Creating Backing Tracks

[LowDown Hal]

I'm a NooB looking for some direction / hints.

The goal is to create a backing track for practice/performance. The idea is to EQ "out" as much of the Bass as possible while maintaining the other instruments and vocals.

I've got numerous SW packages. Most noticeably useful might be Sound Forge and/or Cakewalk.

I know the fundamental frequencies of the Bass Notes. I know I can learn a lot through tedious trail and error but am hoping to jump start the process. Any suggestions?

 

[Kronos]

What kind of practice are you looking to do?

From what you said so far, all you really need to do is set down one track, loop it, and play over top of it. You don't need to remove frequencies, IMO, because if your backing track is all low stuff, then you can be all over the board with what you play over top. If the backing track is just bass and you're playing bass over it and they start to blend together, just use one of the cakewalk plugins to change the first track's sound.

 

[Bruce Lindfield]

I've got "Band in a Box" and you can just set any instrument to drop out - I don't see why there should be any problem?

 

[ga_edwards]

I used to create all the backing tracks for my old covers band and duo. I started out my sourcing the best midi file of the song I could, edit it if necessary in Cakewalk Sonar so that parts were in the right places, add in click intro's and proper ending if originally faded out.

Then I would plough thru my samples and virtual instruments substituting the midi sounds with real instruments, althought I tended to go for the same few to keep things consistent. In particular I always used the same drum kit samples. Although you may think it great being able to use different tailored instruments for every song, in reality, it's a pain to play along to live, as it doesn't sound right anyway if the drums tones keep changing and it screws up the mix of the live instruments.

You may want to check out Propellerheads Reason software if you're only planning on using midi. This has some of the best samples and virtual instruments I've heard in a box set. It does require a bit more learning than your average sequencer to get going, but once you've cracked the logic behind it, it's wonderful. It can be hooked up to other sequencers too as a sound source which makes it really versatile.

I'd also make sure the volume of the drums was the same on all my backing tracks to keep things consistent and to increase the likely hood of my finished mixes being more or less the same in volume. You may need to check the velocity here too as well as the volume.

Even though I would be taking the bass, guitars and vocals out of the final mix, I'd leave them in there as guides whilst mixing so I could get the other parts to sit well.

Once I was happy with the mix, I'd perform some basic mastering. A tip here is to load all your backing tracks into a new sequencer file in separate tracks, then load an eq and a brickwall limiter/loudness maximiser into each track. Eq out everything below (I think) 80hz, which stops the sub bass rumble you make get when played back in the PA, then use the loudness maximiser to get the best volume out of the tracks and match them for volume.

Before I used to do this last step I had such a job getting a decent volume out of our little fender passport 250w PA. Mastering transformed them. We were able to comfortably fill a large hall at functions with such a small and low powered system.


This may be way to much info for you, but if any of it helps, then I'm glad I could help.

 

[LowDown Hal]

Thanks for the suggestions guys.

I guess I wasn't very clear in my original post. Basically I'm simply looking to play along with tracks off of CD's. I was thinking to EQ out some/most of the bass on the CD.

 

[Petebass]

The idea is to EQ "out" as much of the Bass as possible while maintaining the other instruments and vocals.

I've made backing tracks this way for bass-playing singers, and duo's with bass guitar. Vocals are impossible to cut out effectively, so I simply obtained the instrumental version of the song. Sometimes the Karaoke version is usable, but often they're too "hokey" sounding.

Load the song into cubase, logic audio, whatever you prefer, then I used a number of high pass filters, cascading into each other to remove all the low frequencies. The number of filters and the cut-off frequency will vary from song to song, so keep fiddling with it until it sounds right.

However, this removes the bass so effectively that the kick drum also disappears. I use a drum module to re-record the kick drum.

Done with care, the end result can sound like the original version, minus the vocals and minus the bass. And it doesn't take long..........

 

[ga_edwards]

However, this removes the bass so effectively that the kick drum also disappears. I use a drum module to re-record the kick drum.

This has got me thinking, there's a piece of software called Drumagog, which can replace individual drum sounds in a track with new samples, either built in or your samples.

I guess you could use this to create a new kick drum track directly from the original song with a new sampled drum. Then remove the low end from the song and mix in the new kick drum track.

Essentially doing the same thing but saves creating a new kick drum track from scratch, and it will be perfectly in time, note for note and retain the dynamics.

The alternative would be to hone in on the frequency of the kick and remove all the low on bar that frquency. That might work too.