the best way to distinguish the two is to keep your bass in the sub area

20-80hz ish

and hipass at a very low point everything else

EVERYTHING!!!!!!!


EVERYTHING!!!!!!

I cant emphasize that enough. Too many mixes sound muddy because every sample and instrument the person uses also has unnecessary low content. There can only be one bass line. You gotta sacrifice something to get something. But if you highpass everything right above the low bass it will improve your mixes x100.

I only use sidechaining now as an effect or if the kick has sub too.
if you kick also has sub and you dont want to give it up, either write the bass parts around it or use sidechaining to duck it

you can get "mild" ducking by turning up the threshhold and turning down the ratio and input gain, you gotta play it by ear though, theres no right preset ever....ever...ever...in mixing your tracks.

also if you are multi tracking you could always automate the EQ settings to move up to give space for what you want to emphasize. This works all over in mixing, not just for bass but here is an example

you have subby bass and subby kick but at the start of each bar you only want to hear the subby kick
so you put a parametric EQ on the sub channel with a highpass curve all the way at the lowest frequency so it isn't actually doing anything at all
when the kick comes in automate that EQ so it slides up to 1 khz or something higher like that. the low content will be removed like you were dropping the bass on the DJ mixer
then duplicate that throughout the song

wow that was longer than expected but mixing is a complex subject!

thank you for schooling me man. im just starting to take the sound aspect of music making seriously, responses like that are fucking great.