Looking for bass guitar shaping tricks

[drumsound]

Larry Crane likes to use a cross over and separate the low end and the upper end of the tone so they can be treated individually.

Could one achieve a faux-crossover by duplicating the track and highpassing one and lowpassing the other at the same freq.? Same result, right?

I've had decent results multing a channel and killing the highs on one and the lows on the other.

[Brett Siler]

It maybe to late for this but I like to mic the amp with a two or three mics. One for the lowend, one for treble and sometime one for room. Kinda like the crossover trick they were talking about. The bass mic I'll usually compress or limit a bit and the treble mic I'll use a HPF until on it's own it sounds like it's coming out a guitar amp, no deep low end just mids and highs. I don't usually compress the "treble" mic, but sometimes I may a little bit if the dynamics are too wild or sloppy. Then at mix time you can blend the two to your liking. Maybe try reamping and giving it a shot.

[losthighway]

Without a sample of both the bass and the mix...

I cannot say anything.

Thank you for taking the time to post.

As for the crossover ideas, those are good. Maybe turning it up in a 'presence' way without bringing up the lows even further will reduce the risk of cloudiness I'm finding the element is bringing the mix.

[Mane1234]

Is recutting the track not an option? Maybe go through a smaller speaker. Still plenty of low end to be found in a 12 inch speaker. Otherwise I'd have to agree with re-amping and some liberal compression mixed with the original.

[lunatic]

It's a long shot but...

Izotope RX *might* be able to take some of the clackiness outta the DI with the declicker tool. If you don't own it maybe you can demo it. Or you can send me the track and I can try it for ya. Just an idea because it sound like the DI wold work for you if that clack was tamed.

Anyway... just a random "gut reaction" idea. Gimmie some slack... I'm brainstorming here.

[Nick Sevilla]

Without a sample of both the bass and the mix...

I cannot say anything.

Thank you for taking the time to post.

As for the crossover ideas, those are good. Maybe turning it up in a 'presence' way without bringing up the lows even further will reduce the risk of cloudiness I'm finding the element is bringing the mix.

Just being brutally honest. Have a good weekend.

[Burnt Ernie]

1 alternative-Rane DC24-dual compressor with crossover. Can be dual channel,stereo,or cascaded. Has a front adjustable crossover. Has gate/expander/compressor/limiter. Very tweakable,and crossover lets you tweak away. Have used it in "Split" mode with sansamps,de-essers,expanders
(although it already has one),reamps. They're around for pretty cheap these days. Very handy. Sansamp bass driver/psa/reamp/room mic reamp all work well in split mode. Nice having knobs,so you can dial in what you hear "missing". Not terribly super hi-fi,but very usable. Roger Nichols swore by 'em.
Good luck.
Eric.

[Bill @ Irie Lab]

If you're a VST guy Dominion by Digital Fishphones has helped me on occasion control how a bass sits in a mix.

It's free and worth a try if that fits in with your recording style.

http://www.digitalfishphones.com/main.p ... &subItem=4

I've had good luck with their one knob compressor with male vox, too.

[AndersonSoundRecording]

SansAmp bass driver pedal saved my arse a few times. T'was my "secret weapon" - I would "reamp" DI signals through it whilst mixing.

That and the Aphex Aural Exciter with Big Bottom (C4 I think? I just bought it 'cause the name was so funny, but used judiciously it can be helpful in tone shaping a DI signal). Have to be careful tho' - it's easy to overdo it...

Sometimes using an amp simulator plug-in can also work well. Never used that lowender - I'll have to check that out. I've never found the Waves Renaissance Bass to do what I wanted to.

Really, the best "secret" is to use a killer DI (I like something with a big ol' Jensen tranny inside) to record a kick-a$$ bass player with awesome ax and tone. That solves most bass problems.

All that said, Nick Sevilla is right - it's hard to really be helpful unless one hears what the problem actually is.

[MoreSpaceEcho]

I've had good luck with their one knob compressor with male vox, too.

if you mean the blockfish, i've had good luck with that sucker on just about everything at one point or another. if it came in a black box with big knobs and VU meters, people would be falling over themselves to pay 2 grand for it.

[Bill @ Irie Lab]

MoreSpaceEcho - +1

Yes Blockfish. Its price is its only vice. (Hey! that rhymes!)

[MisterMark]

+1 on the crossover or high pass/low pass approach. Would probably be best to duplicate and use the source that sounds best (in your case you mentioned the amp signal). However, you could try using both the amp and DI if you are really in the mood to experiment (example: DI for the high channel, amp for the low... or vice versa).

The real advantage of the crossover approach is that you can compress and/or distort the high band and the low band independently without any phase issues (as opposed to trying to mess with the DI and amp independently and blending them).

A good starting approach would be to compress the low channel and add some distortion to high channel. Now you can mix the bass with a lot more control. Need more clarity? Turn up the high channel... Missing some bottom? Turn up the low channel. Don't like the results? Try different distortions/compressors and/or move your crossover point.

-Mark

PS: for those of you who don't have a plugin that can act as a crossover Izotope Ozone is pretty handy:



Among it's amazing variety of parameters, it allows you to split the frequency spectrum into 4 bands if you want.

[Jeff White]

PS: for those of you who don't have a plugin that can act as a crossover Izotope Ozone is pretty handy:

Among it's amazing variety of parameters, it allows you to split the frequency spectrum into 4 bands if you want.

I just had a major issue with bass come up two nights ago, and the last thing that I used that really helped out was Ozone's multi-band compressor.

I did a live recording outside for BITBY.tv last week, and finally got around to mixing it for tonight's video release. I decided that I wanted to multi-track the session for a little more control and, to be honest, to push myself a bit. Ran the bass through a Countryman DI, but after getting a sound with pedals BEFORE the DI the bass player ended up messing with settings on his fuzz IMMEDIATELY before recording. Not his fault; I should have been prepared to take 2 DI tracks (before and after). Since the day was double-booked everything was 1 take and setup and recording, outside, needed to happen in under 2 hours. Craziness.

In post, I used some Waves compression, limiting, EQ inititally. Then I sent the bass to an aux and side-chained the kick into a gate on the bass aux. Whenever the kick opens the gate, it allows some bass through. When you flip the phase after the gate you lower the bass level each time the kick hits the gate by whatever amount you choose according to the fader level on the aux. I use this trick for guitars and vocals as well. I then used Ozone's multi-band compressor after everything else in the mastering phase to control the low mids of unruly bass on just one song. It helped tremendously. Not the best bass tone ever for that one song. If time allowed (we had a crazy deadline) I would have reamped and played with the tone a bunch more, mixed a bit better with a second day to listen back, etc.

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/pn4byx7qj00p ... 024-48.wav

This is the song with bass issues. There is about 2 minutes of dialog and setup before music. I'll replace this link with the final video edit after the video posts. Just wanted to share asap. Again, completely recorded in a backyard. With 1 power cable for every piece of gear to share! Oh, and dealing with a neighbor and his CB radio broadcasting through the amps was, yes, annoying as hell.

Here is Dreambook's Bandcamp page: http://dreambook.bandcamp.com/

Jeff