Bass awesome-ifying service?

[Ermz]

Hey guys,

For a while now I've considered to offer a combined reamping/mixing service for bass guitar, mostly because it seems to be both an area that's underdeveloped by a lot of folks, and also not a service catered to as widely as guitar reamping.

The benefit of this service would be that guys with less than ideal processing chains, and less than ideal rooms can send their DIs to me, along with thoroughly mixed and representative backing tracks, and I will do some of that under-the-hood magic to give them back a simple mono file that will sit a lot more nicely in whatever mix they're doing. This isn't a simple 'send me your bass and I'll run it through my Recto' offering. It's the full deal, where you get my hearing and experience involved, and I give you a full-range bass track that is catered specifically to whatever project you're doing.

You guys know that I'm huge on the radio rock, Staub and Bergstrand disciplehood, so massive bass is a staple of anything that I do. I feel I'm at a point where I can share just that service alone for others, where my whole-song mix rates may be out of reach.

So, does a service like this sound appealing to anybody? Also, what would be fair rates to charge? Bearing in mind that processing bass can be a very involved task, and that the processing chain will involve thousands of dollars of analogue gear, even outside the reamping.

For reference, some prior bass tones I've tweaked up, in my own mixes:

Metal

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/285689/Music/Untruth - Drones.mp3

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/285689/Cecile-20.mp3 (bass distortion partially reamped by JeffTD)

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/285689/death-metal-mix5.mp3

Rock

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/285689/Music/Memnoir - The One.mp3

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/285689/MissTemptation-4.mp3

Cheers!

 

[tempe]

I would be very, very keen. I say charge a similar amount as the best guitar reampers

 

[brianhood]

I'll vouch for this dude. I was reamping guitars and bass on something he was mixing, and his "quick rough tracking chain" bass tone ran circles around any bass tone i could achieve with my sansamp and pedals here. It was to the point were i just gave up and ended up not even sending bass to him haha.

 

[Nebulous]

Not a bad idea!

 

[Harley Barley]

vurry cool idea!

 

[plague_rider]

Finally someone taking Bass serious... I know its not guitars and often isn't paid attention to... but sometimes hearing mix notes where the guitars have been put through "this" and "this" and "this"... and the bass is a clean DI with maybe a little grit.... FFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU

Ermz if i need reamping done i know where to come...

 

[Ola Englund]

It's an awesome service...

As with everyone else who asks me to do reamps I'll direct them to you...

 

[Ermz]

Thanks for the encouragement guys.

Consider the service started from now on!

 

[Jarkko Mattheiszen]

Possibly interested if a suitable project comes along. Mind discussing rates publicly so we can get a rough idea of what such a procedure would end up costing? If you don't want to discuss it here, I'd appreciate if you PM'd me what you had in mind so I can add you to to my outsourcing services list for future reference

 

[Ermz]

At the moment I'm considering $50 AUD for the initial template song, and if it's a project where multiple songs are involved I will do the rest at a discounted rate from that baseline, depending on how many songs there are in the project etc.

I recall giving Marcus the service for substantially less, but thinking back on how much time it took, I think $50 as a baseline is fair to start with, considering that this is a mix service as well as reamp.

 

[Jarkko Mattheiszen]

Sounds reasonable, thanks!

 

[DanLights]

Finally someone taking Bass serious... I know its not guitars and often isn't paid attention to... but sometimes hearing mix notes where the guitars have been put through "this" and "this" and "this"... and the bass is a clean DI with maybe a little grit.... FFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU

Ermz if i need reamping done i know where to come...

That's nothing, it's even worse when they spend 14 paragraphs explaining all the process of the guitars and then say "about bass, I'm not sure I think it was a DI or something" YOU'RE NOT FUCKING SURE??

Best of luck with that Ermz!

 

[Chris_P_Critter]

Good luck dude!

 

[dcb]

especially with bass, if the source lacks, i highly recommend reprogramming bass rather than trying to fix that mess in the mix.
most basses that i record either sound great right away, or will never ever sound as great as staubs basses for example.
people underestimate the value of a consistent player, new strings, pickups, editing, great arrangement.
ermz, i think the idea in genereal is good!
but im not sure if its worth the money having a great bass sound while everything else is poorly mixed...
well, let the clients decide!

btw. has anyone tried the analog gear reamping service thats offered on gearslutz ? ;-)

maybe the whole specialising thing (like ermz does bass now) is gonna be a potential second income for studio owners.
more and more clients are out there, but more and more clients dont wanna spend a lot of money.
well see what the future brings!

 

[Ermz]

but im not sure if its worth the money having a great bass sound while everything else is poorly mixed...

But so often this is what drives the guitar reamping industry!

Think of it as modularizing one's skillset. If the client wants everything to sound great, then they simply hire the engineer to mix the entire project. If they are more budget constrained, and limited by their ability to tackle a few particular elements in their mixes, simply pay for that service alone! That's what I'm offering here.

I personally (and perhaps controversially) believe that in many cases the bass guitar is more fundamental to a mix than the guitars, so it has always baffled me why guitar reamping has historically been the prime driving force of reamping.

Yes, if this is successful I'm also considering to offer a wider 'analogue' reamping service, where I process entire vocal chains, drums etc. for clients with outboard gear that would otherwise be out of their reach, all within a monitoring environment more ideally suited than theirs may be.

 

[Melb_shredder]

Ermin... If you keep this up you might just start offering entire mixing services lol. Nah but seriously, great idea dude

 

[Seizure.]

Never really had much trouble with bass recording.

Mids and fuzz/distortion fuck yeah hehe

 

[Ola Englund]

Ermz do you offer awesomeifying of MIDI bass?

 

[Ermz]

Well if you recall that last guitar tone competition, that was all fake bass programmed by Jeff (can't recall which packs he used for it though)!

 

[Ola Englund]

Well if you recall that last guitar tone competition, that was all fake bass programmed by Jeff (can't recall which packs he used for it though)!

Cool man, check the production sub forum. PM me what you want payed