Title: Reese taming with EQ: at 170 BPM (Beginner)

Alright, let’s tame a Reese.

If you’re making drum and bass at 170 BPM, a Reese bass is basically the engine of the track. It’s wide, aggressive, moving… and it also loves to eat your entire mix for breakfast. Mud in the low mids, harsh grind in the upper mids, fizzy top end, and sometimes weird stereo phase stuff that disappears in mono.

So in this lesson, we’re doing a beginner-friendly, repeatable EQ workflow in Ableton Live that gets the Reese sounding nasty, but controlled. The main goal is simple: keep the drums punching, keep the bass driving, and keep the mix clean.

Before we touch anything, set your tempo to 170 BPM. Put your drums into a Drum Group. Put your bass into a Bass Group, even if it’s just one track right now. And make sure both groups go to the master.

Here’s the mindset that will save you years: do not build your Reese EQ in solo like it’s a lead instrument. In drum and bass, the bass and drums are one system. So yes, we’ll solo briefly to identify what we’re dealing with, but we’ll spend most of the time with the drums looping.

Now, Step 1: figure out what type of Reese you have.

Solo your Reese for just a moment and listen in zones.
Down at 30 to 80 Hz, do you actually have sub content, and is it stable?
From 100 to 300, do you feel weight… or do you feel boxy, cloudy mud?
From 300 up to around 2k, that’s the grind and character. Is it forward in a cool way, or is it taking over?
And from 6k to 12k, do you have useful presence, or just hissy fizz?

Cool. Now turn solo back off. Drums back on. Because the real question isn’t “does the Reese sound huge?” The real question is “does the groove hit?”

Next, we’re going to do the biggest beginner upgrade for DnB bass mixing: split the Reese into sub and mid.

This makes EQ decisions way easier, because you stop trying to make one sound do two jobs at once.

Option A, the simple way: two tracks.

Duplicate your Reese track. Name one Reese SUB and the other Reese MID.

On Reese SUB, drop an EQ Eight. We are not high-passing the sub track. Instead, we’re low-passing it.
Set a low-pass around 100 Hz as a starting point. Use a 24 dB per octave slope. This basically says: “this track is only the weight.”

On Reese MID, also add EQ Eight, but do the opposite.
High-pass around 100 Hz, 24 dB per octave.
That says: “this track is the movement and texture.”

Now you’ve separated the jobs. Sub handles weight. Mid handles attitude.

Next, lock the sub in mono. This is crucial in rolling DnB.

On the Reese SUB track, after EQ Eight, add Utility. Set Width to 0 percent. If your Live version has a Bass Mono option, great, but width at 0 on the sub track gets you the core idea: the low end stays centered, solid, club-safe.

Now for the main event: taming the Reese MID with EQ.

Open EQ Eight on Reese MID. We already have the high-pass around 100 Hz, so the low rumble and overlap aren’t fighting the kick and sub.

We’re going to do this in a specific order, because order keeps you from doing random EQ moves that don’t solve the real problem.

First target: mud, usually 150 to 400 Hz.

Add a bell filter. Set the Q somewhere between about 1.4 and 2.5. Medium-wide. Not surgical.
Temporarily boost it by 6 dB. Yes, boost. This is just to find the ugly spot.
Now, while the drums are looping, sweep slowly between 150 and 400.

When you hit the problem area, you’ll know. It’ll sound like cardboard. Like a blanket over the mix. Like the bass is stepping on the snare body.
Once you find it, flip that boost into a cut. Start gentle, like minus 2 dB. Go to minus 5 if it’s really necessary, but don’t just delete the entire low mid range. Rolling bass often lives there, so the trick is control, not removal.

Quick coach note: a lot of snares have body around roughly 180 to 250 Hz. If your Reese is heavy there, your snare will feel like it has no chest. So when in doubt, protect that zone.

Next target: honk or nasal “talking” mids, usually 500 Hz to 1.2 kHz.

If the Reese sounds like it’s speaking too clearly, or it has that “honk” that feels like it’s coming out of a small box, do a gentle bell cut.
Try around 700 to 900 Hz first. Q around 1.2 to 2. Cut maybe 1 to 4 dB depending on how bad it is.

Next target: harsh grind, 1.5 to 4 kHz.

This is a massive fatigue zone in drum and bass, because it fights your hats, it fights snare crack, and it makes the whole track feel like it’s yelling at you.

Add another bell, start around 2.5 kHz. Use a slightly tighter Q, like 2 to 3.5. Cut gently, minus 1 to minus 4.

And here’s a great check: do this while hats are playing. If the hats suddenly feel clearer without you turning them up, you just carved the right space.

Optional move: top-end fizz.

If the Reese MID has noisy, pointless top end, add a low-pass somewhere between 8 and 12 kHz. Use 12 dB per octave if you want it natural, 24 if you want it tighter and darker. And don’t be shocked if a pro-sounding drop is darker than you expect. Beginners often leave the bass way too bright.

Now let’s handle stereo, because Reese patches often have phasing and width that’s cool… until it destroys your mono compatibility.

On EQ Eight for the Reese MID, switch it into Mid/Side mode.

On the Mid channel, keep it cleaner. Less mud, less harshness. This is the center of your track, where kick, snare, and the stable part of the bass need to coexist.

On the Side channel, you can keep some movement and width, but you must remove low junk from the sides.
Add a high-pass on the Sides only, somewhere around 150 to 250 Hz, even up to 300 if the patch is messy. Use 12 to 24 dB per octave.

What this does is super important: you keep the wide, scary motion on the edges, but the center stays punchy and reliable.

Now, gain staging. This matters more than people think, because EQ decisions are easily fooled by loudness.

Toggle EQ Eight on and off. If the EQ’d version is quieter, your brain might think it’s worse even when it’s cleaner.
So level match. Use the Output in EQ Eight so the before and after feel roughly the same volume.

Rule of thumb: if you cut a bunch of low mids, the bass will feel quieter. Don’t immediately “fix” that with giant EQ boosts. Get it clean first, then add controlled harmonics.

And that’s where optional saturation comes in.

On Reese MID, after EQ Eight, add Saturator.
Set Drive around 1 to 4 dB. Keep it subtle. If you want, enable Soft Clip for extra control, but don’t go crazy.
Then turn the Saturator output down so you’re matched in level again.

Why do this? Saturation makes the bass more consistent, and it helps the mid layer read on smaller speakers without having to shove 2 to 4 kHz louder.

If saturation creates a bit of extra poke, here’s a slick move: put another EQ Eight after Saturator and do a tiny trim in that 2 to 4 kHz zone. That way you keep the translation but avoid the ice-pick moments.

Now, the real DnB test: kick and snare.

Loop a basic 170 BPM drum pattern. Kick on 1, snare on 2 and 4, hats shuffling. Keep it simple.

Ask three questions.
One: does the kick still punch, or did the bass swallow it?
Two: does the snare crack and body come through?
Three: is the Reese controlled but still nasty?

If the kick is disappearing, check the overlap zone around 80 to 150 Hz, and check if your sub is too loud relative to the kick.
If the snare body feels weak, revisit that 180 to 300 range on the Reese MID. That’s the classic masking zone.

Now let’s add a couple “producer” checks that make this feel more professional without getting complicated.

First: mix volume.
Do your EQ moves at a comfortable monitoring level, not “solo excitement” volume. If you do this too loud, you’ll under-EQ harshness and overdo sub because your ears compress. So keep it reasonable.

Second: use Spectrum the right way.
Drop Ableton Spectrum after EQ Eight on the Reese MID. Don’t mix with your eyes, but confirm what you’re hearing.
If you see a persistent hump around 180 to 300 when the snare hits, that’s a masking risk.
If you see a sharp ridge around 2 to 3.5k when hats are active, that’s your fatigue zone.
And if a narrow peak only happens on certain notes, that’s movement and phase. That’s often better handled with conditional control rather than a massive static notch.

So if you’ve got harshness that only jumps out sometimes, here’s a stock Ableton workaround for dynamic EQ: Multiband Dynamics.

On Reese MID, after EQ Eight, add Multiband Dynamics.
Set the high-mid band so it covers roughly 1.5 to 4 kHz.
Use gentle downward compression, ratio around 2 to 1, and aim for just 1 to 3 dB of gain reduction on the worst peaks.
Now you keep aggression, but you stop the occasional “ice pick” moments.

Alright, quick arrangement trick, because DnB is all about energy.

Instead of rewriting the Reese sound every section, automate the EQ or filter slightly.

On Reese MID, automate a low-pass filter frequency.
In the verse or breakdown, keep it a bit darker, like 6 to 8 kHz.
In the drop, open it to 10 to 12 kHz.

Or automate the mud cut slightly.
For a tighter section, cut maybe 3 dB at 250 Hz.
For a fuller drop, relax it to maybe 1 dB cut.
That’s a subtle change, but it makes the drop feel like it opens up without simply getting louder.

Now, common mistakes to avoid as you do this.

Don’t EQ the Reese in solo for too long. It will lie to you.
Don’t try to fix everything with one magical EQ move. Reese problems are usually spread out: sub, low mids, harsh mids.
Don’t cut all the low mids. You’ll end up with a thin, clicky bass that doesn’t push air.
Don’t leave the sub stereo.
And don’t add ten super narrow notches. If you’re doing that, stop. Find the single biggest problem node, do one medium-Q cut, then check mono again.

Let’s wrap with a quick 10 to 15 minute practice exercise you can do right now.

Load any Reese, from Wavetable, Operator, Serum, or even a resampled audio Reese.
Split it into two tracks: Reese SUB and Reese MID.
On SUB: low-pass at 100 Hz, then Utility width at 0 percent.
On MID: high-pass at 100 Hz.
Now, with drums looping, do only three EQ moves on the MID.
One: cut mud somewhere between 150 and 400, about 3 dB.
Two: cut harshness somewhere between 1.5 and 4k, about 2 dB.
Three: optional low-pass between 8 and 12k if it’s fizzy.
Level match, A/B it, and bounce a quick 16-bar drop.

Then check it in three places: headphones, phone speaker, and mono.
On the phone, you should still hear the bass rhythm from the mid layer.
In mono, the sub should stay strong and the Reese shouldn’t vanish.

Recap to lock it in.

Split the Reese into SUB and MID. That’s your control.
Keep the sub mono with Utility.
Use EQ Eight on the MID to tame mud in 150 to 400, honk in 500 to 1.2k, harshness in 1.5 to 4k, and optionally roll off the fizz above 8 to 12k.
Use Mid/Side EQ so the center stays clean and the sides stay wide.
Add gentle saturation if you need the bass to read more consistently.
And automate small EQ or filter changes so your 170 BPM drop feels like it opens up.

If you tell me what you’re using for the Reese source, like Wavetable, Operator, Serum, or resampled audio, and what style you’re aiming for, liquid roller, neuro, jungle, I can give you a tighter frequency hit-list and a ready-to-go Ableton stock rack starting point.