BASS GETTING LOST IN MIX

[sonicdeath]

Ive been working on my mixing skills for about 6 years now. There is one problem that always gets me in trouble. The Bass Guitar. I Have always put it center in the mix with the kick, and did a little EQ work. But It ALWAYS GETS LOST IN THE MIX. The low end of the GTRS seem to bleed into the bass and the mids of the GTRS kills that nice round feeling of the upper end of the bass.

Can you give me some pointers on EQ, and how to cut a space for it in the mix. I love the drum sound and guitar sound I can get, But the bass just has no Balls to it.

Any help? Please.

[MoreSpaceEcho]

as i seem to be saying a lot recently: guitars are a pain in the ass. they cover up EVERYTHING, not just the bass. but we love 'em, so we invent all sorts of crazy eq and compression schemes for everything else, just to make them sort of stand up amidst the wall of stupidity...

try adding distortion to the bass, you can add a lot without it sounding distorted.
try some retarded eq, boost a ton of midrange or cut a bunch of low flubba.
reamp it in a big room with the mic 8 feet away, it worked for paul mccartney.
add a track of sansamp.
add a track of parallel compression with it squashed a lot or a little.
do all of these things at the same time.
don't do any of them and just turn it up 6db.
pan the guitars hard l and r.
cut low end on the guitars.
mute the guitars entirely...

[darkhorseporter]

I had the same problem, but one thing that has helped of late is building the mix in a different order ala J Hall.. starting with the kick and bass working together then building the rest of the mix around those center points, assuming of course, that you are mixing hard(er) rock

[ballpein]

Yeah, guitar is a pain in the ass, for sure - such a broadband sound, and it can be hard to get away with cutting away too much of it. I sometimes high pass the guitar and/or knock the bottom down a little with a shelf below 200ish... but other times I find that the guitar needs that low end presence. Cutting any boxiness around 250 can help a lot...

Ducking the guitars is something I'm liking more and more... send the bottom end of the guitar to one compressor, sidechained to the bass, (and if necessary sidechain the top of the guitar to vocals).

The right compression on the bass can help a lot in punching up the attack. I really dig the symetrix 501 on bass. In software land I've been playing lately with roughrider, (free from audiodamage) which is pretty extreme, and distorty, but can work on certain stuff... and a lot of folks here swear by the stillwell stuff - I haven't used it enough yet to decide how I feel. I quite like the compressor in Live on bass, too - never felt the magic from Logic's compressors for bass, though.

AS for eq'ing the Bass - I'll usually high pass at 40 or so. Sometimes losing a db or three with a shelf below 100ish can really help clarify the bass track - when I do this I usually end up putting some back around 80 or 90. Depending on the bass track, there's usually somewhere between, say 400 and 1600 where a bit of boost really helps with attack and definition . Usually when I find this spot, I'll cut the mids below it. So if I find a sweet spot around 800, I'll boost that a bit, and then cut from 150ish to 600 or so... then if you're lucky, you can get away with cutting the guitar at this bass-sweetspot frequency.

[darjama]

My usual formula:

Step 1: high pass the guitars, somewhere between 80 and 160 hz.

Step 2: low shelf -2 to -6db of the bass, starting somewhere around 200 or 250. Try a high pass around 40 if there's still a lot of sub-bass. Raise the volume and play with the shelf until you find a good balance with the mix.

Step 3: Are you already compressing the bass? Try a slower attack on your compressor, and loosen up a little on the ratio and threshold.

[sonicdeath]

Thank for the replies.

I normally try do use as little compression as possible when mixing. I do use some on the upper end of the bass just around where it sits with the vocals...not too much though. I always high pass it around 50 normally drop a few db's at 250 and give it a little boost in the low mids to taste.

I normally start mixing by Drums-> Bass -> Guitars -> other -> Vox.

My bass and kick sit at around the same level.

Let me mess with it and give you a link of a rough mix.
Where is a place I can upload it? I have yet to get a web page.

Thank you

[darjama]

https://bandcamp.com/signup

[ballpein]

Thank for the replies.

I normally try do use as little compression as possible when mixing. I do use some on the upper end of the bass just around where it sits with the vocals...not too much though.

You might find some compression on the bottom end really tightens up the bass and helps the attack punch through the mix to be heard and felt. You only need a couple db's of reduction, attack slow enough that the initial strike of the string comes through, then compression kicks in to cut the sustain... release time will vary depending on the track.

[sonicdeath]

Thanks. I will get a track up latter today. This will be my first mix up for others to hear ...at least people who have an idea of what mixing takes and have some set of real ears, so please be honest. I will not take it personally, but will use advise to help my self improve.

[madrex]

are you mixing with a subwoofer? my home studio setup only affords me a single stereo pair of reference monitors, and I'd always run into bass discrepencies when working on projects and demos until I started referencing them in the mix stage on my computer speakers, which have a sub. A lot of inexpensive computer speaker set ups include one these days, and it changed even my cheapest mixes for the better. I mean, if you can't hear what you're working on down there, how can you really work on it? Can't tell you how many time's I'd burn a reference mix and sit there mystified...

[JWL]

Agreed, highpass filters on guitars (actually, on pretty much everything except bass and some drums.... even on them sometimes) can really help.

Sometimes i'll use a HPF on the bass, with a high (2.0 or more) Q so that there is a nice bump in the response before the rolloff.

Also, complimentary EQ between the bass and the kick drum can be your friend.... find a frequency or three where they are fighting, and give small boost to one and a corresponding small cut to the other track. For instance, boosting a kick by 2dB at 65Hz and cutting the bass by 2dB at 65Hz often sounds much better than simply boosting the kick by 4dB at 65Hz.

[DrummerMan]

Not to pimp a product when you're more looking for technique, but I always had trouble being happy with my bass sounds (Tried many things, some worked pretty well [like reamping through my AMpeg Gemini and micing from a distance], but those things don't work for every situation and I felt like I had to work so damn hard to get the bass right). Anyway, I bought a SansAmp Bass Driver DI thingy, and, no joke, my bass sound is like 50 times better, automatically. I was always against amp emulation boxes because I felt like I should be able to get a good sound "naturally" , but this thing makes my life sooooo much easier now.

[ott0bot]

I agree with the high pass filters for the guitars....unless they are tuned to a D or lower. Then you can lose alot of the "body" of the guitar. Try doing using a parametric eq and sweeping your guitar track with a narrow band cut with it and the bass solo'd and see if you can find where they are sharing the same frequencies. Then cut the guitar out only those frequencies....or vice versa with cutting the bass frequencies. Try it with the kick and any other tracks that are competing with the same frequencies. Also I often notch out a little around 60-70 hrz on the bass, it just helps crisp up the signal for me. I think subratractive eq-ing has helped me most on cleaning up my mixes.

also....I know in this DAW post production plug-in filled world no one wants to use compression before it goes to "tape" but using a leveling amp is a steller way to mold your tone before it hits your computer. You can really get that tone nailed down on the original take. OR split the signal and record a clean and a compressed track, then mute one of the incoming tracks while recording. You can compare the exact bass performance side by side then. Ok....and if you still want a clean signal only into the DAW definately add a little bit of compresson or try a tape saturation plug in like the free Massey one. Thats awesome!

[mscottweber]

+1 on the Sansamp Bass Driver. My roommate just got one a couple months ago and it makes D.I.ed bass sounds pretty stellar, IMO.

[sonicdeath]

http://nightmarestudios.bandcamp.com/track/catholic-boy

Here is the link