Mixing fretless bass

[guy in latvia]

Hey guys, having a bit of mindfuck mixing a project that uses both fretted and fretless bass in a song. Say the verse has acoustic guitar riffs, clean vocals and fretless bass and when the heavy distorted chorus comes in, in comes the typical clanky fretted bass.

So, my question is, how do you guys approach mixing two drastically different bass sounds, but try to keep it consistent. Do you still keep the bus processing the same for both, or do you mix them in two entirely different busses? How would you approach this situation?

 

[Megin]

What the hell was the band thinking? Stupid idea and the chance the basses wont be exactly tuned too. Well if you have melodyne that will save that problem. The best you can do is to tell the bassist to record it again and this time with only one bass

 

[guy in latvia]

Not an option anymore. But I do vaguely recalling an Iced Earth track that had both a fretless and a fretted used in the same song.

 

[rapucore]

I'd mix the fretless a bit differently than the clanky fretted, so definitely different busses. The mid-high frequencies of the fretless sound really good if you add some widening, chorus, verb etc

The most important thing IMHO is to keep the low end super consistent between the different basses.

 

[Loki Laufeyiarson]

The most important thing IMHO is to keep the low end super consistent between the different basses.

This. And I'd mix both basses differently, but making sure the sound fits the part. Think of it as having distorted guitar parts and clean ones in one song.

 

[ArsMemoria]

Not an option anymore. But I do vaguely recalling an Iced Earth track that had both a fretless and a fretted used in the same song.

Listen to Horror Show, most notably Dracula, I believe that's the tune you're thinking of.

 

[HiramThurizas]

Ok... I would try to give each bass a distinctive character, probably i would eq the fretted one with more mids to give more attack and definition and the fretles i would eq it with more pressence on the low frecuencies also y would use SansAmp plugin or similar for the fretted one and pan them very little, one on each side