Ideal bass mix sound?

[Eekarooz]

Hi,

Greetings. I'm new here, first post. I compose music. While doing mostly orchestral music I regularly do productions involving band (incl. bass guitar). Instead of mixing and tweaking bass guitars from my own perspective (which is clearly biased by orchestral arranging and sometimes more of a curse than a blessing), I'd like to turn it around and ask any of you accomplished bassplayers the following:

* How you, especially as a player, want your bass to sound like on a recording?

Ofcourse, with that I mean in context with a band in a pop/rock context, not solo bass.

- where is your favorite frequency range for body + how do you like to curve it with EQ
- in regard to finger/fret noises/high frequencies, do you like to emphasize them or filter them out? Do you like using any harmonic enhancers?
- what do you think of overlayering with subbass waveforms for extra thickness, pro or against?
- compression and settings, the details that you favor
- distortion, the details that you favor.

Any bass-recordings I could use as a reference as 'ultimate bass mix sound'?

Also, any set of VST plugins that you favour to process your bass tracks with? And could you elaborate why you use them?

Please specify in your reply also what kind of bass you play, from fingered plucked to fretless or upright. So I know better to which instrument your comment applies to.

Thanks a lot if you can add any experience for me to learn for. I like to understand bassplayers better and what they prefer so I can mix them better and create better lines for them that they can feel happy with.

 

[lz4005]

* How you, especially as a player, want your bass to sound like on a recording?

Ofcourse, with that I mean in context with a band in a pop/rock context, not solo bass.

- where is your favorite frequency range for body + how do you like to curve it with EQ
- in regard to finger/fret noises/high frequencies, do you like to emphasize them or filter them out? Do you like using any harmonic enhancers?
- what do you think of overlayering with subbass waveforms for extra thickness, pro or against?
- compression and settings, the details that you favor
- distortion, the details that you favor.

I applaud your intent on asking these questions, but the answers are going to be completely different depending on what genre of music you're dealing with. And the orchestration.

In my experience bass is the instrument that most often loses frequency space to accommodate other instruments.

If you were to record a rock song with just guitar/bass/drums, for example, you would most likely have room for a completely full range bass tone. For that same song in a band that has two guitars and a keyboard player would need to carve out a bunch of room in the sonic spectrum for those other instruments to have a good mix.

The ideal tone in a smooth jazz mix is going to be completely different from the ideal tone in a modern country mix, or a metal one, or hip hop or latin or classic rock, etc etc.

 

[Eekarooz]

Thanks lz, for the quick response. That's right it's relative to the style/arrangement and which other instruments may or may not occupy space in the lower register. Therefore, I think its best to ask for someone's favorite, with that person specifying him/herself the musical style it is related to. From that I can derive quite a lot of information and crossreference it with my own experiences.

To make it easier for people to respond to my thread, I can say that most of my arrangements are classic rock, jazz fusion, smooth jazz and the occassional metal song. Setups usually contains acoustic drums, electric guitars and keys.
I usually create the arrangements for the other instruments so there is as minimal overlap with the bassguitar as possible (that means avoiding low notes on guitars pianos when they're already played by bass guitar etc).

 

[Badwater]

The one thing that helped me learn to get the bass to fit in the mix was a chart for instruments and what frequency ranges they occupy. It's kind of weird, if you listen to a isolated track from the mix. It often does not sound good, or have a good tone on its own. But in the mix, the overall sound will be a lot better. One of the challenges is fine tuning the EQ for every instrument. One adjustment on 1 instrument will change the entire song. Thus, I like to record the instruments as clean as possible. To reduce finger noise on guitar and bass I record DI, and have the instrument's volume at 75%. This also allows for harder attacks in some styles music. And makes me work to get the tone while I'm playing. For Bass EQ, it depends on the style, I have presets for slap, and funk, as well as the old school round puffy bass tone. In all the mixes, I low cut between 40 and 50hz. This tightens up the bass on the low end. The only time I would use bass frequencies below 40 is for synth music for the sub woofer effect. There are a lot of guides on how to EQ the bass in the mix, and what frequencies work for the articulation. Most of the higher bass frequency is in the 800 to 1kHz range. You can do a shelf cutoff to emphasize this on most DAW EQ

With digital recording, you can get amazing clarity between each instrument when you place them in the mix without much overlaping frequencies. And other Trick I use is sidechain the limiter or compressor on the instrument I want to push back in the mix while I bring forward another, like during solos. This allows the lead instrument or vocals to be up front over other instruments especially in the crowded 500 to 900hz range.

Every style of music will have specific instruments that are out front. As you know from your experience from recording with mics, and mixing multiple instruments on a large area, it's not a easy task. Congratulations for being able to do it. With small bands, the recording is a lot easier to get mics, and DI tracks. But, to make the best of a few instruments, you can do a lot to give each it's own character without using much FX.

 

[silky smoove]

Short version: The words "it depends" could suffice adequately for all of your questions.

Long version:

where is your favorite frequency range for body + how do you like to curve it with EQ

The ones that are just above where I've emphasized the meat of the bass drum.

in regard to finger/fret noises/high frequencies, do you like to emphasize them or filter them out?

It depends

Do you like using any harmonic enhancers?

It depends

what do you think of overlayering with subbass waveforms for extra thickness, pro or against?

Never. I want the bass guitar, or bass synth, or the left hand of the keyboardist to sit above the bass drum. I've used a test oscillator to generate a sine wave way down low that I then controlled with a noise gate sidechained to the amplitude of the bass drum's attack, which forces the gate to open when the bass drum is played and close when it's at rest. That works well for overly large bass drum sounds like you might want in EDM or some types of hiphop when the drummer used an acoustic kit rather than an electronic/sampled one. For use on bass guitar? Yuck. Never.

compression and settings, the details that you favor

It depends. Generally medium to fast attack, slow release, soft knee, a range from 2:1 up to maybe 6:1 depending on the source material, usually just knocking down the peaks, but sometimes getting into full blown squish. It depends.

distortion, the details that you favor.

It depends. Almost always with a low pass filter employed on the distortion to keep the highs on the cleaner side of things. Sometimes in conjunction with a high pass filter to concentrate the distortion on the midrange where it frequently works best. Again... It depends.

Any bass-recordings I could use as a reference as 'ultimate bass mix sound'?

It depends on the genre. Pick something that the artist likes and is similar to their style and go from there. Don't overthink it.

Also, any set of VST plugins that you favour to process your bass tracks with? And could you elaborate why you use them?

I like Izotope's approach to EQ and compression a lot. I could be just as happy using stock plugins. They all basically do the same thing. Learn a few that you dig and move on. Focus on the product, not the tools.

Please specify in your reply also what kind of bass you play, from fingered plucked to fretless or upright.

It depends. Sometimes it's not me playing bass and I'm just engineering. Sometimes I'm doing both. Sometimes I'm laying bass guitar and bass synths on a track.