Bass mixing tip/discovery :)

[Seizure.]

I'm probably not the first to think of this, but.....

I had to tell you guys about something i ran into this week, this basicly enables me to have bass as low as i want without comprimising kick lowend and makes your bass lowend tighter.

Take a distorted basstrack and a D.I track.
Highpass the distorted track to about 200, and lowpass/eq the rest to taste.
Lowpass the D.I to 200 hz aswell.
Now balance the two and maybe eq/compress them individually.
Buss them together if it needs more overall compression

1st good point for me is that your lowend is tighter when its not distorted to pieces, the d.i now keeps it nice and tight

Anyway..

Now if you have your lowend around 60 to around a 100/120 hz like me the lowend from the d.i/bass will conflict!

Filtering is perfectly doable but i allways crave more lowend personally..
And side chaining isn't possible normally (if you have your basstrack on one track) if you want to be heard if you also want to be heard during fast blast/double bass parts.

But now you have you mids/highs on one track and your lows on the other!
So when you now sidechain the d.i track your mids will still be heard perfectly when your drummer is going crazy on his kicks!

Try it, i'm friggin lovin it at the moment, bass on the 2 projects i'm working on sound glorious at the moment, and i wasn't discontent with my basstones in the first place actually

Mvg,

JB!

 

[ahjteam]

nothing new for me, but good tips for newbies

 

[abyssofdreams]

But now you have you mids/highs on one track and your lows on the other!
So when you now sidechain the d.i track your mids will still be heard perfectly when your drummer is going crazy on his kicks!

I'm sorry but I don't get this part?
Why are the mids/highs on one track and the lows on another?

 

[scorpio01169]

I'm sorry but I don't get this part?
Why are the mids/highs on one track and the lows on another?

because the lower end of the bass has the most conflict with the kick, so therefore the hi/mid bass track will come through untouched when sidechaining.

 

[AdamWathan]

I'm sorry but I don't get this part?
Why are the mids/highs on one track and the lows on another?

Because he high passed the distorted track at 200hz and low passed the DI at 200hz. So any frequencies above 200hz don't exist in the DI track and any frequencies under 200hz don't exist in the distorted track.

 

[abyssofdreams]

ahhhh! I misread the filter part wrong, I thought he meant the highpass both to 200hz, since he wrote aswell...

 

[Ben Johnson]

I like to do 3 bass tracks - clean as a sine wave lows, warmer mids, and overdriven/crunchy highs (love my BDDI)

Crossover points are 200Hz and 2KHz.

 

[mintcheerios]

Thanks for the tip. I may have to re-track all my bass lines in my new project I'm working on.

 

[smy1]

Thanks for the tip. I may have to re-track all my bass lines in my new project I'm working on.

No, not necessary! You can either

a) just copy them to have different tracks and then EQ & distort them differently
b) create one or two aux sends and EQ & distort the returns differently.

If you need to spread out your bass and make it wide, big and fat:

1) create an aux send with a light chorus on the return
2) cut everything under 300-350hz off
3) blend in to taste (usually just a bit is enough)

and you get much nicer bass!

 

[Seizure.]

Yeah, the giving your d.i the lows and mic/distorted track the mids is not something new, but the side chaining thing is what i never thought about before

The tip on the chorus smy said is also awesome! especially on isis type stuff, listen close to the album panopticon and you can realy hear this trick being used

 

[Urgul]

Do you sidechain d.i. track and the kick? Sorry for noob question

 

[Seizure.]

I sidechain from the kick to the compressor on the D.i

 

[mintcheerios]

No, not necessary! You can either

a) just copy them to have different tracks and then EQ & distort them differently
b) create one or two aux sends and EQ & distort the returns differently.

If you need to spread out your bass and make it wide, big and fat:

1) create an aux send with a light chorus on the return
2) cut everything under 300-350hz off
3) blend in to taste (usually just a bit is enough)

and you get much nicer bass!

Yeah, I realized this today while going through my tracks. This is really great since I can compress each track individually as if I were using a multiband compressor, and also I can process each track separately. Now my bass has some serious growl.

 

[johnjm22]

Is side chaining the bass common practice? Why would you want to do this?

All you're doing is ducking the bass when ever there's a kick drum hit, right?

 

[ahjteam]

Is side chaining the bass common practice? Why would you want to do this?

To give room for the subhit of the kick for the maximum volume.

 

[Slammer88]

i'll give it a try,too..but, i got a question..i'm using a Pod GX instead of a DI, and using Farm to get a bass tone..according to this, shall i duplicate the bass track + add distortion one of them + make the cutting processes + voila ?

 

[P-E]

You can do this in POD Farm itself.

And that thread dates from 2008, isn't it a bit too late to reply?

 

[Trevoire520]

Yep

 

[drew_drummer]

Essentially.. you're doing multi-band distortion, and multi-band sidechain compression, by the sounds of it. Good tips !


Ballness. Didn't see the necro-bump.

 

[reg3n]

cool tip, i'm definately trying this tonight, thanks thanks thanks.