the Ultimate Metal and the Mixingtips forum. You can even create your own samples by microphoning a real drum or ripping the single samples from your favourite album, just make sure to find a song where the drum part is playing alone, or you will sample something of the other instruments too!

Once we have replaced all the drum parts we need (usually snare, kick and toms, since is not a good idea to replace the cybmals as the sampled ones tend to sound a bit "unnatural"), it's time to head to the "cleaning" part: clean all the midi drum tracks of the "double hits" accidentally taken by the software, correct the eventual timing and quantization errors (if the samples are replacing a real microphoned drum track), adjust the Velocity to the right levels when needed (just remember to not make it completely flat or you will lose all the dynamics of the drumming), and after this phase we will have a perfectly edited triggered drum track, which is ready to be mixed (and with the right samples, more than 50% of the mixing job is already done!).

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MIDI Dynamics: How to adjust the Velocity (for more realistic MIDI drums)

Hello and welcome to this week's article!

Today we're going to talk about how to adjust/edit the Velocity parameter on a MIDI track!

The first MIDI samplers used to have just one sample for every sound (e.g. the legendary Roland TR-808, a hardware drum sampler with just one snare sample, one kick sample...), but through the years we've seen the arrival of always more accurate samplers, so now we have available huge libraries of sounds, and the most recent drum sequencers (which today are almost completely VST based) have many samples for each drum piece, (talking about Virtual Drums, but the same is for any other virtual instrument), divided by how hard the "virtual hand" would hit them, in order to give a more realistic result. 

Velocity is the intensity, the strenght of the "virtual hand" that hit the drum piece, and today it's an editable parameter, created in order to give a better realism to the MIDI instruments. Some MIDI instruments according to the Velocity you choose will choose the right sample, while others (the ones with fewer samples, or with just one) will apply an Envelope Filter on the sample in order to make it sound quieter or louder; eventually many MIDI instruments will apply a combination of these two methods.

Today, most of the commercial DAWs features a Velocity Editor (for example, in the Cubase/Nuendo interface is located on the lower side of the Piano Roll editor window), so you can manually choose the intensity of each hit: just select the midi part you've created on the Piano Roll, and it will select automatically the Velocity on the lower window (on the side menu you can decide the parameter to edit: Velocity, or Volume, or any other); 

from here, using the Pencil Tool you can move up or down the bar, and the higher it will be set, the louder the Velocity will be.

If you keep the left button of the mouse pressed you can trim the Velocity of all the notes in the Piano Roll if you want (e.g. creating a "Fade In Effect"), or just choose some of them to adjust and leave the others untouched. Many MIDI instruments features also a "Humanize" control (e.g. you can find it on the Toontrack drum sequencers), which automatically randomizes for example the velocity of the drum hits in order to make them sound more natural.

- HOW TO SET A MINIMUM AND MAXIMUM VELOCITY FOR THE RANDOMIZER: If you have a randomic velocity on your drum sequencer (or any other VST instrument), but you wish to set a minimum and/or a maximum Velocity so that the hits won't be weaker and/or stronger than a certain threshold, select the MIDI track and go to the MIDI Modifiers section: from here on the Random menu, choose "Velocity" and you'll be able to set a Minimum and a Maximum (from -120 to +120), so that all the hits on that track will respect that threshold.

- HOW TO SET A FIXED VELOCITY: If you want a Fixed Velocity, instead, just select on the MIDI Modifiers section the amount you want on the Velocity section (from -126 to +126), now all the new notes you will write on the Piano Roll will have the selected Velocity, and to set it on the notes already written, just select them, Right Click->Functions->Fixed Velocity.

- Addictional Awesomeness: Some quick tip to make a sampled drum track more realistic, by adjusting the Velocity. First off visualize how to play the parts you are going to write: nobody wants to listen to drums played unnaturally, just because the guy who wrote the part is not a drummer and has no clue of how to play it :D 

Then when writing a drum roll, think of which hand does each single hit, and make the hits with the right hand slighly harder than the ones made with the left hand (assuming that the drummer is right-handed), plus make the drum roll start harder and then get progressively softer as it ends.

When making a press roll part, or a blast beat part, lower the velocity of the snare, and raise it just on the accents, plus raise it progressively when heading toward a Drum Roll, or to a Fill, and remember that a real drummer usually the faster he goes the lighter he hits, in order to control better the movement of the sticks, and to save his stamina ;)

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How to use Automations and the Tempo Track (a guide for dummies)

Hello and welcome to this week's article! Today we're going to talk about Automations in Steinberg Cubase and Nuendo.

An Automation is a system which will memorize and playback the whole variations we make, applied to the different parameters of the mixboard: volume, Panning, Eq, effect level, etc

Do you want the volume on your lead guitar to raise on a certain point of the song? 

Or the volume of lead vocals to raise a little during the chorus in order to make it stand out more?

Well it's not a difficult task, let's see how to do it :)

I'm using the Cubase/Nuendo interface as an example, but the same mechanism can be applied on most of the recent DAWs.

In each channel of our virtual mixer there are (among the others) two buttons: W (Write) and R (Read): 

we can press W, then playback the song and modify in real time any parameter of our song (for example the volume fader, or the settings of some plugin, e.g. an Equalizer), then we stop the song, and disable the W button, so that only the R button is on (this button must stay always enabled, if we disable it, the channel will ignore any automation set so far); 

now if we playback the same part, we will see the parameters modify automatically exactly as we did in the "writing" mode.

This is the way to set manually in real time the automation, but we can also just write it (or modify an automation already created in real time) pressing the "+" button on the channel: 

this way we will be able to see all the settings of the channel, automated and not automated.

Using the "Pencil" tool, we can now create new automations or modify/correct the ones we've already done, by creating points and moving around the lines between these points, for example if we create a "slope" line on the "Volume" parameter, we can create a Fade Out effect. 

Practice around to discover all the various parameters you can automate!

- Addictional Awesomess: Usually on a project the tempo is set to "Fixed" (you can see it on the Transport Bar), which means that the metronome is set for just one speed for the whole project, but what happens if we want to use one single project for more than one song, just using the same channels, and the two songs uses a different tempo? 

Or what happens if we just want to throw in a tempo change inside a single song? 

How can we tell the DAW to change the metronome tempo from a certain measure on? 

Well, there is an Automation for this too :)

Click on "Fixed" to change it to "Track", and press CTRL+T to open the "Tempo Track".

This will open a timeline where, using the Pencil tool, we can create points, in order to change the tempo on a certain point of the project, so ad example, once the song 1 is finished, for example, at the measure n.200, we can change the tempo here in order to have the right click for the song 2, from the measure n.201 on. 

We can also create "ramps" of metronome, in order to give a "speeding up" or "slowing down" effect, that will obviously affect all the other plugins and virtual instruments, especially the Delay speed and the Drum Sequencers!

Another interesting feature of Steinberg products it's the "Musical Note" icon featured on Midi tracks: if it is engaged, if we change metronome, all the notes in the piano roll will be quantized according to the new tempo, if it is disengaged instead (it becomes a grey clock icon), the grid will change, but the notes will remain where they were. 

Hope this article was helpful!

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HOW TO USE THE TRANSIENT DESIGNER / SHAPER / ENVELOPER (free Vst Plugins inside)

Transient designers (also known as "Transient Shapers" or "Envelopers") are sound processors that stands somewhere between equalizers and compressors, but the aim of T.D.s is to affect only the Attack and Sustain phase of a sound, so these effects are capable of enhancing or attenuating each of these with precise accuracy. For instance, using a transient designer we’re able to increase the attack of a snare sound or even reduce the sustain of a drum loop, in order to reduce the room sound in the recording.
These results can be achieved with other methods too, for example using an Equalizer, but the characteristic of Transient Designers is to leave the "core of the sound" unaffected and only process attack and sustain, which is quite hard to obtain with other methods.
First off lest's start saying that some of todays best DAWs already features an in-bundle Transient Designer, but here is our suggestion for the best free Vst  T.Ds: FLUX BitterSweet II, DigitalFish Dominion, Storm Transient Designer (this is mono). For an interesting example of how this kind of plugin works, check out the audio samples of the Native Instruments Transient Master, that can be found Here.

Here are the most common and fundamental controls featured on Transient Designers:

- Attack: With this control you can increase the punch of the initial part of the sound (for example the pick of a bass, the strum of a guitar to make it more "chimey", or the attack of a drum sound), or lower it to make it softer and less "in your face". This function adds or subtracts decibels like an equalizer, boosting or cutting the amplitude of the first part of the sound.

- Sustain: This control affects the "tail" of the sound, and is mainly used to remove (or increase) the room reverb for example on drums, vocals or acoustic guitars. The sustain control is useful to get the sound closer or farther away from the listener, increasing or decreasing the sustain as it works with a compressor. The nice thing with Transient Designers is that you can work of the sustain of a sound without compressing the sound itself and leaving it more natural.

- Gain: There is really not much to say about this control, other that is used to lower the volume of the sound when needed, especially when increasing the attack: the volume of the signal will be increased, so it’s well worth lowering the output level of the plug-in to avoid clipping.

Transient Designers are used also for creative results, like shaping the sound of a Synth (for example making it less aggressive) or adding space (or removing it) from a whole mix during the Mastering Phase. Let us know if you have some other interesting use of this kind of processor to suggest!

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HOW TO USE SIDECHAIN COMPRESSION (free Vst Plugins included)

Hello and welcome to this week's article! Today we're going to talk about an advanced compression technique called "Sidechain Compression", which is widely used in productions that span from extreme metal music to dubstep. To take a look to the Basics of Compression, CLICK HERE.

Sidechain Compression is a technique that consinsts into putting a compressor on a sound (usually the kick), that when is triggered, it applies the compression on another sound (usually the bass, or the synth on dance music), instead of affecting the kick itself;
the aim is to obtain a "pumping" drum sound, almost as the bass is part of the release of the kick itself (therefore largely increasing the groove), and avoids at the same time certain frequencies of the bass to cover the same frequencies of the drum kick, leaving it as much clear and audible as possible.
Let's focus on its most common use, for rock-heavy metal music, and once you've learned how it works, you can try it on more creative ways.

First off, grab a vst compressor that supports sidechaining, Here is a List of Free Sidechain Compressors, and among them I obviously suggest the ReaComp; many DAWs, anyways, already have an "in bundle" compressor that supports sidechaining.

Now load the compressor on your Bass track and activate the "sidechain" control (for example, in Nuendo, it's an orange button on the top left of the effect window, if you lay the cursor on it without clicking it will say "Activate Side-Chain"). Once this control is active, open the kick track and find the "Audio Sends" menu. By clicking on one of the empty slots, it will make you choose the buss where to send your Input, and choose "Sidechains - Reacomp", or whatever  is the compressor you've loaded on your bass track. After you chose, set the "Send Level" to 0.00 db.
Now, by playing the two tracks together, you will notice how the kick will cut through the bass sound much clearer, and the more you will lower the "Threshold" control, the more the bass volume will be lowered when the compressor activates (the ideal would be that when the kick hits, the bass is lowered of around -7db).
The attack time should be set pretty fast, according to the music genre, and so the release time, that may vary orientatively from 250ms to 500.

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