DP nailed it. If you thought music production was deep, thats just the tip of the iceberg.
In the showcase before the current one I described in a fair amount of detail how to get the kick to bang more, you might want to check that out for a starter guideline
to save you searching for it, Ill just paste it here.
the drums are very far back in the mix. You can get more bang from your kick by slapping an eq on it and taking away the inaudible low end below 30 hz, literally cut everything below 30 hz, as you have the sub bass too id cut everything below 50hz for the kick, give it a boost around 80-90hz and a boost around 800hz too to add presence, to counter you will probably have to remove muddyness around 250-350hz. The result will be a banging punchy kick, to get it to punch through that sub though might require sidechained compression that compresses the sub bass every time the kick triggers the compressor to allow it through in the mix. You can get loud drums without necessarily layering them, frequencies from layered drums can phase frequencies doing the exact opposite of what you hope to achieve. Layering is better for adding a range of frequencies so that a snare for example covers more of the frequency spectrum, like adding some mid bass to a snare, or adding some presence in the higher end for a kick. Layer with purpose. If after compression and equing on the drums and they still sound "thin" then layer to fill them out. Just some ideas, there are no strict rules, just guidelines and many different ways to achieve the same result. Whatever works best for you is the way to go because you dont want to stifle your workflow with too many technicalities
Id start with finding the right sounds first, then equing them to remove unwanted frequencies(especially lows below 30hz) then Id make the drums the most dominant in the mix but not just by making them louder but by making everything else quieter, this way you maintain some headroom in which to achieve a dynamic mix. If you raise the volume on the drums too much then you will eventually peak on the master bus as everything competes to be heard.Try to avoid clipping at every single point, no one track should clip and no combination of tracks should clip and this is before you ever go into a limiter. Never rely on the limiter to "fix" a peaked and distorted mix. My master chain is usually eq>stereo field>compressor>limiter. But I will not even start going into mastering as Im no expert on the subject and mixing is a big enough topic on its own.
Things to search on the university of youtube....
Eq'ing,
Reverb and Delay,
Compression and Limiting,
Side-chained compression,
Parallel compression(new york compression)
Mix headroom.
Thats a good starting point.
These are the things that will help your drums bang and cut through the bassline.
Its a long journey learning to mix, its challenging but its an epic learning experience and Im glad I did it, without it I wouldnt be the mixing engineer/producer at my mates studio.
