First real band recordings... some questions on bass levels...

[chjohnst]

I just picked up a presonus firestudio tube, really nice interface. It has a total of 10 inputs, 2 of which are tube preamps and 8 in the back. I have a pretty decent setup with 6 mics on my drum set, a DI for my bass coming right from my GK600 head and an SM57 mic going into the unit as well. I have the DI plugged into the tube pre-amp I am hoping will help clean up the sound a little. My buddy on guitar is using an SM57 microphone as well.

So one of my questions I have is around recording the bass and mastering the tracks. I think I am having a difficult time getting my EQ levels set correctly on my bass, my amp and in the recording software. From everything I have read about recording the bass (and in general) it seems it is best to record the bass natural then worry about EQ and compression after you done recording your track.

Well I have found that at the end of every recording I do, I have a number of problems that I am seeing.

1) clanky strings - I thought maybe it was my attack here so last night my band and I were recording a song and I was EVER so light on the strings but they still seem to come through on my recordings. I thought it was my treble running hot, so I cut that back a little in another recording but it made the recording very boomy.

2) I cant seem to EQ the tracks correctly in the final mix down, I try to remove some highs to get rid of the clanky string noise things start to get boomy. I bump up the mids a little to give a bit more tone to the sound and things get distorted.

3) Since we are recording with overheads on the drums I think they are picking up a good portion of the bass frequencies which is also making it quite boomy, should I be putting high pass filter on them to cut those frequencies down?

So basically I am looking for some pointers here. I play with both a 4 string and a 5 string bass. Both of them are warwick corvettes with ernie ball nickel roundwounds. My amp is a GK600 and a Gk 4x10 cabinet. Where do I begin in my recording experience to make sure I am doing things "right" to get semi-studio quality recordings?

[BurningSkies]

Does your recording program have a decent parametric EQ? You should be able to isolate the frequency of your string/fret noise and pull out that by itself with a tight Q.

You're right that your overheads are picking up a bunch of everything. If you solo them once you've recorded, you should be able to hear that. Unless you're going for a lot of room sound or a garage sound, close mic'ing drums on home recordings seems to work best. I do sometimes use a set of 2020's for overheads on the drums, and in the mix, just a tiny amount goes a long way...back underneath the snare/hat and kick tracks.

Some string noise is ok, as once you've got all the other instruments in the mix, it doesn't stand out half as much. Of course, soloing a track is where that stuff sounds the worst. With your mids, you might try to attenuate the other frequencies instead of boosting a lot of mids. If you do that, you might have to raise the overall track volume, but you're less likely to clip the track, which is what it sounds like you're doing when you boost mids (or of course, you could boost mids, but then turn down the track volume)...

[chjohnst]

I think I forgot to mention I am using Reaper for my recording software so I have all the nice plugins that they provide as well as an EQ plugin that came with the presonus gear. I have tried some of the "default" preset EQs and they don't seem to work with the sound I am going for. I am looking for a very well defined, punchy and controlled bass rhythm. We play a lot of funk and blues songs.

I know for sure that things are boomy from the overheads because when I solo them out I hear a lot of bass coming through. I like having the overheads turned up pretty loudly since they really bring a "live" sound into the mix.

I guess some of my questions are, where do I start when mixing the bass tracks. If I start with a flat EQ where can I start increasing/decreasing to make the bass sit well in the track, cut out the boom and get things to be punchy (and growly).

Also, I tend to play my bass and amp relatively flat across the board on both the amp and the bass(s). I sometimes turn the bass or treble up/down depending on the track we are recording, ie if I am doing some slap I will spike the treble up. Since the warwick has both passive and active preamp (pull the know for passive), I usually record active. Should I be doing passive or active?

[Greyvagabond]

Although it pains me to say thing, you might want to try just going direct, instead of micing the cab, too. If you are recording in a small space, with guitar and drums at the same time, you might be getting some weird standing waves, and other esoteric audio engineering things that I don't understand, but know exist and know that they suck! I also agree about cutting some bass and treble on your head before boosting your mids. Remember, a little goes a long way! Good luck on your recordings!

[sonic assassin]

a couple suggestions:

high pass the overheads. i always cut mine at ~50 hz so the lowest crap gets cut out. if i were trying to cut out some bass bleed, it would be more like 200-500. you might lose a little bottom in your snare, and your cymbals MIGHT get just the slightest bit thinner, but you'll live.

take the bass DI during the tracking, and then invest in a reamp box. you can get the tone you want without ruining the room during tracking. bass takes up ridiculous amounts of bandwidth, and even if you find a great spot in the room for an amp, theres the possibility of giant standing waves and phasing. skip all that. go DI for now, reamp and record your amp later. live feel, studio tone.

high pass your bass. thats right.. not EVERY bit of that 31hz signal is necessary. most people dont even listen for the lowest part anyway. start a gentle high pass at your lowest note (31 hz if you hit a low B etc), and take some of that GIANT low fequency stuff down. it doesnt need to be there, and it would get cut off during mastering anyway.

cut off bits of low end from everything. all that extra garbage adds up. i cut my snares at 200. guitars about 150. kicks at 50. that extra bit of 80 hz guitar and the kick bleed in the snare, and the tom tracks that are just giant bleed mics.. all that extra low adds up. so kill it. you wont miss it much.

clanky bass? try a peak limiter ala 1176. might be labeled a FET compressor. set the attack to only catch peaks, release to let go right afterwards, high ratio (10:1), low threshold (+10 to -2 dB). might take some clank out. might want to low pass the bass about 6-8 khz on the DI track. you dont need full range on a bass.

dont listen to the bass solo. mix it WHILE listening to the guitars. it might hide some of that clank.

[chjohnst]

I am recording DI, my DK-B600 amp head has a DI out. It still lets me sit in the live setting but also get the DI out going at the same time. There is a button do pre/post eq, not really sure how that helps on whether I should allow my amp to EQ the sound coming out (I am interpreting that correctly on what its function is?).

Since my MIC is in a separate input, I can always mute and not use the track when I am mastering the track.

What exactly is a "re-amp" box? Never even heard of one.

I am going to load up the track now in reaper, stick a high pass filter on it. The whole song is in E (open E). So you are saying to put high pass filters on all the drum mics with everything getting cut off at specific frequencies so everything kind of "sits" in the track?

Let me look into the limiter, I think reaper comes with one.

[sonic assassin]

pre/post DI determines whether or not your EQ gets in the DI signal. if you want your EQ in, you go post. this was likely made for stubborn FOH engineers that wanted to start from scratch because they dont think we are smart enough to set our own EQ. if you want to start from scratch, go pre.

i vote you keep the mic.. but im this boards resident anti-DI lunatic. id rather plug into a cats ass than run a DI. but thats just me.

a reamp box will safely change the level and impedance of your signal back to instrument level so it can be sent back through the amp. the process here is: record direct. route direct signal back out, then through the reamp box, and then into the amp. mic and record amp on a different channel.

with the HPF's, i suggested you should cut off the unnecessary bottom ends of the tracks. try using the frequencies i gave for a reference. those are my personal tastes, so feel free to change them, but they tend to get rid of muddy low end from a source while still keeping the track's fidelity.

the frequency thing was only about the bass. since the song is in E, you dont technically need the bass under 40 hz. so get rid of that signal if your track is muddy. and you also dont need so much sub frequency. gently rolling off (12 dB/octave filter) some 40-80 hz might reduce some boom and keep the track full.

ive never messed with reaper, so i dont know much about its plugins. an 1176 (FET) type compressor is pretty standard. it should be included somewhere in your compressors. it is a PEAK limiter, not a band limiter or a full range limiter.

[bassbrad]

I suggest you turn off the amps(or isolate them), go direct and put on headphones and get the drum tracks right. After that you can replace all the other tracks taking your time nailing the parts and tones.
Your bassic track and tone have got to be down cuz there is only so much that you can fix in the mix, spend some time alone with the recording set up and get your sound and touch just right.
Reamping refers to sending a direct dry recorded track thru amps and or effects to simulate those sounds. It is a technique that gtr players especially resist but after they try it they will be hooked.

[chjohnst]

So just through quick playing around I was able to get put an HPF on the kick drum, snare and overheads. Definitely made a difference removing all the bass bleed that was happening and kind of "dial in" the sound I was looking for.

I used the garageband plugin which just has a single setting for the frequency and an option for resonance (whatever that means)

kick - 50hz
snare - 250hz
bass - 50-60hz
guitar - 150hz
overheads - 50hz

I noticed all of my drum mics sound a lot cleaner, less bass frequencies blaring when I had everything else muted but them.

Then when I went on to the bass, I just cant seem to EQ things correctly. Reaper comes with various plugins for EQ, mostly all some form of parametric where I can move the points around. I push the lower frequencies in the 30-120hz points to -6db and the bass get quiet. Start going into the mid area push them up a little to around +3db... etc. The bass still kind of seems "boomy" to me. What are some good EQ starting points and settings for a very punch, controlled bass tone.

-Chris

[sonic assassin]

im glad you HPF idea helped clear up the bottom end.

as for the bass, if you are JUST using the DI, then you might want to cut the top end off, a little bit of the sub frequencies off the bottom, and then try to replicate your amp's EQ.

6 dB might be extreme. try 3. and 30-120 is a pretty wide range.

try to cut it up like you would your amp's EQ. lows, low mids, high mids, highs, and annoying

if you're getting boom, take down some 40-200. you lose bottom end, add some low mid. 200-500. not enough definition, add some 500-2k. too much zing, take down 2k-6k. anything from 6k up is pretty much annoying haha.

just my opinion anyway. YMMV.

[HogieWan]

even if you hear a lot of string noise when the bass is soloed, it may sound great in the mix. Same goes for drums (esp. toms) ringing. If you dampen them to sound good by themselves, you ruin their tone in the mix.

[Nick Kay]

Listen to the straight up DI track solo'd. If that's boomy, the problem isn't the mix, it's the source.

I don't know why anyone would insist on tracking in a small room with amps blaring. If you have to track live for feel purposes, you NEED to isolate those amps. Stick 'em in closets and throw headphones on, whatever it takes, but get them away from the drum kit.

Half of the war with a punchy, controlled bass tone is a compressor. Start up an instance of ReaComp on your bass track/bus. Set the Attack very fast (3ms or less) and the Release around 50-150ms. Depending on the mix, set the ratio anywhere from 6:1 up to 15:1 with a 3dB to 6dB knee. Higher ratio, wider knee. Set your threshold so that a mezzo-forte or forte note gets about 6dB to 9dB of gain reduction on the metre (the all-red one).

You're also going to want EQ, obviously. I'd suggest a low-pass at around 5-7k for most bass tones, but if you want hi-fi, leave it be. Take one of the bands, set the Bandwidth slider for 1.5 or 2, then bump it up by about 9dB to 15dB. This is called your diagnostic band. You're going to sweep it up and down the frequency spectrum to find the boomy frequencies, then you're going to add a band to cut those frequencies, along with any other frequencies you don't like (fret clack, string noise, etc.). I'd suggest doing this IN THE MIX while listening to all of the instruments. Use a higher bandwidth for boom, use smaller bandwidth for noise artifacts.

PS: If the compressor takes out too much punch, use a slower attack (ie: more like 15-50ms instead of <3ms). That'll leave the transients and attack a little less doctored.

[chjohnst]

"Listen to the straight up DI track solo'd. If that's boomy, the problem isn't the mix, it's the source."

What do you mean by the problem is from the source? My DI is direct from my amp which I have set flat across the board to 0db. And I run my bass pretty flat as well. If I listen to it solo, its boomy defiantely. There is a limiter built into my Presonus preamp where I am DI'ed as well for since its a tube. But the solo bass DI track is definitely boomy. Now I can turn those both on/off. (Wish I knew exactly how that impacts the overall tone and sound).

I will turn all the EQs off and start with the compressor. Just to see if that makes any difference at all. I used some of the defaults in ReaComp, they pretty much kill the recording and sound pretty bad.

Could a bad battery in my bass be causing "boominess"? I just feel like something is not right or my settings are just way off. What I hear in a live setting coming out of the amp may not reflect what the DI is receiving.

[Nick Kay]

Anything from a bad battery, to dead strings, to playing too close to the neck could cause the bass to sound like butthole. Check out the EQ settings on the amp. If you're boosting the high mids and highs at all, you're compensating for the murky tone of the bass. You might want to try retracking with completely flat EQ on the onboard controls and using both pickups or just the bridge pickup.

The presets in ReaComp are just starting points. You have to tailor them to the mix regardless. They may also be killing your mix because you're neglecting to add makeup gain on the output fader. I don't like the Driving Rock Bass preset at all, but the Spanky Bass preset has its uses sometimes, if you bring the detector highpass down lower.

[chjohnst]

Apologies for what some might are ignorant or silly questions, I am very new to doing my own recordings. So doing a lot of research and reading as I go.

I am going to put new batteries in tonight to be safe. I just replaced both of them in my two basses about a month ago its possible I left them plugged in for too long (overnight)/.

Whenever I record (or play for that matter) I tend to put the entire eq flat across the board set to 0db for all the eqs (low, low mid, high mid, highs). Same goes for the bass, where I might every so slightly boost the bass, but lower the treble. I always keep the bass setup with both pickups (pickup knob is in the middle always).

When I record, I record dry with no plugins going in Reaper.

[Podgorny]

Originally Posted by chjohnst

it seems it is best to record the bass natural then worry about EQ and compression after you done recording your track.

The best way to record your bass is to forget about "your sound", and bring the sound up in the control room monitors. Listen to it in the context of the track. Make adjustments accordingly.

What your amp sounds like when you stand in front of it is of little importance in the context of a mix (especially if that mix contains lots of guitars).

If your strings are clangy, no amount of processing is going to make them not clangy.

If your bass sounds dull, no amount of processing is going to make them lively.

The real trick to great recordings is diligence. If something isn't right, fix it IMMEDIATELY.