where do you highpass your stuff aka HOW DO MIX BASSGUITAR ¯\(°_o)/¯

[Emdprodukt]

I always find my mixes having a lot of low end. I usually low and highpass everything.

but how about the bassguitar and the kick? do you usually highpass them too? I think I just don't get the right lowend into my bass... sucks. it's always rumbling. when I turn it down, everything seems to be in place. I turn it up and things get worse. I like my bass to be crunchy and growly and not just sitting in the background. but usually it does, so the other stuff will not be drown by it.

when I finally get a bassguitar to sound decent in a mix I'm a happy man. HELP ME!

You can hear it in allmost all of my mixes on my soundclick page:

http://www.soundclick.com/vanityruinsger

I usually record a DI and a Gearbox track for bassguitar.
What do you guys do with your bass?

 

[TheWinterSnow]

well for starters youi need a bass toent aht works. IMO stright DI's don't work. You need some sort of amp simulation and cabinet emulation if you are not micing an actual bass amp. Also I roll off my bass like everything else. And like everything else, i start al the way from the bottom and work my up until the boomyness dissapears or before the that track begins to loose body. Usually with my bass tone, the point at which i high pass is about 60 and i usually bump up the low 100's about 3db to give it some power.

Also...Compression Compression Compression. I sually have 3 heavy compressors on my bass (usually the tube bass compression on revalver) and then two on my daw. If you are playing metal or hard rock it is also wise to get some breakup as this means you are getting more natural compression from your amp.

Also it might be hard to judge your bass frequencies if you aren;t mixing with a sub. I find that subs will in the beginning make you mix with less bass but later on you start bringing up the bass more than you would have without one, but the bass that is there is way more controlled.

Hope that helps.

 

[Fragle]

well, personally i like my bass to sit in the subs mainly, so i actually tend to use a low shelf on the <100hz area, and only hipass the very very lows like 25-30hz or so....but that's a different tone really.

for what you seem to be after, i'd try to have the main bottom sit around 100hz as suggested above, and another peak in the 2kish area...get rid of the sublows <60hz, and multiband comp / EQ the low mids so things don't get muddy. after that it's just balancing with the guitar tone.

people will often suggest to split the bass into a high and a low track, and process those differently, but for some reason that has never worked particulary well for me...i like to reamp the bass through a sansamp psa with a sound that's very scooped with a slightly edgy highend, and then blend in the DI for the midrange cut/bark.

 

[Fox Mulder]

I usually highpass at 40hz. Scoop off around 4db at 70hz (effective from 60hz to 90hz) - Edit: But this would more or less depend on the tone.

 

[Emdprodukt]

TheWinterSnow: As I mentioned I'm using Gearbox Bassamp aswell. I use Impulses on the DI-Track which makes it sound smooth.

Thanks for the advice. I don't have a subwoofer here... at least not for mixing purpose. Just the Hifi subwoofer which sucks ass. My room is not treated aswell (can't do it here, by no chance) so I always export my stuff and listen to it on different soundsystems, headphones and cars. Sometimes I'm in luck and the lowend seems fine to me.

I will go and try out what you guys told me Thanks!

 

[DaveBlack]

people will often suggest to split the bass into a high and a low track, and process those differently, but for some reason that has never worked particulary well for me...i like to reamp the bass through a sansamp psa with a sound that's very scooped with a slightly edgy highend, and then blend in the DI for the midrange cut/bark.

I actually did this last night and got a pretty solid bass sound. I had a DI track and then a sansamp track that was slightly distorted.

With the DI track I rolled some of the high off and scooped some mids out. Essentially I did the exact opposite with the sansamp track, Compressed the shit out of both of them and then blended the levels to taste. It worked well for what I was doing.

 

[beyond dead]

I usually highpass at 40hz. Scoop off around 4db at 70hz (effective from 60hz to 90hz) - Edit: But this would more or less depend on the tone.

+1

sometimes adding some "air" around 40-50 hz, and scooping the "perceived" lows around 60-80 hz helps make your bass less boomy. also, you want to compress bass, but do your eq first so that the low end energy around 60 hz that you cut doesnt pump the compressor and eat up your headroom!

I also often will blend 2 tones. one high passed with a gritty hi end, and one low passed with a clean low end. then compress each separately.

 

[xJSx]

By this days, I take Line and Mic
Line I process with ampeg svx plugin and i work it on low freqs
Mic I love to take it with akg d-112 and I work high, mid-hi freqs on it
bassically I Pass (hi or Lo) every channel the range of freqs I don't want to work on it, and then compress it all together, I love fardchild plugin for that.

I preffer using distortion on the Lo track, Highs often come alredy distorted with active pickups basses.

 

[darthjujuu]

to get things smoother and creamier in the bass end, try scooping out some of the muddy boomy lows and then compressing to get a smooth and consistent signal with nice sustain, and then plopping in waves Rbass (if you have it) and tweaking from there. you're essentially replacing the harmonic lows with synthetic new rbass ones which are as smooth and syrupy as it gets. if you're doing a DI track and a separate tone track, this is a good method to use on the DI track to extract nothing but smooth harmonic bass, and then use roll off everything under 100-150hz on the tone track...or maybe even higher, to taste. another good thread here:

http://www.ultimatemetal.com/forum/production-tips/507392-whats-damn-bass-guitar.html

 

[sgt.pepper]

how hard do you all high / low pass your bass (or other tracks)?

6/12/18/24 db / octave?

 

[Splat88]

how hard do you all high / low pass your bass (or other tracks)?

6/12/18/24 db / octave?

To each their own, but I would not ever high pass a bass guitar.

 

[egan.]

I've definitely played with HP bass but IME when you have a bunch of garbage down low it's almost always from the guitars. The fundamental freq of a low B is 31hz--which most playback devices can't even produce--so than main reason to HP bass would be to get your masters louder.

 

[Splat88]

I've definitely played with HP bass but IME when you have a bunch of garbage down low it's almost always from the guitars. The fundamental freq of a low B is 31hz--which most playback devices can't even produce--so than main reason to HP bass would be to get your masters louder.

I just high pass the master buss.

 

[Emdprodukt]

it's not from the guitars. when i extract my songs without bass and listen to it through a hifi with sub there is absolutely now problem with the lowend.

thanks for all the replies! you guys are a lot of help!

 

[Matthias King]

For whatever it's worth, I hipass my projects at 30hz, bass at 40hz, and kick at 50hz, and rhythm guitars at 100hz. I also usually hipass all other instruments too, even if only a little bit. None of it seems to suffer to my ears, and it seems to tighten up the overall bass of the project. Something else I usually do is scoop out a little bit between 200-400hz to get rid of the part that can sound flabby and boxy.

You have to listen carefully to everything you're doing though. What works for me might not work for you, or it might work great. You have to try things and see what works with your instruments and tracks. Arbitrary "presets" don't work for everyone. However, they can sometimes be a good starting point at least.

Also, what no one else mentioned, sometimes your arrangement and selection of instruments and their ranges can really affect how a mix comes together. If you have a sparse mix where the bass guitar and kick drum are the only instruments occupying the bass frequencies, that can clear up a lot of problems and make tightening the low frequencies up a lot easier.