WHAT's WITH THE DAMN BASS GUITAR?

[Uncle Junior]

Hey guys, I was wondering how to insert bass guitar into my mix?

I have fender bass with active emg pickups.

So I start like this:

1. I record quad-track guitars...


Tracks: Tracks: GUITAR 1 (1 2) GUITAR 2 (3 4)



2. Pan them like this:

L-side
1(100) 3(80)-3dB



R-side
2(80)-3dB 4(100)



3. Do some eq: Reading the forum and trying stuff with the eq.


4. BASS GUITAR: I record one dry track, put some plug-in on it (Studio Devil, AmpegSVX, Izotope Trash...)


..........but I can't get it to sound right with the guitars like some of you guys here do. You know that big, powerful, "chick impressing sound"

So what to do with the BASS?


One dry track, panned in the center with the right eq or what? Which plugin?

 

[Sean in Silence]

Honestly dude
Bass is something I don't understand
and it just seems like I've gotten lucky in all of my mixes
I usually cut a thin band around 500
but other than that
nothing stays the same with my bass tracks
I just simply don't understand them
hahahahaha

 

[Fragle]

well...people often tend to split their DI track into a low/high pair...the lowpasses one gets smashed to pieces and stays clean - this will provide the bottom punch basically. then use something like an overdrive/ampsim on the high one to give it some grit, and blend that in to make the bass audible.
you could also try to reamp the DI through something like a sansamp, and blend that in to taste....seems to work pretty well for metal bass.

 

[DanLights]

yeah some people split the track like fragle says, some people just work with spectral eq'ing it with the guitars. Cutting the guitars somewhere the bass should shine more, like 200-300 Hz maybe (I might be really off with the numbers, but what the hell) and boosting the bass a bit in the same freq. that should give the bass some space to shine in middle of the million guitar tracks.

I say go for the first one, try putting izotope trash or some other distorsion on the highpassed bass track and compress the hell out of the low-passed clean one

 

[ahjteam]

LTD B-50 -> ODB-3 -> DI -> bass sim

Before/after: http://www.ahjteam.com/upload/ahjteam_accell_bass.mp3
In context: http://www.ahjteam.com/upload/ahjteam_accell-02.mp3

 

[Erlend_]

Bassguitar is the devil! I always thought it would be easy to get it to sound good
but its really hard.

One thing that helped me was to record the bassguitar before the guitars.
This made it easier for me to judge what kind of guitarsound I should use.
I always record DI so I could record in any order I want, but bassguitar first works for me at least.

 

[Full_Tilt]

balance the bass guitar with the drums .
Decide what should be the lowest element Bass or Kick. Most like the kick.
Then EQ the guitars , when it all starts to go muddy dont frig with the bass re eq the guitars.

 

[JonWormwood]

LTD B-50 -> ODB-3 -> DI -> bass sim

Before/after: http://www.ahjteam.com/upload/ahjteam_accell_bass.mp3
In context: http://www.ahjteam.com/upload/ahjteam_accell-02.mp3

You still get a nastier (in a good way) grind then me.

What sim are you using? I use this ampeg impulses, sorta phasey.

 

[AudioGeekZine]

It helps to have an amp and DI track.

If just a DI I usually duplicate the track and apply Eleven or Sansamp to the copy. Compress both and some eq to get something that can be heard above the wall of guitars. As for levels I usually balance it with the kick and snare.

A bass performance that is tight to the kick helps a ton too.

As for getting my own basses to record well I've been out of luck.

 

[Fragle]

balance the bass guitar with the drums .
Decide what should be the lowest element Bass or Kick. Most like the kick.
Then EQ the guitars , when it all starts to go muddy dont frig with the bass re eq the guitars.

for faster metal, i think 99% of the guys out there have their kick higher than the bass.

personally, i tend to have the kick peak around 70-90hz depending on the kick, with the bass sitting above AND in the subs...just make sure to cut some of the kick range so they are seperated.
to me the 100-200hz or so area of the bass is where the fullness of the bass/guitar combo lies, whereas i tend to have a lot of sub bass in the bass to provide for overall fullness of the mix...after all there's next to nothing going on there besides the bass.
i often find myself hipassing the sublows out of the kick too...helps with getting rid of the rumble during faster passages. automation is your friend too.

 

[GarethSE]

hm i usually tend to have the kick sitting at 60hz, kicking you in the chest, cos that's the area where you feel it more than hear it, and then the bass centered around 100hz providing fullness.

 

[Full_Tilt]

yeah I suppose both of you are right
Lots of kick samples seem focused on punch with a metallic "slap" .

 

[darthjujuu]

FIRSTLY: NEW STRINGS , NEW STRINGS , NEW STRINGS. And at the very least, medium/heavies. no ultra-lites will do.

Also, the active-bass sound is usually doodoo (in my experience- relative to a jazz or p-bass) but if you have no choice make sure your guitar knobs are at 12'oclock (IN THE CENTER, NOT CRANKED!)

the recipe that i've always gotten highly satisfactory results with, is as follows:

Start by plugging bass into this:

It's pricey, i know, but if you tend to yield sub-satisfactory results with your bass tracks it is WELL worth it. Awesome live too.

I usually go XLR into the interface so it can run off phantom power just to keep things neat. Get a good PUNCHY sound that will give some nice mild "pick sound" transients.

I then run a small patch cable from the "parallel out" of the sansamp (unaffected dry instrument signal) into a $99 presonus tubepre. I crank this til it's warm and saturating. This, i suppose, is optional, since a $99 tube preamp isn't a whole helluvalot better than the pre's on most interfaces these days. Anywho. We now have two separate signals running into two separate channels on the interface. Record these two signals on two separate tracks simultaneously.

I then usually slap an ampsim on the tubepre channel, and leave the sansamp channel for punch/low end. Compression, surprisingly, isn't 100% necessary in most cases but can be good before your ampsim if sustain is an issue. Compressing the sansamp can be helpful if your clicky transients end up being more than you bargained for, or again, if sustain becomes an issue. C1 seems to have a longer creamy sustain than it's counterpart plugs. Tinker the faders.

Having two very different DI signals leaves more room/options for tonal exploration then just duplicating one DI track and tinkering one of them. I've fiddled with leaving the tubepre track dry and ampsimming the sansamp signal (sometimes desirable, usually not) and all sorts of other combinations. You can get an endless variety of tones this way.

I tracked/mixed this album using this method for the first time:

 

[Z3R0]

I read somewhere on someone's "quick mix guide" or something this:

have the bass at -12db

then add the kick at a level where its not fighting with the bass, but sounds good and then eq to taste if theres any problems.

then just slowly add more elements in a mix. this has helped me out quite a bit, and bass in my newer mixes has had that sound i've been looking for. i felt much like you did until recently!

 

[aramism]

i always found bass and general low end control of a mix to be the "last frontier" of a truly pro mix. some of the biggest sounding albums (non metal) have separated themselves from other mixes due to their bass freq i feel like.

the bass while rarely being in the forefront is like the "silent empire" of a mix i feel like because the perceived impact of drums and fullness of guitars is kind of centered around it. stuff like CLA, andy wallace and staub always has unreal bass density and energy and that's what give it that impact at least for me. i could be wrong.

they also mix in world class rooms and i think with bass especially it's important to have a well treated room to accurately hear what's going on down there.

 

[Zombietakeover]

FIRSTLY: NEW STRINGS , NEW STRINGS , NEW STRINGS. And at the very least, medium/heavies. no ultra-lites will do.

Also, the active-bass sound is usually doodoo (in my experience- relative to a jazz or p-bass) but if you have no choice make sure your guitar knobs are at 12'oclock (IN THE CENTER, NOT CRANKED!)

the recipe that i've always gotten highly satisfactory results with, is as follows:

Start by plugging bass into this:

It's pricey, i know, but if you tend to yield sub-satisfactory results with your bass tracks it is WELL worth it. Awesome live too.

I usually go XLR into the interface so it can run off phantom power just to keep things neat. Get a good PUNCHY sound that will give some nice mild "pick sound" transients.

I then run a small patch cable from the "parallel out" of the sansamp (unaffected dry instrument signal) into a $99 presonus tubepre. I crank this til it's warm and saturating. This, i suppose, is optional, since a $99 tube preamp isn't a whole helluvalot better than the pre's on most interfaces these days. Anywho. We now have two separate signals running into two separate channels on the interface. Record these two signals on two separate tracks simultaneously.

I then usually slap an ampsim on the tubepre channel, and leave the sansamp channel for punch/low end. Compression, surprisingly, isn't 100% necessary in most cases but can be good before your ampsim if sustain is an issue. Compressing the sansamp can be helpful if your clicky transients end up being more than you bargained for, or again, if sustain becomes an issue. C1 seems to have a longer creamy sustain than it's counterpart plugs. Tinker the faders.

Having two very different DI signals leaves more room/options for tonal exploration then just duplicating one DI track and tinkering one of them. I've fiddled with leaving the tubepre track dry and ampsimming the sansamp signal (sometimes desirable, usually not) and all sorts of other combinations. You can get an endless variety of tones this way.

I tracked/mixed this album using this method for the first time:

I do the exact same thing . only when i go from the parallel out from the sansamp to the interface i use that as my Low end.....So its a nice clean tight lowend and not wobble from distortion and then i use the grindy part of the sansamp for the highend......Do you see anything wrong this way? or is it important too amplify the Clean bass di track?

 

[Hodie Ballswap]

I read somewhere on someone's "quick mix guide" or something this:

have the bass at -12db

then add the kick at a level where its not fighting with the bass, but sounds good and then eq to taste if theres any problems.

then just slowly add more elements in a mix. this has helped me out quite a bit, and bass in my newer mixes has had that sound i've been looking for. i felt much like you did until recently!

Yeah ahjteam posted a quick guide like that at some point and I've saved it for reference. Hope he doesn't mind me reposting it:

- turn all the faders down, bring the master fader to zero and turn off all the master bus plugins, except maybe spectrum analyzer and "safe limiter" (For example the free Waves L1 clone, W1, with threshold at 0dBFS, doing nothing, just making sure that the finished mix doesn't clip. Don't worry about archieving the loudness at this part, it will be done in the mastering, not mixing).
- bring up the bass first and keep that as a benchmark. Have it fucking slammed against the compressor and put it so that the peaks hit at -18dBFS and never move it again. If the bass gets buried, don't turn it up, but turn everything else down. If the bass sounds too quiet at -18dBFS, turn your monitors louder.
- Add the vocals so that they cut thru the bass but don't overpower them. if the song is an instrumental so far, skip this phase
- The bring up the kick and listen to the low end that it isn't competing with the bass in the sub or killing eachothers out. If they are, do something about it. My suggestion is to sidechain kick to the bass (see the sticky)
- Then add the overheads so that you get nice balance with the kick and the cymbals, don't worry so much about the snare
- Then add the guitars. They have to cut thru the mix, but not overpower anything else. If they cut thru the mix only by overpowering something, do something about the guitar sound.
- Then add the snare. Make sure that it cuts thru but doesn't overpower the mix. If it doesn't cut thru the mix without hitting the limiter, do something about it. Usually the bottom mic helps alot.
- Then add everything else to taste
- After you have done this, I suggest you group everything (ie. kick, snare, drums, bass, guitars, keys, vocals, fx... etc.) so its easier to do small adjustments. Its not mandatory, but I highly recommend it.
- Go take a break, atleast 10 minutes. Eat something, catch some fresh industrial polluted air, have a smoke, go watch some tv, surf the net. Come back and listen again. Tweak until it sounds good. 20-60 minutes of tweaking, a 10 minute break, 20-60 minutes of tweaking, a 10 minutes break, *continue until satisfied*

 

[chonchball]

the sansamp bass pedal is DWARFED by the sansamp Tri AC which is actually meant for guitars. I have the rack sansamp, and both pedals, and be damn sure if the Tri AC isn't the go to for making the bass DOMINATE their space without getting muddy. Fundamental harmonics is the name of the game.

With bass it's about packing as much smooth dynamically devoid signal as you can without introducing unnatural sounds. Just try to work with the harmonics of the bass rather than overly EQing it. If you have to do anything too drastic with EQ ever, you did something wrong in capturing a good sound.

 

[DanLights]

Also, the active-bass sound is usually doodoo (in my experience- relative to a jazz or p-bass) but if you have no choice make sure your guitar knobs are at 12'oclock (IN THE CENTER, NOT CRANKED!)

I'm gonna prove you wrong on this one, well maybe not with a J or a P bass, and I don't have any personal experience recording an active bass at all, but I got a tip from Egan once that he records his active bass (Roscoe) with treble and bass all cranked up to the max, with the signal split through a clean DI for and a Sansamp BDDI, normally the bass would need some low end cut later but cranking the treble and bass gives him the sound he uses, and I love the bass sound he gets on Daylight Dies. very deep and powerful but very subtle, if you don't pay attention you'd think it's the guitars that bring all that power, but it's mostly the bass (the highpassed sansamp helps a lot) that provide the heaviness and fullness.

But yeah, like you I have heard many times active basses are a pain in the ass for the recording engineer, most tell the guys to leave the eq on the bass flat, Egan proved me wrong on that one though, gotta take into account he has a pretty good and rare bass (personally i hadn't heard of it before)

Edit: Oh and to keep contributing to the thread, no one has mentioned pick or fingers use. I have heard from some annoying recording engineers (mainly guitarrists btw) "record with a pick!" but personally I don't feel it's mandatory, and I've also heard from many shithead bassists the stupid-ass phrase "real bassists play with their fingers" which is absolute rubbish also. Be it pick or fingers, there IS a difference in the sound, as much as where (near bridge, over this or that pickup) you pick/pluck and which pickups/combination of pickups you use to record and if you max or cut the tone knob on a passive bass, etc. You should really check the difference of tone when using pick or fingers and find out which suits best the sound you're looking for or the sound that fits the guitars best.
Of course, you must also judge on your own ability, if playing with a pick sounds better but you're not too skilled with it or the parts are too hard for you since you're not used to playing with a pick, a sloppy performance will overshadow a slightly better tone, so go with fingers, or vice versa depending on the case

 

[darthjujuu]

I'm gonna prove you wrong on this one, well maybe not with a J or a P bass, and I don't have any personal experience recording an active bass at all, but I got a tip from Egan once that he records his active bass (Roscoe) with treble and bass all cranked up to the max, with the signal split through a clean DI for and a Sansamp BDDI, normally the bass would need some low end cut later but cranking the treble and bass gives him the sound he uses, and I love the bass sound he gets on Daylight Dies. very deep and powerful but very subtle, if you don't pay attention you'd think it's the guitars that bring all that power, but it's mostly the bass (the highpassed sansamp helps a lot) that provide the heaviness and fullness.

sounds like a fine crafted axe in the hands of a bass jedi
I had a schecter C4 for awhile. Tracking with that resulted in a hot fart with the knobs cranked, and (albeit more usable) an "old strings"ish sound with the knobs flat. I couldn't win either way =/ i eventually switched to a mexican p-bass and was delighted tenfold with the tonal results over the more expensive (and sexier looking/better playing) schecter.