How would you record this?

[lionaudio]

Ok, this may be long, but I'm sure some of you could help me with this. My band is a 4 piece very very very heavy experimental rock/ metal band. I've recorded us in my studio twice, but this was before two major factors came into play. Now we have a keyboard player who uses a triton and a micro korg, and I also use an old mu tron octave divider along with Blue Beard distortion on my bass. Basically, my bass sounds like a bass and 10 other guitars playing at the same time. This is my tone. It sounds great live. My guitarist uses an "electric" amp that was made for Dennis Hopper, and a Russian Bigmuff distortion through 10 12in. speakers, and my drummer uses a brand new 4 piece ludwig kit... The problem that I'm facing is that when we play live, we all, especially my bass and the keys can create very low notes simultaneously. It's huge when we play. I want to create this "hugeness" on our next recording, and i can't seem to figure out a way to not just make a big mess with the low end. Until now, I have skipped the octave pedal on the bass guitar while recording, instead just running two direct lines. One with a SansAmp, and another out of my Ampeg with distortion, and blending the clean and distorted during mixdown. I would really like to come closer to our live tone and make it more "overwhelming" when you listen to it without losing clarity.. suggestions, input, criticisms, questions are all welcome.. thanks

[oldguitars]

are you sure it sounds as great live as you think it does?


It sounds like you are gonna need to mic your rig more than DI'ing it....

[lionaudio]

yeah, it's more or less the way things FEEL while we play.. we spend a whole lot of time working on tone. especially my guitarist and I. I played in another band for years with no guitarist at all, so it was hard for us to find some common ground on making space for eachother, but we've done it pretty well so far.. my bass has a bass and guitar-ish tone, while his guitar has a guitar and bass-ish tone. the keys really help with the definition of notes and the highs, and also create this knee buckling low end when they hit the lows at the same time as me.. examples of that low end thing happening in recordings are kind of rare.. i think Joel pulled it off really well on the Battle of Mice album.. other examples would be Zeni Geva "freedom/bondage", earlier Godflesh albums, to name a few.We don't really sound like those bands, but the general tone of those albums is what i am after and I don't know if that is possible using so much low end.. stereos, and even studio monitors are limited in that area. A bass rig can handle all of that low end.. barely.. I once read something online (this was quite a while back) about giving the IMPRESSION of massive low end using harmonics.. I know nothing about this. I'll check out and see if there are any previous threads on the subject unless anyone can explain this to me.

[thesneakyjesus]

I play in a band and use a blue beard. I love that thing

When we play live, I rock the heck out, play my SVT out of a Berg NV-610 with lots of distortion, and extended low end.

When we record, I just let things get tamed. I've found it impossible to actually capture these sounds and have it translate to speakers. There's only 2 recordings I can think of that have this sound recorded, maybe 3.


#1) I can't think of the name now.. but give me like a bit, I'll conjur it up.

#2) Jerome's Dream
I can't find any good examples of their myspace, but check it out. It's really really really really low end heavy, like, stupid. It's awesome, but a little much sometimes you know. Maybe this sort of sound?
http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fu ... D=41906747

#3) Mewithoutyou
Their bass sound is really clear, and HUGE low end. It's not quite effected at all, but it's still really big. He uses a fuzz sometimes, but it always seems to push the bass back in the mix.

http://www.toothandnail.com/video_play. ... speed=high



My answer to the problem was to make a CD that doesn't really have bass up front in the mix because we couldn't figure it out.

You're answer... maybe e-mail some of the engineers for the records I mentioned.
100% amp is a good call. Try a dynamic mic. I duno.

Someone once told me they got a great bass sound (similar to mewithoutyou) with a Brick Tube DI. I have no idea.

That's the biggest struggle with bass man, it's hard as shit to record. People think it's simple, but as soon as you step outside of a clean unaffected sound, things go bad.

I've never heard of a heavy metal guitarist complain about getting his sound, but heavy metal bass (or just heavy distorted bass) just gets the short end of it. I'm really wondering too how to deal with it.

[MoreSpaceEcho]

i don't have much to offer here, but when i think 'hugeness' i think 'lots of bleed'....

you guys must be loud as fuck...is your space big enough where you can have the amps cranked up and still keep them far enough away from the drums to keep some semblence of clarity to the drums? although now that i think about it, i recorded a really loud band in my old basement with their amps not 10 feet from the drums and it turned out pretty good. but i would think you'd wanna try and keep some bleed between the bass, guitar and keyboard amps at least...

or maybe not. maybe track everything direct with the drums and then carefully go about reamping everything and you can try and really dial everything in while listening in context over your monitors. i dunno.

trodden's band has the mega low end. we need to get him in this thread.

[I'm Painting Again]

how big is the room you will be recording in?

I find when I'm doing a group that is really loud and dense in a small space the recording gets WAY smaller..it sounds largest when the band "plays to the room" meaning you play quieter and adjust things so it sounds correct as can be in that room..you adjust the arrangement of the song so everything works and reinforces everything else..you know what happens when your bass is just slightly off pitch from the keys? phase cancellation city..low end just collapses..while tracking monitor in MONO and then mix in mono first then work out a stereo mix after that..

less is more..less is bigger..quieter is louder..


take it slow and really listen because what you are describing is not an easy job..

[lionaudio]

thanks for the quick responses, guys! and yeah trodden does need to get in on this.. i saw his band years ago and the two basses thing was immense.. We have a fairly large room that we track in and practice in.. about the size of a medium sized club.. we practice with a full PA system, too.. I'm definitely tracking the drums separately with just a bass scratch track.. I need as much control over the drums as I can get during mixing. This will be my first recording that I will experiment with using the overheads and room mics as the "main mics" and using the individual mics as sweeteners.. I think I can get a fuller sound like that.. I;ve thought about doing the guitar and bass simultaneously with dynamic mics on the cab's and then using a condenser 6 to 10 ft. away to catch them both in the room at the same time.. anyone experimented with that? the keys will be direct and then possible re-amped, mainly so we can spend more time with the sounds once the guitars are layed down.. yeah, distorted bass is a bitch to record.. I've been recorded analog once, in my old band Metatron and that was the closest it ever got to my actual tone, but the recording is so bass heavy it has actually blown up speakers in peoples stereos, and there was no guitar at all.. and glad there is a fellow BlueBeard Rocker here!!

[MoreSpaceEcho]

t I;ve thought about doing the guitar and bass simultaneously with dynamic mics on the cab's and then using a condenser 6 to 10 ft. away to catch them both in the room at the same time.. anyone experimented with that?

i used to do that at my old place...i'd run like two keyboard tracks and a bass track out to amps in the basement with whatever assortment of mics on the amps/room, bring those mics up on the board and just mix like that. it was kind of done out of necessity at the time but listening back to those records it sounds cool. definitely worth a shot.

it sounds like you have a plan already, i say just go for it and see how it turns out. and don't be afraid to bail on the plan completely if it's not working out like you want. and i'm all for oh's/rooms being the 'main mics' on the drums, but if you guys sound like i imagine you do you're probably gonna need a lot of the close mics to cut through the din...

[lionaudio]

Hopefully the din will be a controlled din.. Definitely not tracking with nearly as much gain on the guitars as we use live. I think that will help. Also investing in more "bass oriented" compression.. The RNC's are great, but they aren't giving me the huge ballsy sound that I want out of the kick or the bass. Just trial and error I guess.. I wish we could just make a cd that every time someone puts it in, we magically appear in their living room or car and just crush them to death.

[MoreSpaceEcho]

when i was a little kid listening to the radio i thought the bands were actually there at the station, playing live. and i'd switch stations and hear the same song back to back and just couldn't figure out how the band got across town so fast.

[lionaudio]

when i was a little kid listening to the radio i thought the bands were actually there at the station, playing live. and i'd switch stations and hear the same song back to back and just couldn't figure out how the band got across town so fast.

That's the exact idea.. only scarier.

[wedge]

when i was a little kid listening to the radio i thought the bands were actually there at the station, playing live. and i'd switch stations and hear the same song back to back and just couldn't figure out how the band got across town so fast.

When I was a kid, I thought that people who were killed in the movies were actually really killed, and my only logical conclusion was that they must have been prisoners who were on death row anyway, so why not kill 'em in a movie?!?

I also believed I could -- and very much wanted to -- grow up to be a dog...

[Professor]

There's no question your live sound will be difficult to record. What you're trying to do is to capture a few particular points of sound within what is undoubtedly an enormous mass of sound. I can't really say whether it would be better or worse to turn things down, separate or stay together, or what. Running the bass through a DI can get it recorded without disturbing the drums, but I'd then re-amp the signal, crank the amp up to your favorite settings, and maybe back off a little further with the mics - like where you would normally stand in front of it. Let the room be part of the amp sound.

But really the biggest thing that I think will get in your way is probably how you are listening to the recorded tracks.
Think about it - your guitarist plays through 10 12-inch drivers!?!? If you're trying to mic that from 2-inches away with a single SM-57, then you won't capture the experience. But more important, if you're trying to hear the recorded sound on a pair of 2-way monitors with 6" woofers, then you're just going to be let down. The sound might be 100% accurate, or even better than the live sound, but your experience of the live sound isn't just a question of tone or timbre, but of VOLUME!! and IMPACT!! I'd say that after you place some mics and record a little, you should listen back on the band PA at a performance volume to see what you're getting. You may actually be closer than you think, but you're not satisfied because you're not feeling your liver being liquified by the guitar amp. It might take a little trial & error, but I'll bet you can find your way to a pretty close sound once you listen that way... and then you can simply stick with that recording method and monitor on the little monitors, knowing that it really is getting the sound right. Not to pick on guitarists too much, but when I get guitarists complaining about not hearing their tone coming out of the control room monitors, I can almost always asuage their concerns by kicking up to the large mains (1", 5", and 2x 12" per side) and cranking up the volume.
So there you go, turn the amps back up (how often do you hear that), back the mics away so the sound has a chance to come together, and listen on bigger monitors.

-Jeremy

[joel hamilton]

The real trick is to give the illusion of huge. There are so many variables! Wanna come record with me?? ... that would be much simpler than for me to type this much...

Remember this: if the parts sound big, thy will be big. sounds stupid, I know, but I mean it. Nimble and fast and too many notes do not add up to the kind of heavy you are talking about. A samurai sword or a telephone pole being swung at the listeners head? that is the decision... That battle of mice record worked out well because the parts are all very heavy...

To be honest, most of it is in the mix for that record. I didnt do anything i wouldnt normally do when tracking. Some of those songs there were only 3 mics on the drums, with a few guitar overdubs... OH that is something worth mentioning: When you are doing guitar OD's, dont do the same part 700 times. Play some inversions, and different octaves and stuff.. for timbre modification. Also, have someone play the bass line as octaves or even single notes, on the guitar. Keep stacking up unison octave lines derived from the bass... then get to mixin!

Have fun, man.

[TheForgotten]

trodden's band has the mega low end. we need to get him in this thread.

Indeed. Wormwood has 2 bass players and a keyboard. But no guitar player.
But nevertheless, Trodden would be a good resource.
Trodden, get in here.