Mixing Bass

[joninc]

+1 on the REAMP.

i recently did some DI'd bass through a UA solo 610 and although it was really warm and deep - it was lacking in mids - where the "note" lives. running through the smaller speakers of a guitar amp (in this case, 10's in my super reverb) was almost like adding an upper octave - WAY clearer to hear the notes.

mic it with something that you'd use on a guitar and then line up your wave forms in the daw.

sometimes the best way to do this is to flip it out of phase and adjust until it cancels itself out as much as possible. then flip the phase back and blend tracks to taste!

using a sans amp for a reamp - rather than an actual amp - can sometimes achieve similar results too. it seems to fill in a zone that's lacking.

[stompforfuzz]

About the re-amping.

This might be just assumed, but certainly do what you did in the DAW - run two signals, one dirty for voice and one clean and deep for thump. Mic them separately - guitar mic on the dirty amp and a kick mic for the thump.

again, perhaps already the plan.

[riantide]

OK, so I don't know whether to feel really stupid or be glad that the solution ended up being remarkably simple, but most of the problem songs are not problems any more. Wanna know what did it?

Removing about 2-4db between 100 and 150. I really can't believe it wasn't the first thing I tried, but it was so counterintuitive to me to remove bass from a bass guitar.

I recently got professionally certified in Logic for my day job and while I was studying for the certification I got into the video tutorials at macprovideo.com (like Lynda, really awesome site). The Logic videos are mostly done by this guy Steve Horelick, who does a really amazing job. There's a tutorial on mastering with logic and in it he talks at length about equalization.

In that tutorial Steve mentions that psychoacoustically, when the bass is increased it will make the top end sound duller, and likewise, when the bass is reduced it will make top end sound brighter. So I tried carving out some low end on my misbehaving bass tracks and immediately the mids that were being masked by all my mud came out without having to boost them at all and the bass just sort of "clicked" into place.

Anyway, I'm still going to reamp a couple tracks, and I'll be sure to post about my success, but I just wanted to give an update!

Thanks again for all the great suggestions!

[jgimbel]

Removing about 2-4db between 100 and 150. I really can't believe it wasn't the first thing I tried, but it was so counterintuitive to me to remove bass from a bass guitar.

I feel like every year or so I learn something, some rule or theory that makes my recordings incredibly better than they were. Like when I listen to older recordings of mine, I can tell exactly when I did the project because of what thing is prevalent in the recording like that. In the past year or so, it's been low cuts. It's absolutely counterintuitive to start, but ever since I started low cutting a ton more in my mixes, they've sounded so much less like amateur mixes. It seems like often a lot of the sound that you associate with a good bass or kick sound don't actually live in those super low frequencies. It's kind of the same, or opposite actually, with high sounds too. When I record dulcimer, I often end up taking out some highs, despite it being mostly a high frequency instruments. Two things that make mixes sound too great are when lows are too boomy and highs are two bright, which are things that are problems in their respective cases - instruments with high frequencies are usually the ones running the risk of being too bright, while those with a lot of lows might be too boomy. So it seems opposite of what's obvious, and I've found that in my mixing patterns I often end up taking some lows out of low instruments and some highs out of high instruments. This also comes in tracking though, I don't mean I'm so bad at tracking that every instrument needs frequencies taken out. It applies to mic choice - sometimes a brighter LDC works well on kick, while a darker mic works well on bright sound (I love my Oktava MK312 on dulcimer and acoustic guitar).