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What is the deal with scooping mids
- Thread starter poochiecheeks
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A thing to understand about tone is that there is no one fixed place where your bass should sit. Lots of people have lots of opinions about what you should do with your EQ, but the truth is that they do not have a complete understanding of how you sound and what your band sounds like. Unless someone is in the room with you experiencing your sound along with your band, they almost certainly don't have the full picture. Plus, things like the way you play affect your ability to cut through. If you naturally play with more punch to the strings and you are very good at not stepping on other instruments, you can get away with a lot more tonally. A reason why the scooped mids because popular in genres such as jazz funk or fusion is because the bass often has enough room that a scooped tone won't get stepped on. But whether you have that luxury depends on your unique situation.
The way I tend to think about scooping and boosting mids is that what you shouldn't be afraid to cut, but you have to cut with some purpose. What you don't want to do is just carve a hole between 300 and 1.5k. That's the stereotypical mid scoop that sounds mildly interesting by itself but then becomes virtually inaudible in a mix.
If you want to try my broad tonal recipe, this is what I do:
- Slight cut to low bass (in the 60Hz range and below) I prefer to do this with a high pass filter as I find the response is more musical.
- Boost ~300-330Hz
- Cut ~600Hz, though depending on the amp it might have to be as low as 500Hz or as high as 1kHz.
- Boost treble to taste.
I tend to like how this sounds in the mixes I play, which tend to be not super crowded but involve primarily guitar or keyboard. I also play a lot more actively than some other bass players, and I find this general idea lets me be audible while still resembling a bass.
All of these adjustments are pretty mild. How an amp sounds when you're using really strong voicings (deep cuts or peaking boosts) can be very subjective and it's really best to keep adjustments to as little as you need to get what you want.
The most important lesson that can come out of this, imo, is that listening is an active process. When you're making changes to your sound, you have to listen to what those changes are actually doing so that you can determine what works and what doesn't. I'm sure this sounds trivial, but a lot of people (both guitar players and bass players) simply don't get to this point, either because it just doesn't occur to them or because they are too focused on the act of playing that they can't keep up with the act of listening.
It sounds like you guys are new to this and don't really know the details of EQing, which is fine.
But due to this, boosting frequencies is a waste of time and why your band sounds bad right now. Here is the easiest fix - set everything flat on the board and don't boost anything. Simply high pass the low end out of the guitars and vocals to start. Many boards have a high pass button that you can simply press. If yours does not, then it will have a high pass knob. I high pass guitars around 150hz to start. This should not get the guitar player angry if they have any concept of tone. Singer won't even notice this difference.
Then I would high pass all the drum mics at around the same except the kick. Leave the kick alone and the bass alone.
Now listen to your bass and the kick and see where they sit. You both will have a lot more space to make little tweaks. One easy tweak is to cut 60hz a little out of the bass and add it to the kick. Then boost a little bit of 100hz on the bass and cut that out of the kick. Don't boost the crap out of it, I am talking just a little bump and cut.
If your band still sounds bad, then you need to examine the source sounds. How the amps are set..etc. It's not about slamming frequencies in the mixing board unless you want to sound like crap. Before you boost any frequency you need ask why you need to do this and then don't do it, until you have a much better understanding of how to mix.
My minor boost cut suggestion is conservative and just gives a little space in the mix for the kick and bass to coexist better.
But due to this, boosting frequencies is a waste of time and why your band sounds bad right now. Here is the easiest fix - set everything flat on the board and don't boost anything. Simply high pass the low end out of the guitars and vocals to start. Many boards have a high pass button that you can simply press. If yours does not, then it will have a high pass knob. I high pass guitars around 150hz to start. This should not get the guitar player angry if they have any concept of tone. Singer won't even notice this difference.
Then I would high pass all the drum mics at around the same except the kick. Leave the kick alone and the bass alone.
Now listen to your bass and the kick and see where they sit. You both will have a lot more space to make little tweaks. One easy tweak is to cut 60hz a little out of the bass and add it to the kick. Then boost a little bit of 100hz on the bass and cut that out of the kick. Don't boost the crap out of it, I am talking just a little bump and cut.
If your band still sounds bad, then you need to examine the source sounds. How the amps are set..etc. It's not about slamming frequencies in the mixing board unless you want to sound like crap. Before you boost any frequency you need ask why you need to do this and then don't do it, until you have a much better understanding of how to mix.
My minor boost cut suggestion is conservative and just gives a little space in the mix for the kick and bass to coexist better.
Live gigging player for 30+ Years. I set my amp with slight dip in the midrange. Technically, according to the knobs, the amp itself is slightly scooped in the mids, no matter the bass- active, passive or whatever. Bass to occasionally one overdrive or chorus pedal to amp, and that's IT. My bass amp is my stage monitor- always have PA support, and I don't get into what the sound guy is doing. Between singing, dancing, grooving, playing and entertaining, I just don't have time to investigate the sound person's settings in-depth or even comment much on them if at all.
I don't get into the numbers, but I use my ears, particularly with regard to tone and active EQ. I'm always loud enough to hear me, and I can dial in the tone I want and which I think is appropriate. I have NO control over what the soundperson does that is fully independent of my own stage sound, and unless there is absolute malfeasance from the soundperson for my bass signal, vocals and other related things, I have to let that go. TRUST the soundperson... of course until such time as they are not trustworthy.
If you have a soundperson, and I suspect you do, focus on the tones you're happy with hearing (forget the numbers for a while), provided they're ballpark appropriate for the song, and leave further sound engineering to the soundperson. I love thinking technically about frequencies and such, but at the end of the day:
-YOU are the performer, so focus on what best enables and least distracts you from doing that
-Trust the soundperson to make you sound good, right and appropriate, absent any critical mixing errors.
-Find a tone and volume that works for your ears and is broadly usable across a range of songs and stay in that ballpark.
For extra-curricular credit, offer to take your soundperson out for a drink, coffee, dinner, and get into the numerical weeds to see where both of you are as a friendly gesture of like minds.
IMO, "not scooping the mids" is meant as a cautionary tale for young guitarists to not dial their amp in to 10/0/10.
Unfortunately, that lacks nuance and the internet has distorted it into the idea that 6/4/6 will make you absolutely inaudible, which isn't true.
The problem is people develop a fear of turning their mids down, even when it makes them sound better in the mix.
Unfortunately, that lacks nuance and the internet has distorted it into the idea that 6/4/6 will make you absolutely inaudible, which isn't true.
The problem is people develop a fear of turning their mids down, even when it makes them sound better in the mix.
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Whoa....
I guess you feel you need to keep up with the gtrs...and whilst this sounds like it could do that in terms of volume, its the wrong aproach imv.
Unless you are playing huge stages..and even then.... this not a rig for the inexperienced. Or rather, it is and thats one reason you are having problems with the mix.
If the gtrs approach the problem the same way..you are into volume wars rather than tone wars.
If the gtrs have stacks too...you basically need to drastically streamline the backline.
LOL.
Back in the 90s I was in an original thrash metal band where our singer was just awful. His voice had the aggressive tonal quality of a combination of Ronnie James Dio and Ethel Merman - except without any ability at all to sing on pitch! He basically just shrieked and howled the lyrics without any regard as to what the notes were supposed to be.
In the PA, we'd try to EQ out some of the more obnoxious frequencies from his vocals and pile on a bunch of effects, like chorus, flange, reverb, overdrive, etc.. and then bury it all in the mix as much as possible.
We'd run a clean vocal signal to his personal stage monitor and then crank it up so he'd hear too much of himself, letting him believe that he's louder in the FOH mix than he really is.
Very often, audience members would come up to us complaining that our singer was too quiet and requesting that we turn him up. We'd reply by saying that we were experiencing "technical difficulties" and that it was the best we could do.
I like to think that we weren't actually lying, depending on how you define "technical difficulties".
I thought we were talking about scooping mid frequenciess, not scooping out the guy standing in the middle of the stage!! With that said, there are plenty of bands out there that could learn from your 'solution'.
Ah I should have mentioned thats the PA for all the instruments, everything is direct so me and the guitars are both coming out of that setup.
Scooping "mids" (itself a broad term) in a live situation removes frequencies that make it easier to hear your instrument, due to the fact that there are generally mid-range frequencies that are relatively under-occupied by other instruments.
A good example of this is how guitar speakers typically have a noticeable dip in response betweek 1k-2k, which may allow a bass to "cut through" by boosting, or at least, not cutting, at that frequency. The AudioKinesis "Hathor" series of bass cabs was actually designed to take advantage of that dip.
In the context of a mix this is an extension of what is often called "frequency slotting," and the frequencies that help with audibility are often counter-intuitive to find. FWIW, as a live engineer I can wind up with some pretty strange-looking EQ curves in order to make sure that every instrument has its own spot in the mix.
EDIT: ah jeez, a couple of people already responded similarly, including the always-white-paper-quality @Wasnex . Sorry to be mostly redundant.
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I was going to suggest getting a p bass and setting everything flat, but then remembered you said 80s pop. Doesn’t all that stuff use an octaver and a Stingray?
The "deal" with "scooping the mids" is a phenomenon of how human hearing works, and something we call the "equal loudness contours", famously first described by Messers Fletcher and Munson. It's why old stereos have a "Loudness" button, the activation of which boosts the lows and highs (which is the complement of "scooping the mids").
en.wikipedia.org
The most famous example of this for musicians is the love/hate relationship guitarists have with the Boss MT-2 Metal Zone pedal, beloved of so many teenage guitarists with small amps playing in their bedrooms. To put it simply, "scooping the mids" sounds good in isolation, but too much of it in an ensemble setting can be bad.
also:
Equal-loudness contour - Wikipedia
The most famous example of this for musicians is the love/hate relationship guitarists have with the Boss MT-2 Metal Zone pedal, beloved of so many teenage guitarists with small amps playing in their bedrooms. To put it simply, "scooping the mids" sounds good in isolation, but too much of it in an ensemble setting can be bad.
also:
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Guitars do not generally need an HPF, because the lowest fundamental on a standard tuned guitar is E2, which is 82.4 Hz.
