Today I asked my Facebook fans what they wanted me to write about. Luca asked about how to get a big bass sound in the mix, using parallel compression, etc. Great question, Luca.
If you were to keep track of how much time you spend dealing with the low end in a mix, particularly bass and kick drum, verses everything else, I bet you’d be surprised. A huge, punchy, tight bass sound can make or break a mix. Once you’ve got the low frequencies playing nicely together, the rest becomes much easier to put in its place.
But how do you get that big sound, especially out of the bass track?
I’ve got a recording session coming up soon with a fairly well-known bass player around Nashville.
As far as I know, he’ll want to record direct. What I’m planning to do is something I’ve not done before, but I’m fairly excited about.
I recently bought a Presonus FireStudio Project for my studio. It’s a simple, one-rack space interface with eight microphone inputs. One of the unique features of FSP is that the first two channels can be either microphone or instrument inputs.
Do you struggle to get bass guitar to sound right? Is it always either too loud or too thin or too boomy or too round?
We’ve all been there. On some projects the bass just seems to fall into place. On others, you feel like nothing short of divine intervention will make the bass sound right.
Here are three quick tips for getting a better sound out of your bass tracks.
1. Go Nuts with EQ
There are no rules when it comes to EQ-ing bass. I’ve mixed some tracks recently where I had a 16 dB cut at 250 Hz on a bass track. Seems extreme, I know, but that was what it needed. Only then did the bass begin to sit nicely in the mix without giving me a headache from all the low-mid buildup.
You may recall that a little over a week ago we did a little ear training with drums. If you missed it, finish reading this post, then head over there and check that out, too.
Today, let’s have a listen to a bass part. In my opinion, the bass can be the most unruly part of your mix. It can sound amazing, but it sometimes takes a lot of wrangling to get it right.
I’ve written about mixing bass before, but let’s take a listen to an actual bass part.
Ready Your Ears
I’ve got two clips for you. The first is the dry clip of a bass, as it was recorded. On the second clip I did some processing. Here they are:
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After listening a couple of times, leave a guess in the comments section as to what exactly you think I did to the signal. Be as specific as you can. Let’s see who gets the closest.
Last week I posted a video called Parallel Processing -- Drums. In that video, we looked at how to use parallel processing and compression to get a huge drum sound.
In today’s video, we take a look at a cool technique for processing a bass track.
Today I asked my Facebook fans what they wanted me to write about. Luca asked about how to get a big bass sound in the mix, using parallel compression, etc. Great question, Luca.
