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Help me hear myself over a recording

H

Hippos Melas

Apr 9, 2009
337
7
Milwaukee, WI
#1
I do cover videos (and now some originals) for my YouTube channel, but I've noticed that I can never really hear myself on my recordings with the songs playing in the background. Is there a trick to having myself heard?

Here's why I'm stuck:

-I can't turn the volume up on the track with my bass sound in it. It's already as high as it can go without distorting.
-I EQ myself with plenty of mids, sometimes maxing out the mid control on my Sterling and still not really hearing myself. :eyebrow:
-I've tried turning the track down and the volume of my bass playing up, but still can't hear myself over/in the mix...I still get lost very frequently
-I've also tried compression, but I don't get good results with this, meaning I don't know how to use a compressor properly to hear myself over the recording.

So, yeah...help? :hmm:
 
#4
But I've seen people who just mix the recordings and can hear themselves better. I don't understand how they can do this and I can't. I've been told it's all in the compressor and I'm probably not using it correctly. I'm usually squashing at only a 3:1 ratio, is that not enough?
 
#10
Check out Waves MaxxBass
turn down the actual bass and turn up your mids so you hear more definition. MaxxBass will add back in the lows but not suck up the bass power.

You may have to put up a couple of videos
One best for Laptop
One best for speakers and headphones/earphones.
You can see what I mean at the MaxxBass demo site.
 
#11
Why not just turn the backing track down all the way in reaper, put your bass at a nice level and just bring the backing trck up until its sit nicely underneath your bass? You shouldn't need any compression for something as simple as that, but if you like where the bass is sitting for the most part but it sometimes gets lost then it may help. You can go further than 3:1, bass can take a fair bit of compression.
 
#12
For compressors I generally tend to always use a 4:1 ratio and just experiment with hard and soft knee settings. Less than a 4:1 compression can make it seem like it's not actually doing anything. I make up for the ratio by setting the output gain at around 6 or more, depending on how much the signal is getting squashed.
 
#13
Charling said:
Why not just turn the backing track down all the way in reaper, put your bass at a nice level and just bring the backing trck up until its sit nicely underneath your bass? You shouldn't need any compression for something as simple as that, but if you like where the bass is sitting for the most part but it sometimes gets lost then it may help...
Click to expand...

+1 to this.

Electric basses don't have a huge dynamic range. Unless your playing is unusually sloppy, you shouldn't need any compression to make yourself stand out over the track.

It's more likely that you either didn't EQ enough low end out of the backing track, or that you simply set the level of the backing track too high.
 

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