Bass guitar and Distortion guitar relationship

K

Klosure

Member
Nov 26, 2009
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For yeeeeeears I have struggle witht he bass and guitar relationship. My mixes in other genres have improved significantly but as soon as I go into heavy territory im up against a brick wall.

I reference a lot of Katatonia/Jens mixes.

I fight with 2 main problems, one the sharpness of the guitar/volume (I am unsure which is bothering me more). For example guitar goes down in volume, sounds week so I play with EQ, then sounds thin. Either that or too loud or harsh. I think I have a good guitar tone from the start but further on down the line I find its just not working/I dont know how to adjust it.

Oddly enough I seem to have similar but different problems with real amps. Moving the mic around helps and I record several mics at one but then the Bass and guitar relationship seem wrong.

The end result is I can back the 2 off to let the drums come through but my mixes sound quiet in comparison, even using a clipper combined with other tools ie limiters on the 2 bus, I just cant keep the power/dynamics. The mids get too much from the guitar volume and that low mid power gets lost.


Ive hung around here for several years just looking at posts occasionally, and usually being wrong about many things. I wonder if a pretty please someone help me from going mad thread can be started up. If you help we'll have a party somehwere! How about it! I need to get my head around some of this stuff before I explode!


Cheeers!!



PS some info about me.

I work from home and a studios with great monitoring in the studio.. ie dynaudios m1+m3 so thats fine. (KRK vxts at home)

I use clippers such as Fabfilters limiter in clipping mode (pro l I think)

I mix very gently into Bus compressor (I experiment but usually is SSL based) usually no more tha 1-2db if that.

I use variety of amp sims. Usually ampeg+sansamp on bass. POD, GTR, A few from here with Recab for impulses

I have Slate samples I do use.

I am a fan of Waves C4 but not specifics, I play around with it all over the place.

I experiement a lot more with notching frequencies out but worry I take out stuff I need.
 
Mashreef said:
I eq the guitar's running the full mix...
so that it sits right in the mix
and Eq helps in bringing the sides upward as well as the In your face attack you just need to see in your mix what kind of sound you are looking for..
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/98385758/Jotun.mp3

I did this with my 20$ pc speaker :p
Click to expand...

Not bad, the drums lack the beef I would look for but the guitars sound pretty good!

I think if the drums felt more .. .. the kick for example feels higher than the snare - not that they are bad at all so dont get me wrong here, its a taste thing and I see what you are doing. But I do like the guitars.




What did you use to do your guitars? If I eq my guitars to bring the sides up.... it eats my face! My guitars always sound so damb dark
 
@Klosure well i havent beefed up the drums because it feels okay too me...prob my monitoring problem
i like to put the kick a little bit higher (a personal taste)
guitar singal chain- Tse 1.1 - X50 (6505 with Hifi setting) Low 5 Mid 4 Hi 6 Presence cracked up to 10 Gain 5
I used a Hp/Lp filter on 100 and 8k... used cut on 3.6k for the fizz.... and around 2k for the "air".. Scooped some mid around 600
If i loose the clarity i will boost at 5-6k for the presence.... usually i find the spot 200-400 that keeps my guitar muddy..
i let my bass to take over the low-end control...
 
Mashreef said:
i let my bass to take over the low-end control...
Click to expand...

I wish more guitarists thought like this. I was suggesting that our other guitarist has too much bass/not enough treble in his tone (Dual Recto) and his response is always something similar to "I like how it has balls". And when I tell him "that's what the bass guitar is for", he just never really seems to let it sink in. Then again, his bass is mostly almost all the way down and he is not running a TS before the amp. So...guessing my Mark IV just cuts like butter naturally and with a TS in front, even more so.

Sorry, off topic there. Carry on.
 
i guess there is always some boost needed... when it comes to amp...

"I like how it has balls"
Click to expand...

Ususally when I mix any Brutal Death stuff.. i keep the lowend on the guitar's preety high so that it sounds like a mess :p
usually the Death metal bands looks for a dirty sound... That doesnt mean it have to kranked at 10 :| to feel the balls :mad:
 
some engineers I spoke to do barely any cutting of guitar on the lows maybe 20Hz hi pass. If course different methods.
 
what about the instruments!?
a shitty bass will always sound shitty no matter what you do to it.
make sure you have a good bass, new stings, proper setup, good playing and editing. same goes for guitar.

a sound example would also help...
 
fair enough and good points but in many instances the bass strings and guitars are setup and I try to get them played as best as I can - but I know what you mean.


I guess this is a case of more the fit of the sound, getting it to feel smooth.
 
I got a mix to look at today and same damb thing the mixs bass is almost not there and guitars are barking out at me.


If you listen to any katatonia mixes recently specially DEK the bass is fat and guitars sound really thin but tucked in
 
If you cannot solve a problem by twiddling with knobs, you will have to approach this surgically. If that means 6db boost in the low end and 12db cuts, so be it. I usually have each element really thin when it comes to the low end: The kick dominates 50-70 (and has a serious lowpass on 80), the bass takes up the whole 30-120, however, it is important to note that I do sidechain-compress it with kick. My guitars are VERY thin if not playing mutes, however, since the bass is huge, it makes up for it, and when mutes are there, they still don't mess up the bass frequencies because bass is steadily located at 30-120 and guitars are highpassed at 120. So really, place very steep highpass (or several) on the guitar to kill everything below 120, surgically EQ bass into the 30-120 range so it's steady (and compress the shit out of it, too), and make sure that the kick is dead from 80-250. This will get rid of that '80-120' kick thump, but in return you get audible bass. Kick is still pounding very well down there. Another thing that's very important is arrangement. It is much easier to have an audible bass if you play guitar passages an octave above what you used to play, but the problem with bass/kick relationship still persists. I completely erased kick from the 80-120 range because I still want audible bass on doublekick runs. Downside to this is that it cannot be reproduced on smaller systems and many earbuds. Then again, if you use really small speakers or earbuds, you won't get much kick out of the kick anyway. Another neat trick to this is to have bass aided by the upper harmonics. That is, if the bass is still not audible, but you have a clear tone up there, you can increase the 800-2500 range by a huge amount and notes will resonate there. Your mind will associate the attack (with proper note definition up there!) with the low rumble since it occurs at the same time and you will get a pretty decent sounding bass. The tradeoff? You will have to kill some 1000-2500 in the guitars. Not the whole range, of course, just where you feel the bass would sit the best. Get a pretty narrow Q, put it at -12db, play the whole mix and sweep the 1000-2500 range on guitar. When you hear the bass cutting through really well (and enjoyably) take that range out of guitars. Not by whole 12db, of course, you'll possibly end up with a narrow -6db cut somewhere out there.

A little tip: if your bass strings are old, you can try using the plugin native to reaper, ReaPitch. It has a formant setting that you can change, and it will greatly improve higher harmonic content. However, it sounds artificial, but you can still distort it to get some attack.
 
Whenever I run into a problem along these lines, I automatically know it's the original tone. The saying "Less is more" is totally true. At the beginning of my "career" recording, I use to flop anything on track, and say to myself "well, I can just eq it and process it later" and it never turned out that way. But once you record everything, it should sound 80-90% the way you want it to, and the rest is HP, Comp, LP Some surgical EQ, Saturation, Limiting etc. Minor Adjustments in the after-mixing stage.

So if it's not working, it's not working. Seems like the bass is muddying up your guitar tone. Change bass tone, go from there.
 
I got the bass/guitar relation right when i switched to ns10s. Damn those mids are so clear on those speakers so it is easy to get that mid punch. Before, working on the hs80's most of the energy from my mixes of the bassguitar came below 100hz and of course that is important too but nowdays i can get that both the energy below 100hz right and that midpunch.
 
With heavier styles the bass guitar plays a slightly different role from my observations .
More often than not the bass sound is EQed to give the impression that the guitars are doing most of the work when in fact the bass is whats giving the guitars their crushing tone but not so low that its robbing the master bus of head room so you will have to roll off the low's that add nothing to percieved heaviness . That goes for any instrument I suppose .
I'd just concentrate on rolling off the frequencies that add nothing and then tweek and balance the ones that are more audible .
Distortion will squash most of the problem frequencies on bass but the cleaner the bass tone the more careful its EQ needs to be .
Its all about each instrument having its own band width (accept multiple guitar tracks) .
Find out whats overlapping in the EQ and separate them . You dont have to separate them by much but this is why its a bit tricky ,too much separation and you lose power (audible volume) not enough separation will cause the mix lose its dynamics .
Its easier to mix when the frequency bands are narrow .

Try reading this thread its a good guide on understanding frequencies and how to use EQ:
http://www.korgforums.com/forum/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=5560
 
A good distorted bass sound is my favourite aural pleasure ever

Also it's funny to observe a guitarist's mental evolution where they showcase a song with a "brutal guitar sound", where the trained ear can discern that the true root of a sound is a monstrous bass tone, think of a overdriven musciman stingray through a wall of ampegs :}

guitars are just this boxy scratchy noisy shit on top of it..


anywho, my love lately:



good god...
 
Last edited by a moderator:
My struggle is everything <100hz... I'm not sure when to decide if the low end should be kick dominant or bass dominant. I'm mixing in an 11x11x8 room though, so that's a given- even with the whole thing covered in 4' panels. I don't think I trust my HD280's either for mixing. I'm not sure if multiband compression on the master (after everything has been fit into place) is another thing to keep things from jumping everywhere and what would be a good investment in a good multiband comp. This last recording I did lacks so much and I totally overcompensated for the peaks in my room:erk:
 
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