In Your Face BASS - What's your strategy?

[musikman1]

Hi friends,

I've been using CW for years, and being primarily a keyboardist, I use a lot of synth bass sounds.  Now synth bass is usually already processed with some effects, so I've not had too much trouble getting control over a synth bass track.   However I'd like to pick your brains here if you don't mind sharing, and have a few minutes, when it comes to getting a nice in-your-face bass track, one that sits well with the rest of the mix without overshadowing, without getting lost in the mix,  without sounding too boomy, etc....well, you get the idea.  The typical issues that need addressing with a bass track. 

I seem to sometimes run into trouble more when I use a basic acoustic or electric bass patch, from either a hardware synth, or a virtual module, like Spectrasonic's Trilian, which I most currently use.  Trilian has some great sounds, most all are high quality samples.  Individually they all sound great, it's getting them to sound right in a mix that is sometimes challenging.  I've often auditioned some great bass sounds, found one I like for the project, record the track, then later when all the other instruments have been recorded, I wonder, where did that great bass sound go that I originally auditioned??  Of all the instruments to mix, bass always seems to present the biggest challenge.

Most times if a bass track sounds boomy I try using EQ to roll it off, that usually helps cut the boom.  Sometimes a bass track will sound kinda "flat" and can get lost in the mix.  Compression seems to be the answer here.  These are  typical answers that I've found, which help to some degree, but many times I'm still not getting "that sound" that I'm hearing on all the CDs and radio songs. 

What I'm looking to do is be able to distinguish the bass track clearly, without needing to bring the level up to where it can make a mix sound unbalanced.  I don't want the bass to seem lost in the mix, on the other hand,  I want to know the bass is there, and feel it punch me, without it taking over the whole mix.  When I listen to most songs on a professionally recorded CD, or on the radio, I can hear and feel that bass, but it's not overpowering the rest of the mix, it has its rightful place, and it sits there nicely.  Easier said than done I think! 

Rather than going back and forth and putting band aids on the different problems that come up with bass tracks, I figure if I can get some kind of proven general method to start and end with, that I can use as a sort of "template" for the bass track in every project I create,  then I can at least be in the ball park, then I tweak the details later if needed, based on the type of song.  So if you don't mind briefly sharing your basic "rule of thumb" process from beginning to end that you use to get your bass tracks off to a good start in your mixes, that would be very helpful, and appreciated!   

Thanks much!

MM

Edited May 20, 2022 by musikman1

[Byron Dickens]

1) Treated room including real broadband bass traps and not those foam blocks masquerading as bass traps they sell at the music store.

2) Complementary EQ.

[bats brew]

i play electric bass.

when i'm recording it, i typically split two inputs,  and use two pedals for DI line level captures:

Sansamp Bass DI

Strymon Iridium

 

with the sansamp, i'm dialing in a very deep clean bass tone (the basis of the sansamp is the venerable Ampeg svt amplifier)

 

with the Iridium, i'm using a marshall superlead amp paired with a ampeg 4x10 IR, and the marshall is set for an aggressive lead tone, eq'd for midrange and high end bite.

 

then, i mix those two tracks together to a common mono bass sub buss, and blend the lows to the highs based on the song and arrangment.

this gives me pretty in your face bass tracks.

 

if the sansamp has too many low, i just use a HPF and find the sweet spot.

i'll take anywhere from 150hz up to 300 hz out wherever i have buildups.

 

i'll compress and/or limit the bass sub buss to get the levels consistent, if they aren't already.

i can post clips to demonstrate if interested.

[John Vere]

What works for me is not eq or compressors or nothing. Just the right bass sound to begin with. First I’m a bass player so I have a few good basses and amps, pre amp etc. i spent my life searching for good bass tone that works in a live band situation. That sound is never quite right for recording. 
I must have spent more time working on trying to get my bass tracks sounding right than anything else. So don’t laugh at this, I finally found the closest I’ve ever had to my goal and it goes like this. 

Grab my bass and plug it directly to the interface! (Really?)

Record the part clean and with a  solid groove and note placement. 

Drag it to AmpleP bass lite track. 
Edit the midi to taste. 
All velocities at 106 ( important) 

Now using the Gain set the output at -8.0 db.  

That’s it. No eq ,no compressor just the raw bass sample . 

The Ample bass on its own sounds sort of growly and awful but it sure works in my songs. 
 
So ultimately the solution is to find the right bass. If you have to process the sounds then it was garbage so keep looking. 
 

I can also get a great audio bass sound as well but it takes way longer to both play and edit audio than it does to use midi. I doubt if the punters can tell the difference. 
 

Here’s my latest song list

https://www.soundclick.com/artist/default.cfm?bandID=1420844

Edited May 20, 2022 by John Vere

[musikman1]

All great info guys, thanks a lot for showing up here with your input, much appreciated. 

3 hours ago, Lord Tim said:

If you don't have a monitoring environment you can trust, nothing you do will have any kind of meaningful impact. If you can't hear it properly, you're flying blind.

Actually, my newest studio setup is in my apartment at a senior living complex.  I used to have a well designed studio with at least some wall dampening and bass traps, but all that is gone now.  Plus here I really can't play my mixes super loud without disturbing others.  I do have wall to wall carpet, and have Auralex monitor pads, plus a few panels of Auralex strategically placed on the walls.  I do need to add a few to the back wall though, in the process of getting that ball rolling.  So the environment isn't perfect but not too bad overall.  I'm just using some KALI 6" monitors, which mix really flat and for the most part true.  At first I thought it was the monitors, and they may slightly factor in, but that said, I can play a mastered CD of my favorite band and I'll hear the punch on the bass pretty well, and then play one of my "unmastered" mixes and it sounds kinda flat in comparison.  That said, my "mastered" mixes do sound a step above the unmastered ones, but still pale in comparison to a pro CD.  

So I kinda ruled out the monitors and/or the room conditions as being soley responsible, though they do factor in.  Apologies for not mentioning my room and monitor setup prior to this, I would imagine it would have helped make things clearer.  I probably should also mention that although I have a friend who occasionally records live electric drum tracks for me, I mostly have to otherwise use loops.  So isolating specific drums is not always an option unfortunately. 

I used to have Mackie 824s, but for where I live now I had to tone it down some, so I went smaller.  There is a difference for sure, smaller speaker factor,  but  I have to say they sound decent and give a pretty accurate reflection of the mix, and it is what I have to work with for now.  I do use some very flat headphones that don't enhance the low end, like many do, but I try not to use them if at all possible when it comes to mixing, unless it's very late at night when others are sleeping. 

You have certainly given me a lot to think about Lord Tim, some of it is a bit over my head, but not so far that I can't figure it out, and I at least have something to sink my teeth into!  Thanks for taking the time to give me the details, much appreciated.

1 hour ago, John Vere said:

What works for me is not eq or compressors or nothing. Just the right bass sound to begin with.

I hear ya loud and clear John.  Being a keyboard player I can't tell you how many times I've been to  a club to hear a local band, and the keyboard player is technically sound, but is using garbage sounds and has no clue how to select the right sound for each song.   So yes, selecting the right bass sound here is paramount in my opinion as well.  That's why I bought Trilian because their samples are very good, and the selection is plentiful.  So I do spend a good amount of time sifting through sounds until I hit on one that fits as best possible. 

Edited May 20, 2022 by musikman1

[treesha]

Sometimes I play my bass, sometimes use a bass vst. In both instances I like the free vst bass professor it has l and ll versions. I use izotope low end balance and look for masking frequencies with izotope too. I do try to find the right sound for the song or get close to what works which can change as the song fills out. 

[musikman1]

3 hours ago, Lord Tim said:

But that said, this was the reason I mentioned throwing a spectrum analyser on the METERS bus and comparing the frequency curve to one from a mix you like.

I actually have a metering suite by IK MM, and tbh sad to say I'm not well trained in how to use it since I seldom have used it.  I'd have to watch a video or dig into the manual to get familiar with it again.  No sense trying to use it if I'm not going to understand what it is I'm looking at. Like I had mentioned in another thread, I'm a musician first, sound engineer second, so I still have learning curves now and then when it comes to the technical stuff. But anyway, here's what I have, and I believe this is the only one I have, but from what I understand it's decent quality....  If you have any brief tips on using the analyzer, that would be kool.

https://www.ikmultimedia.com/products/tr5metering/

3 hours ago, Lord Tim said:

Do you compromise your end goal because it doesn't work right off or do you try to work out why isn't not working and apply your knowledge of mixing skills to get it to work?

I almost always try to figure out why it's not working and I experiment with different plugins to see what kind of results I can get.  I have had some success with my mixes in that regard, and I don't always run into major trouble with bass tracks.  That said, however, if there is an area of improvement that pops up more often than not, it's with balancing and mixing the bass with everything else. So although I'm not totally out in left field with this, I do need and want to improve that part of my mixes.  I'd like to de-mystify it and get a better handle on how to get it sounding more like what I hear on pro CDs.  Sometimes I think the bass track is sounding a little lost or a little off, then I'll add a limiter to the master track, or I'll export the mix and run it through one of my mastering software and that will take care of it straight away and it will sound great. Other times that might not work, so it's been something that I just want to be better at and feel more confident in knowing what to do, rather than just experimenting blindly with different plugins, hoping one will work. 

45 minutes ago, treesha said:

I use izotope low end balance and look for masking frequencies with izotope too. I do try to find the right sound for the song or get close to what works which can change as the song fills out. 

Hey treesha, thanks for jumping in, always good to hear from a bassist. I don't have the Izotope plug, but I did check it out. I too usually spend time looking for what will work in that specific project.  Sometimes I like to record the bass track early on, so I may not find out til later when the mix is more full how it's gonna work out.  

I actually have a TON of plugins, it's just a matter of selecting the one that will be most likely to help in whatever project situation arises.  I have the Waves Gold bundle, which is a well rounded mix of plugs. I have IK MM T-Racks with a bunch of extra modules that I've added over the years, Stealth Limiter,  432 Master EQ (which I use often), compressors, reverbs, there's a bunch. I also have Lurssen Mastering Suite, which is kind of a quick one step mastering software, and for quite a few projects it has worked out pretty well.  So I'm not lacking plugins, that's for sure.

3 hours ago, Lord Tim said:

I really think the end justifies the means. If you get your desired end result and it gives you the emotional payoff you and your listeners enjoy, absolutely zero people will care how you got there. If you can get it right without doing a bunch of extra processing then that's fantastic - certainly aim for that first! But if not, you have the tools to make it work

Agreed! I have pretty good ears from being a musician for 45 yrs, I play keys primarily, and my secondary is guitar, which I began about 8 yrs ago.  I have always made music a priority in my life, even when I couldn't do it full time. Now that I'm semi-retired, I have the time and I want to make the best of it.  I can rely on my ears to get a decent finished product, sometimes a very good one, but you know how it is, when I compare it to songs on a CD or the radio, it seems to fall just short enough to make me think....."what the hell am I missing?...I'm so close!!"   ....and that is why I started this thread!  :-)

[treesha]

https://www.sonarworks.com/soundid-reference/resources/ebooks/ebook-mix-your-low-end-like-a-pro

I just got an email with this link to a free ebook, no idea if it is worth checking out but I will have a look sometime, so fyi.

[Starship Krupa]

Probably the best thing I do for that is listen to reference songs in whatever genre I'm working in, songs that I think are well mixed and mastered. And I listen to them on my monitoring system. When asking for advice on "how do I get this sound?" it makes it much easier to give advice if you give us an example of exactly which "CDs and radio songs" you think do a good job of presenting an "in your face" bass sound. Different genres call for different methods.

Go to YouTube and search for "how to mix bass" or even "how to get an in your face bass sound" and you'll find plenty of information.

A mistake that I think a lot of people make is in assuming that "bass"=low end. I grew up listening to Paul McCartney's bass coming through on the 2" speaker of a plastic AM transistor radio. Our ears "fill in" the rest when we're listening via imperfect reproduction systems. Listen closely to those well-produced songs and you'll likely find that the "bass" sound that pops out is much higher in frequency than we might expect, and that the extreme lows are rolled off with high passing. As a listening exercise, try throwing a steep highpass on your bass track and slowly bringing it higher and higher until it doesn't sound like "bass" any more. When I do this, it's always higher than I expect.

The way it "looks" in my mind is that there's the "upper" component of the bass sound, where the pluck, snarl, whatever, is, depending on whether I'm using a bass guitar (or sample of one) or a bass synth sound. Then down from there comes the space that I cut out for the kick drum, often involving sidechaining with Trackspacer or just a compressor. Then down from there in a space all its own is the pant-flappy boom, the amount of which can vary depending on what genre and what I'm trying to achieve. Club sound systems can reproduce it, earbuds less so.

To make any fast attack rhythmic sound stand out better, I use compression, usually with about 5-10 mS attack to let enough of the attack portion through, and 100mS or shorter release. This isn't to smooth it out, it's to give it a bounce that resembles how our ears naturally react to instant sounds. I didn't twig at first that compression can be used not only for the gluing and smoothing functions (that were the first parts of its job that I understood), but also to shape the dynamics and rhythm of sounds.

As a side effect of putting this kind of "bouncy" compression on other sounds in the mix, I find that it helps them stay out of each others' way. I started a thread on this forum about noticing an example of that. I was twiddling a compressor and thought it was the one on the bass track because it was affecting the bass track in a big way. Then I noticed that it was on a different track. What I was doing was just getting that track out of the way of the bass track, leaving space for it to come through.

If I can't hear my bass distinctly, what's covering it up? Look for things that might be covering it up and maybe work on them a bit. It might have less to do with the bass sound and more to do with the other things we try to cram in.

In trying to understand it better, I thought of it like looking at an image. If all of the elements in the image are tinted medium orange, it's harder to pick out individual elements. This is how I think of the usual advice to carve each element its own space in the frequency spectrum. However, if we take a full-range image and then make a spot on it that's completely bright white, even though that bright white spot isn't strictly "in the way" of the darker elements in the image, it still draws the eye's attention away, and maybe even make the iris close somewhat. This is akin to having a poky loud sound in the upper mids: nothing to do with "bass" as far as frequency, but its volume makes the ear recoil and pay less attention to what's happening lower down. In this way, sounds can mask other sounds that aren't even within the same spectrum. Not something to be afraid of, rather something to notice.

As for listening environment, I don't know if there's such a thing as a perfect listening environment. I figure if I can play my Radiohead reference CD on my monitors and it sounds killer, then there's no reason that with mixing and mastering chops, I can't theoretically produce something with at least a similar sonic balance. I haven't deployed any bass traps as such, but I have 4 different sets of monitors connected to my workstation, plus good listening systems in my bedroom and living room, plus headphones and automobile. I work on it until the song sounds good on all of those systems. Hey, why not? After all my stuff is listened to more by me than by anyone else. ?

P.S. I've heard nothing but good about Kalis. It's on my to-do list to go down to GC and audition some.

[whoisp]

Here is a simple tips!

1: Make sure your bass is mono.  

2:  Amp sim or preamp sim or speaker cab or combination

3: If there's mud in your mix clean it up with boosting and carving out space. Lets say you boost bass at 70Hz you would cut other instruments at 70Hz that might be bleeding over and merging with the bass, the kick can also effect it depending playing on or off the kick. Therefore;

4: Side chain your kick can give your bass space or even side chain your bass if its a kinda hook bassline.

 

5: Depending how you want bass to sit in a mix you can add a tad of reverb to sit it at the back or bring further forward or give it width, if you want to glue it in a tad of saturation and compression. A tip for width or bass in general, n duplicate the bass track stick them on a bass room bus and use panning on the two tracks to sit them where you want in the mix and then go about adding your compression or filters or amp sims to the bus which you can further tweak the eq on tracks and bus. Drum and bass style music or even hiphop, its good to create a drum room bus and a bass room bus which you still can sidechain. 

NB: there is some fancy filters now which trigger compression on frequencies you want or don't want. Bass  and kick frequently occur simultaneously which is usually where the problems are or otherwise some phase or blead from other instruments or even vocals.

Hope at least one thing helps

P 

[John Vere]

Lots of good info in Tim’s post. I definitely use analytics to “look “ at my mixes. Span is a huge asset for this. And they also make a free multi band correlation meter which shows me when I’ve got phasing issues. 
I’ll also open the Pro channel EQ fly out which also has a great spectrum meter. 

[Starship Krupa]

4 hours ago, John Vere said:

I definitely use analytics to “look “ at my mixes. Span is a huge asset for this.

SPAN is great, and much loved. My favorite tool for this is MAnalyzer, which has presets that allow you to compare the tonal balance of your mix with typical curves from different genres. It's great for knowing whether I'm in the ballpark.

[musikman1]

On 5/21/2022 at 10:51 AM, Lord Tim said:

The green area is the subsonics. For 90% of your instruments, you'll want to roll off the low end of your EQ to much higher than this so this part entirely goes away - you'll be surprised at how far up you can high-pass this stuff without it affecting the sound of a track.

Thanks so much everyone for the helpful info. An analyzer is something I'll have to spend some time getting familiar with going forward, and hopefully I'll be able to incorporate it as a regular part of my process. I do use a mastering EQ to roll off the sub freq. I usually use the preset "cut boom" as a starting point, which does eliminate that part of the frequency range completely. I usually put it on the master track at the end. Once I started doing that awhile back, I noticed a big improvement in the clarity of the low end. There have been occasions where I've used it on an individual track, like acoustic guitar, but mostly I've used it on the master track.

On 5/21/2022 at 10:51 AM, Lord Tim said:

If you're not playing stuff loud or your speakers don't have a good extended low-end, you just can't hear this stuff properly. It's there, but it's hard to tell how much it's there. This is where you'll want to try doing the instrument muting like I mentioned earlier, to see which track is the problem one.

So this is where the question sometimes arises in my mind as I'm checking the mix, ....If I notice the low end is a little muddy on a few keyboard tracks, and the bass track, should I use an EQ plugin on all those individual tracks, or just use the Master EQ on the master track to cut the frequencies out. Sometimes just one EQ plugin on the Master track with the low end rolled off seems to take care of all of it.  I'm just thinking if I use an EQ on a keyboard or bass track to eliminate sub freq, then another EQ on the master track, do I really need it on both?..or all?  Also , I do get what you said about being careful not to back it down too much or it will sound thin, and I've noticed that a few times.  I just don't want to be using a bunch of EQ plugins on individual tracks if I really don't need to.  I try to stick with plugs mostly on the Sub mixes and Master track.  The bass track usually seems to call for some EQ and/or Compression.  I suppose once I get used to using the analyzer I'll be able to better narrow down where the plugs are needed.

 

On 5/21/2022 at 10:51 AM, Lord Tim said:

Be careful if you have things strapped over your MASTER though. It's a good idea to bypass any master effects while you sort this stuff out because while you may be adjusting something at the track level, those effects may actually be moving the goalposts on you (eg: you have a multiband compressor on the master that's changing the balance of the sounds hitting it, so any EQ you're doing is getting modified so you can't really tell what the changes you're making at the track level are doing)

I hear ya, I usually wait until I've mixed everything before using any FX on the Master channel.  If I have any FX in the master while I'm checking the individual tracks, I usually do bypass them. I'll listen to an individual track, then listen to that same track in the context of the full mix with no FX on the master. 

In the current track I'm working on, the bass track is getting a little lost in the full mix, and so just to experiment, I added a limiter to the Master track, and it definitely seemed to bring the bass track more into focus. Same holds true if I export and use a mastering software, which has the EQ compression, and limiter built in.  I know I can't rely on this, but it at least it has been a quick way for me to compare check what the mix will sound like when enhanced with those tools.  But like you said, if I can't trust my mixing environment, or monitors, etc....then the only way to know for sure is to use the analyzer to see what's really going on.  

On 5/21/2022 at 10:51 AM, Lord Tim said:

Both @John Vere and @batsbrew also gave great ideas when it came to making a bass sound be more aggressive, albeit with entirely different techniques to get to the same goal. Sometimes it's good to have your original sound and then duplicate it, then mix that duplicated track through some kind of mid-range heavy distortion, then blend it in with the original sound. You still have all of the warmth and character of the original sound you like, but you also get a great consistent and aggressive tone from the distortion too, and you kind of don't even notice the bass has distortion on it, only that it sounds more up-front, and more consistent.

Yeah I thought that was interesting. Certainly something I've never heard of before.  I think of distortion as something reserved for electric guitar mostly, so I never really thought to use it on bass.  Just thinking about it I can't really imagine what it would sound like so I'll have to try it!  When you blend the distorted bass track with the original, do you keep the original bass track gain up and keep the distorted bass low and just leak it in to blend it, or is it a 50/50 on the gain for each?

On 5/21/2022 at 3:11 AM, Starship Krupa said:

A mistake that I think a lot of people make is in assuming that "bass"=low end. I grew up listening to Paul McCartney's bass coming through on the 2" speaker of a plastic AM transistor radio. Our ears "fill in" the rest when we're listening via imperfect reproduction systems. Listen closely to those well-produced songs and you'll likely find that the "bass" sound that pops out is much higher in frequency than we might expect, and that the extreme lows are rolled off with high passing. As a listening exercise, try throwing a steep highpass on your bass track and slowly bringing it higher and higher until it doesn't sound like "bass" any more. When I do this, it's always higher than I expect.

I will try this! I have that "cut boom" preset on my EQ plugin that rolls off the sub, not sure the exact freq but this is something to consider.  Especially since I noticed that even when I use the EQ cut on my master track, when I export and run it through a mastering software, I notice that some of the low-mid boominess is exaggerated again.

 

On 5/20/2022 at 9:44 PM, treesha said:

I just got an email with this link to a free ebook, no idea if it is worth checking out but I will have a look sometime, so fyi.

 I'm sure it will be of some help. Much appreciated.

Edited May 22, 2022 by musikman1

[musikman1]

I'm not sure if I uploaded these photos correctly or not. But anyway, just for a quick experiment and to allow you to actually see what my mix and bass track looks like....I installed SPAN and checked the bass track by itself, and then the entire mix (no limiter), then put SPAN on a commercial CD track that I think has a similar sound to it. I literally just installed SPAN and did this 5 min later, so I don't know if there are any settings I'm supposed to be dialing in beforehand or not, I just used the "Smooth" feature at 1/4 for the test on the full mix.  I opened the settings so you could see them anyway.

1ST PIC IS THE BASS EQ, 2ND ONE IS THE BASS SPAN SNAPSHOT, 3RD ONE IS MY MIX, 4TH ONE IS THE COMMERCIAL CD SONG

I have an EQ on the bass track which is still a live VST MIDI track, I haven't converted to audio yet.  The Bass track EQ is just to roll off the sub freq, but maybe I didn't go down far enough cuz I still see some sub freq creeping in at a low level. 

To me, the commercial CD SPAN image looks somwhat close to my own song mix.   I was expecting to see a lot of difference.  I do see some differences, although I'm not sure what exactly needs adjusting yet, or how to go about it. I'll figure it out though.  Any obvious differences stand out to you in those SPAN snapshots of my mix, as compared to the commercial CD snapshot? What do you guys see?

As for your previous post Lord Tim, thank you for clarifying, and luckily I upgraded my PC so I may be able to add in a few more EQ plugs without choking my computer.  I do usually add plugs on the sub mixes only, as long as the individual tracks sound ok, so I do check the individual tracks first.  But I figure if the individual tracks sound ok then I can just use one instance of any plugs I want to use on the sub for that instrument. 

Drums are a little tricky because most times I'm stuck with using loops, so many times I can't really separate the individual drums, except maybe for the cymbals that I add in on a separate track from the loops.  So if I EQ the drum track to go after the kick drum, anything I do will affect the rest of the drums in the loop unfortunately.

I did watch a few YT videos about all the stuff you guys have been teaching me, and I've definitely learned some valuable lessons already. 

Edited May 22, 2022 by musikman1

[musikman1]

Btw Lord Tim, I just checked out those tracks, awesome!  I saw the stomach cramps faces hahahaha! Seriously, that bass & drums sound is what I'm striving for.  I don't write metal, I like it sometimes, but my stuff isn't that heavy.  But that is the punch I'm talking about, and in addition, it's CLEAN.  If I can get my low end sounding clean like that, and with punch, that would be great.  Once I can learn it, I can apply it to every project going forward.  I watched a video about something you mentioned as far as rolling off unnecessary frequencies on other instruments using EQ in the individual tracks.  I'm starting to notice in these videos where the EQ is used to carve out unwanted or unnecessary freq, even in the high end.  I'll have to check each instrument to see what the SPAN tells me, but how do you know what frequencies to cut? I get that cutting extreme highs and extreme lows, but what else in between can be cut, say for example on a keyboard track?  I have a Keith Emerson "Lucky Man" synth sound playing a line one of my projects, and I have a chug electric guitar sound that is kinda bassey, so I will look at those two.  So what do you usually look for as far as seeing a freq range that can be eliminated without ruining the sound?  Just curious..

I would think that some tracks don't interfere at all and don't need any freq's gutted. So how to tell which instruments need gutting?

[musikman1]

10 hours ago, Lord Tim said:

A lot of what we hear as how loud the bass is, is actually much higher up the frequency spectrum - maybe you need to drop the bass volume in general but then give it a boost at 900hz or thereabouts, rather than leaving the bass louder and dropping the bass frequencies of it. This is where that "adding hair with distortion" trick is great for increasing punch and presence but without making the low end too crazy.

900hz bass boost kind of surprised me, that is quite a bit higher in the spectrum, but you know it works so I'm looking forward to trying that out!  I have a couple of distortion plugs, one is SaturatorX by IK Multimedia, though right now I don't know which setting I'd use, so I'll have to try a few and see how they sound.   SaturatorX...... https://www.ikmultimedia.com/products/trsaturatorx/?pkey=t-racks-single-saturator-x

I'm beginning to better understand this whole concept for the most part, thank you so much for taking the time to explain this, very helpful!  I will have a couple hours each afternoon beginning tomorrow,  so I'm going to begin the process of checking each instrument, seeing what the SPAN looks like and start cutting where it seems needed. I figure as I go through each track, I'll throw on a hi-pass, cut the sub freq, then move along from there,  listening with the hp EQ off, and then listen with it on as I go, going back and forth as I gradually roll off more low end. That way I can compare and make sure whatever instrument I'm working on doesn't start to lose its original fullness.  Then I can make adjustments after listening to it in the full mix later.  I think I had watched a video awhile back on getting clean tracks on distortion guitar, and acoustic guitar.  I have both on the track I'm working on, and so I did already roll off the low end on those and it made a big difference as far as the guitars cutting through better, especially the acoustic guitar, which was originally getting lost in the mix.  It was surprising to me how after hi-passing them, the guitars sound so thin when soloing the tracks, but in the mix they sound so full!

Btw, what did you think of the SPAN screenshot I posted for my own mix as compared to the one I posted for the commercial CD track?  To me there were some differences, but the differences didn't seem drastic.  Checking mixes with SPAN is new to me, so I couldn't really tell where the differences were between my mix and the commercial CD mix.   I do know mine wasn't mastered, and the CD was, but just looking at the SPAN image they seemed relatively close in appearance to me.  Were you able to see anything going on there?  Just curious.

Edited May 23, 2022 by musikman1

[Starship Krupa]

Wanted to mention: one of my favorite tools for getting rid of collisions is Trackspacer. The way it works is that if the sound of one instrument, we'll say piano, is obscuring another, we'll say guitar, you put Trackspacer on the piano track and make a send from the guitar track to the piano track. Et voila, whenever the guitar is playing, its frequency range is reduced in the piano track.

So if we think about what Trackspacer is doing, we can do it manually by deciding which instrument we want to emphasize in each frequency range. Let the piano take the mids, let the guitar take the upper mids.

As Tim mentioned, our ears/brain fill in the "missing" information from the track that's had the cuts applied to it.

We haven't gone much into compression yet, but creative use of that (rather than just using it to smooth out poky transients) can really make a track pop, while at the same time helping to keep it out of the way of the other tracks. On bass, start with about 7ms attack, 50ms release, 4:1 ratio. Tune threshold until the gain reduction meter is peaking at around 5dB. Use 0% or "hard" knee. Then play around with the release until you hear the bass "swinging" with the rhythm. I suggest not using a "vintage emulation" type compressor for this as you're learning, because the quirks they add can obscure things.

Many people have learned their compression chops using Meldaproduction's free MCompressor. Don't let the price fool you, it's one of the best workhorse compressors out there (the only thing it lacks is a mix control for easy parallel compression, although there are fairly simple solutions to this). There's no compressor I would recommend more when learning compression. The sonitus fx compressor that comes with CbB sounds good, but it has that tiny display.

[musikman1]

11 hours ago, Lord Tim said:

I'd personally have more subsonics in there, but if you're not sure how to treat those properly yet, losing them entirely is a FAR better thing than having them ruin your mix by not having them treated correctly.

Thanks LT, we've been talking mostly about cutting out the sub lows, so you're saying there should be some subs left in and "treated".  I wouldn't know which subs to leave in and/or how to treat or process them, so until I do I'll just use the info that you guys have been sharing with me to try to first cut the mud and separate the frequency ranges of each instrument.  I would ask though, if our ears can't hear the sub lows, would the purpose of leaving some in there be just for when listening on a surround system that has a sub speaker?

Thanks Starship, I'll keep that TrackSpacer in mind next time I have a few dollars in my music budget. 

1 hour ago, Starship Krupa said:

We haven't gone much into compression yet, but creative use of that (rather than just using it to smooth out poky transients) can really make a track pop, while at the same time helping to keep it out of the way of the other tracks. On bass, start with about 7ms attack, 50ms release, 4:1 ratio. Tune threshold until the gain reduction meter is peaking at around 5dB. Use 0% or "hard" knee. Then play around with the release until you hear the bass "swinging" with the rhythm. I suggest not using a "vintage emulation" type compressor for this as you're learning, because the quirks they add can obscure things.

Many people have learned their compression chops using Meldaproduction's free MCompressor. Don't let the price fool you, it's one of the best workhorse compressors out there (the only thing it lacks is a mix control for easy parallel compression, although there are fairly simple solutions to this). There's no compressor I would recommend more when learning compression. The sonitus fx compressor that comes with CbB sounds good, but it has that tiny display.

Thanks for giving me a road map for some comp settings.  I typically will try to find a compressor preset that works and tweak from there if needed. A lot of the presets will be named for what they would best be used for, which helps.  I will likely download and try that MCompressor, but I also have quite a few already.  I'm not sure if you are familiar with any of these, but if you do recognize any of these and can make a recommendation on which to use, that would be great.  With T-Racks 5 Plugin Suite I have T-R5 Bus Compressor, T-R Classic Compressor, TR5 Opto Compressor, TR5 Precision Compressor/Limiter, TR5 White Channel (which is a Compressor & Gate/Exp & EQ combo). With Waves bundle I have C1 Comp, H Comp, V Comp.  Some seem a bit more complicated than the rest, so again, to save time I usually check out the presets as a starting point.  A couple of these have the word "Bass" in the preset name, which are in the screenshots, so you can see the settings they start you off with for bass compression.  It seems these Bass preset settings don't line up with the starting settings you mentioned above. The TR5 Comp Attack is 67.6ms, you recommended 7ms, and the Release is 346.0ms, you recommended 50ms.  I'm sure it varies for each individual's preference, so the differences probably don't mean much, I just noticed the numbers were quite different. 

 

Edited May 24, 2022 by musikman1

[Starship Krupa]

I'd say that if you want to use something that's already in your locker, go with Waves C1. Turn off the EQ function, and pay attention to what the screen with the curves on it is showing you. It has a similar display to sonitus fx and MCompressor. I like the one in MCompressor because it's BIG.

I love the sound of the T-Racks processors I have, but the metering in the compressors is pretty slavish to the vintage vibe they're going for. Not the best for learning on.

Re: MCompressor, it's part of the Meldaproduction FreeFX Bundle, which includes 36 other top quality FX and utilities. I use MStereoscope on every project, and MNoiseGenerator and MOscillator are great for equipment setup. I mentioned MAnalyzer earlier. They're all part of the bundle, all free to use.

Okay, yes, the settings on those "bass" presets are way "slower" than the ones I suggested. They're set up for the thing that compressors were originally designed for, which is to control the dynamic range. Bass notes can leap out at you in a bad way, bass players put dynamics into what we play with slaps, picking harder or softer, etc. Sounds great "in the room," but not so much for a recording where you don't want a sound to dominate. I know, counterintuitive, if you're looking for the bass to "pop," why reduce the dynamic range?

In short, reducing the momentary level spikes allows you to set the bass track's overall level higher without it poking your ears every time a high-velocity note sounds.

My quest when I started recording vocals was "how the heck do these mix engineers get the lead vocals to sit out in front of the speakers like a hologram?" I played my engineer friend a track from Elliott Smith's XO to demonstrate. He had me do two things to my vocal track. First was smoothing compression, second was sweeping for the "honk," which has become a topic of controversy due to people misusing it. Sweeping for honks is a way to find any obnoxious freq buildups that are due to the imperfections of the recording chain and the nature of instruments and voice. You listen to your track for something that's unpleasantly poking out (and I emphasize that because part of the misuse is that some people think you have to do it for any freq that sticks out, and that's not true. Just the one(s) that are clashing and poking the ear), and first exaggerate them to make sure you have it right, then drop them a bit with the EQ. My rule is no more than 2 honk notches on a given track.

It sounded great, a big step toward what I was looking for, but it seemed counterintuitive: why would I take things away from an instrument (my voice) that I wanted to stand out. Well, duh, if you knock down the spiky things, you can crank it higher in the mix without it sounding obnoxious.

Get the concept? We tone down the spiky things so that we can turn it up and have it not hurt.

So what is the role of the "smoothing" settings vs. the "make it bounce" settings? With one, you're emphasizing the instrument's rhythm (and this was not, I think, the original intention of the compressor, engineers just figured it out), with the other, you're making sure that the level is reasonably smooth. We use two compressors. The "bouncy" (or "punchy") one goes on first, then the "smoothing" one. If you have ever refinished something, coarse sandpaper first, fine later. Same idea. All along the chain, dynamics processors are smoothing it out so that it can be louder.

What are we listening for as far as gain reduction? Until you tune your ears to hear the effect of compression, a good all around number on your meter is averaging 3-6dB. It's hard to do too much damage at that number. When you get better at it, the "bouncy" one can have more GR.

P.S., for the "smoothing" compression, I like something like the T-Racks 670 (it sounds so good it's like cheating) or whatever LA-2A they have.

Edited May 25, 2022 by Starship Krupa

[musikman1]

1 hour ago, Starship Krupa said:

We tone down the spiky things so that we can turn it up and have it not hurt.

So what is the role of the "smoothing" settings vs. the "make it bounce" settings? With one, you're emphasizing the instrument's rhythm (and this was not, I think, the original intention of the compressor, engineers just figured it out), with the other, you're making sure that the level is reasonably smooth. We use two compressors. The "bouncy" (or "punchy") one goes on first, then the "smoothing" one. If you have ever refinished something, coarse sandpaper first, fine later. Same idea. All along the chain, dynamics processors are smoothing it out so that it can be louder.

Thank you for the reply, much appreciate the advice! Not much time at the moment, so I will address the rest of what you said tomorrow, but for now just a quick couple thoughts....I am getting the concept, and keep the analogies coming, it's making things easier to understand, thank you!

I did notice today that just the overall level of my bass track in my current project is lower than all the rest of the submixes, and I can't bring up the individual bass track without it peaking the meters. So tomorrow I think I'm gonna have to turn down the rest of the mix so I can get more headroom on the bass, cuz right now it has nowhere to go. Maybe the comp will also help once I've gotten that far.

The way I have most of my projects set up is all the instrument and vocal tracks are routed to submixes for each instrument.  So I'm getting the concept that Lord Tim and others have shown me here as far as using the EQ to carve frequencies to make room, etc......but after trying some of that today, I think I need to practice a bit more, it seems easier said than done.   That said, although I think it was Tim who mentioned it better to use the plugins on the regular track instead of the submixes, it's not CPU friendly for me to put an EQ and/or Compressor on every individual track when many of my projects will end up with for example, ...7 keyboard tracks, 4 elec gtr tracks, 4 acoustic gtr tracks, 6 vocal tracks, so my thought is just put one on the subs for each instrument, since they are all routed there anyway.  I probably can do the individual track with bass cuz there's usually only one or two bass tracks.   Sometimes when I have multiple tracks for one instrument, it may just be a duplicate or overdub to get a fatter sound, so I can't put plugins on one of the tracks without putting them on all the others too.

So what I'm asking is about the initial setup and placement..., according to what I've been learning, and what you've been saying about compressors, (punchy one and smooth one), where and in which order do I place these plugs? I like to keep things organized, and right now I have plugs all over the place, some on individual tracks, others on the submixes.  I'm assuming a typical scenario, going by what you guys are suggesting, would be to put the EQ first in line in the submix(es) for carving frequencies as mentioned previously, then the punchy comp 2nd  in  line (in the submix), then the smooth comp 3rd in the chain in the submix, then whatever other plugs I use, like delay or reverb, doubling, etc, after that,  depending on which instrument submix I'm working with.  Does that sound like the right approach as far as where to put these plugs, and in that order?  I'm only saying use the submixes for the instruments that have many tracks feeding them.  I would think I could use the same FX chain order in the individual bass track(s) since there usually is only one or two. 

I'm just looking to see if I'm in the ballpark here, just as far as setting things up, I don't want to start off on the wrong foot....set it up correctly first, then I can experiment with the plugin settings from there, using the guidelines you guys have given me.

Edited May 25, 2022 by musikman1