Recording bass

[Elessar [Sly]]

I always have problem recording bass onto Logic in terms of fitting it into the mix. I mess around with the EQ after but it never quite comes out how I like. On logic bass amps, what sort of settings with help give me a decent bass sound to start with? Fundamentally I'm a guitarist, and have little experience with bass amps generally.

[nightflameauto]

I could talk about this subject all day and barely scratch the surface. I've been fighting that fight for a very long time and still feel like I'm barely scratching the surface and have so much more to learn. If you're talking about high gain guitar mixes, there's some quick ideas that can help get you started, but no hard and fast rules on how those ideas can be applied as every mix turns out different.

1. Get some grit in the bass tracks somehow. You can do that by splitting the bass and recording a direct track while also recording the bass going through a guitar amp that's nice and dirty. You can do it with side-chain processing in the DAW and a model of a guitar amp. You can try just adding distortion to tracks, but you definitely want to keep some part of the bass path clean to blend in for tightness. This is not a 100% necessary thing if you're willing to chop frequencies from the guitars in the mid section to allow the bass to poke through. YMMV. If you do add grit, keep it in the mid section (500-1500 tends to work best for me, but I've seen others peg it much higher), leave the fundamentals on the low end as clean as you can to maintain punch.

2. Balance the EQ between the guitars and the bass. If both have a huge spike in the low mids, one or both are going to need to be tamed a bit. For myself I've found pushing the bass somewhere in the region of 700-1200hz and cutting the guitars by around the same amount in the same spots can really open up the mix and make the bass sit better between the kick and the guitars. Again, this is depends on the mix and how much bass you want to hear overall.

3. While the bass fundamentals are essential to getting a full and fat mix, don't be afraid of letting upper mids and even some treble come through the bass tracks. It doesn't need to be clack city, but a little upper end can help keep things well blended and clarified.

4. Never be afraid to try something crazy. I've done everything from single track a bass direct with some EQ to pull four separate bass track routes, each with their own processing and side-chains, and all coming back together into one monster tone and lots of stuff in between.

In the end it's all about the balancing act between the drums, the bass, and the guitar. You have to find the frequencies that each need to have the most impact, and then subtly carve away those frequencies in the other instruments to allow each to shine in its own area, yet not cut so much you end up with empty spots or hollowness.

[RustyMetal]

I don't know who nightflameauto is, but it's pretty easy to tell he really knows his shit. As does several people in here.

This is a thread, or part of one, that I copied from the Guitar Forum here before they consolidated into Amps, Guitars, and Gear Forum that is here now. I don't know how much it may apply or help, but I thought it was important enough at the time to copy to a text file.

I think the original thread name was Bass Sculpting if you want to search it up.

GAB - nakedzen:
I usually sculpt the kick and bass gtr to compliment each other. Cut 120Hz from bass and 80 Hz from kick or vice versa, however works best. Cut some low mids if it's too muddy. Boost 750Hz or 1.5kHz (whichever works best) to make the bass present through small speakers. Low pass usually at 8kHz, maybe even as low as 2kHz depending on the mix.

Use a compressor, with at least 4dB of gain reduction. I really like Variety of Sounds Density MkIII for bass.

What I usually do with the Density (I'm not too good at tweaking comps either ) is load one of the presets, the "Larger than life" being my favorite, tweak the amount of gain reduction to where I want it or where it sounds best, raise the volume back up with the Makeup knob and that's it. I usually check that it's the same volume with the comp on and off and adjust the makeup if it's not.

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GAB - PamukParty:
Depending upon what I'm doing (putting together small clips vs. full song mixes) I do different stuff. I always use a built in preset sim in Amplitube just to get a decent tracking tone - then promptly pull it off the direct track once I'm done.

For small/quick clips:
Off the direct track I split out 3 parts (one is raw direct and I eq it so that it's just the low part of the bass, the second track is usually with an amp sim but is aggressively low/hi passed just for some character, then the third is another amp sim / pedal combo that is just for distortion (again heavy low/hi passed).

The low part track I then sculpt around the bass drum (edit - boost the bass around 80hz, cut around 60hz but this is kick dependent), hi/low pass, and carve out the 400hz range to clear out mud that can build up
hi pass usually on this track is around 40hz, low pass is between 300-500hz.
For the bass amp track the hi pass is usually around 500hz, and the low pass is around 5000hz
The distortion track hi pass is usually 500-750hz and the low pass is 5000-6000hz

All three tracks are then fed to a single bus where I compress pretty heavily. I shoot for 5-6 db reduction.

From a mix perspective I use the bus fader to adjust the overall level of the bass, then the three faders depending upon what the mix is doing. Need more lows then up the direct bass track. Need some more punch - up the bass amp track, etc.

For quick mixes this process usually does a passable job - although solo I usually don't like the tone very much.

Here's an example of one I'm currently working on using the quick method -
No Guitars
http://www.tonefinder.com/index.php?sec ... alue=14920

Guitars Added in (all Amplitube - scratch tracks, dont' mind the tone/playing)
http://www.tonefinder.com/index.php?sec ... alue=14922

For full on mixes the principles are the same except I process waaaay more. Multiple compressors, Limiters, more nutty eq. I also will mic up a guitar amp to get the grit part and bass amp on occasion as well.

Hope that helps

[nakedzen]

Number one most important thing: A good sounding bass with fresh strings.

Then I usually go through one of my Sansamp Kemper profiles, I don't do a clean DI track anymore. The sansamp is set relatively gainy to give the bass some growl, not overly fuzzy though.

Then in daw, subtractive eq and compression, and lots of it. For the Coraxo EP here's my bass track chain, the bass is eq'd fairly dark since it's a really bright sounding bass:


Both compressors are set to about -4dB of gain reduction

There's an old mix (I've put something like 100hrs of work into the mix after that) on our site to give you an idea of how it sounds.

I also have this in the master bus to give the bass a more even and constant low end:


Looks more complicated than it is, below 60Hz 5:1 ratio, 60-130Hz 4:1 ratio, around 4-5dB of reduction on both as well. Not too much gain added to the sub lows, quite a lot added to the 60-130Hz area.