The kick and bass line are two of the fundamental driving forces in dance music production. In order to get these two elements working well together, it's important to learn what's involved in the process. The kick and the bass line both work in the lower end of the audio frequency spectrum, so it can sometimes be difficult to give each pattern its own definition in a dance music production mix.

However there are a few tricks that you can employ to help separate out these two basic forces when dealing with your dance music production tracks. The first is to always EQ out anything below 30 Hz on the individual channels and across your entire stereo mix. The human ear cannot hear below about 20Hz so anything much below it totally unnecessary. If you want to add extra sub bass to your dance music production tracks so that people can feel the bass that low (even if they can't hear it) it can be added in later on rather than muddying up the mix in the early stages.

Another dance music production method you can use to help your kick and bass line sit well together is to tune them both to the same note. Even though a kick drum is percussive, it will have an underlying tone, and this is what you want to tune your bass line patch to. This can, of course, be done in reverse so that you tune your kick drum to the bass line. You may even find this approach somewhat easier - as once you have your bass line in pace, you detune you kick drum until it fits properly with your fundamental bass line frequency.

Depending on the sequencing patterns you are using for the bass line and the kick, it can sometimes be beneficial to use a gate to duck out the kick or bass slightly at moments when the two channels play at the same time. This way you will not get so much conflict in the mix between the two sounds as they will not always be competing for the same space in the overall dance music production mix.