recorded a band, mixed it good, but they want it to sound filthy...

[onetruth]

hey everyone,

i recorded a friends band (http://www.myspace.com/motherdirtband) at the weekend and now it's mix time, i'm having problems!!

Firstly, I just can't get the bass sound right....i took a plain DI for the bass to allow me to mess with the sound later. I've tried various combinations of distortion/overdrive pedals (mokafix noamp, pod farm rat and sansamp) along with various amp models (mainly ampeg svt classics or svt pro) and also tried splitting the bass onto 2 tracks (as per advice found from searching the forum) so having 1 pumping the lows and 1 just looking after the midrange......but I just can't nail the sound I'm after.

the band gave me 2 records to use as reference for me when mixing. one was an album by TRAP THEM and the other was a record by BREATHER RESIST. the breather resist album has got a great bass sound on it.....i guess it could be compared to mike from killswitch engage's tone....but with more balls i guess. i can post a short sample if anyone is interested? i'm pretty sure the guy on this record is using a pick which is a crucial element to the sound. the guy i recorded at the wknd is a finger player, so the DI track is all over the place. also, the bass he used was a bag of shit. he'd put fresh strings on but it was still a hunk of junk. so i'm starting to wonder whether i'm basically banging my head against a brick wall......if i posted a sample of the basic DI track, would anyone mind giving their opinion as to whether the DI track is ok? and/or whether I should be able to achieve the tone i'm after with more fiddling about?

and then onto the overall sonic quality of the mix......i think ive mixed it pretty well so far but i think the mix is almost too clean for what the band are after. the 2 tracks on their myspace were recorded with a shit hot engineer in my area earlier this year but the band weren't happy with them....they said the mix was almost too good and too clean!
check out the breather resist tunes on myspace (http://www.myspace.com/breatherresist).....pretty brutal stuff which sounds powerful. my mix lacks a bit of that power. i think the guys in the band want it to almost sound crushed.....crazy i know, but thats the sound they're after. should i be looking to smash the 2-bus with some extreme saturation (tape/tube?) to create some overall distortion of the track?

let me know if any of you have a few minutes to help me out and i'll post the raw DI and also a sample of the tone i'm after.

many thanks in advance!
Jim

 

[StefTD]

About the bass thing, a shitty bass played with fingers will never give you the sound
of a good bass, especially if this bass was played with a pick, just soooo different.
Imo, you can't do alot with this, had something similar happen to me a while ago, I put
a comp in the line before everything else to get the DI a bit more "linear".
Used 2 tracks for it, one with BTE Soldano ampsim (forgot the name of the plugin) for
the mids and highs, and one with the Basspreamp v.1.1 plugin for the lows.
The Soldano one got a high pass around 200hz, the basspreamp track got a low pass at 200hz.
Send both of these channels into my bassbuss, compressed them together, than used an eq
to cut out some stuff around 500hz and for a low pass at 5khz, than I compressed it again.
Sounded ok, but with a better bass, a better player and a pick, it would have been so much
easier to get a sound that fitted their style.

About the rawer mix, I use a lot of saturation on stuff like that, ferric, tls saturator and stuff.
I put it with very "soft" settings on almost every channel and use it on the second buss, too.

 

[Seth Munson]

Just tell them that you wont put your name on something that you will be embarrassed to add to your portfolio and to show other people.

 

[Jarkko Mattheiszen]

I wondered why I never heard back from you regarding the free mixing deal, but I guess I dodged a bullet here in the end.

 

[onetruth]

Hey StefTD, thanks for those tips! i've already tried splitting the bass onto 2 tracks and done pretty much the same as what you have done previously (HPF@200 for driven track and LPF@200 for clean sound, then compressing both in a buss)......but i'm still falling short with the sound bigtime! I'm really starting to think the bass needs re-recording....which isn't a major problem as the bass player lives 20mins drive from me so I could get him over to project studio at home and DI the bass there. maybe that way I can really focus on getting him to play well with a pick and also get him to use a different bass guitar?

hehe sounds like i'm doing stuff kinda right so far....cus i'm using all those plugs too! using lots of tape saturation on the drums along with parallel compression, got tape saturation on the guitars, got tube and tape saturation on the mix buss. my recording still sounds a bit thin in comparison to the reference cd's. maybe the bass sound is the missing ingredient?

hey seth....i totally hear what your saying!! if i thought they totally sucked as a band or something then i definitely wouldn't agree to put my name to it.....in fact, i wouldn't agree to record them in the first place! haha. but i actually dig what these guys do.....its not exactly my cup of tea, but they're all very good musicians and they play tech stuff. i personally wouldn't want my mix smashed to pieces but i can kind of see why they're aiming for that overall sound.....ive seen em live a few times now and they are fucking brutal! uber loud and super heavy....sometimes a bit too heavy (if thats possible). they remind me a bit of Iron Monkey actually. so i guess they just want the CD to sound like they do live.

Jarkko!! so sorry for not getting back to you dude.......after i recorded these guys and realised the work involved in getting the "sound" they want, i kinda felt bad passing on that burden to your good self! haha. also, as they recorded 2 tracks, i figured if u mixed one, and i mixed the other, then maybe the band wouldn't be happy with the difference in the mixes? but now i'm having difficulty with the bass tone, i wish i'd sent you the files straight away! haha. fancy having a stab at helping me get a decent bass tone if i don't succeed after another 6 hours of tweaking pod farm tonight??

 

[onetruth]

well......i spent a couple of hours on the bass sound last night and finally realised that the bass DI is shit and that no amount of amp modelling software will get the sound I'm after. so ive instructed the bass player to get hold of a shit hot bass (something with active EMG's preferrably) and re-string the fucker with brand spanking new strings so i can get the basic DI sound as lively as possible before it even touches any amp modelling software. also asked if he could play the tracks with a pick.....felt a bit bad asking him that as he is a finger player but fuck it....it want a decent bass sound so he's gonna have to toe the line \m/

i'll post my final mix next week sometime.....its sounding killer already so can only imagine what its gonna sound like once the bass has been re-recorded!

 

[colonel kurtz]

Firstly, I just can't get the bass sound right....i took a plain DI for the bass to allow me to mess with the sound later. I've tried various combinations of distortion/overdrive pedals (mokafix noamp, pod farm rat and sansamp) along with various amp models (mainly ampeg svt classics or svt pro) and also tried splitting the bass onto 2 tracks (as per advice found from searching the forum) so having 1 pumping the lows and 1 just looking after the midrange......but I just can't nail the sound I'm after.

soloc-->crunch channel

 

[AEL89]

Hey dude, this band are fucking cool - I'm sure the final product will be amazing!

One thing I do with bass to get it super dirty is boost shit loads of 1.5k then multiband that area... it almost bakes loads of that frequency into the bass if you get what I mean? Then distort the fuck out of it (seriously fuck it up, so its buzzy and evil) - try just hi-passing it anywhere around 300ish then reamp it through something brutal... orange heads are amazing for bass! Blend this with the DI. Loads of 1176 compression too - not conventional stuff either, I'd try 20:1 ratio with medium/fast attack and fastest release. Definitely needs to be pure filth. Let us know how it turns out - I like the stuff on their myspace!