Mixing bass

[Whoopysnorp]

One of the things that I struggle with in my recordings is getting my bass tracks to sit in the right place in the mix so that they are audible without sounding too loud. Lately, I've been tending to shelve the high end and bump up the lower midrange, as well as shelving the low end on the guitar. I'm actually getting the kick drum and the bass to coexist pretty well in my current recordings, although there is a certain song where our drummer does a pretty intense double kick assault at the same point where I am doing some stuff on the bass that I kind of like and would like to make heard, but I don't think there is enough sonic space to let everything through.

Of course, I also apply the usual compression, although I find that too much makes the individual bass notes less defined. Also, I'm recording my tracks direct from the line out of an Ampeg SVT-II into a Presonus Eureka. What tricks do you guys have for making an interesting bassline audible underneath a nice fat guitar tone?

[dagosto]

Try out this EQ trick.

Cut 100Hz out of the kick track because that's where the bass lives. If you need some more bump up around 100Hz in the bass.

Also try panning each track a tiny bit to the side away from each other. Just a tiny bit.

[Nubus]

Originally Posted by Whoopysnorp

One of the things that I struggle with in my recordings is getting my bass tracks to sit in the right place in the mix so that they are audible without sounding too loud. Lately, I've been tending to shelve the high end and bump up the lower midrange, as well as shelving the low end on the guitar. I'm actually getting the kick drum and the bass to coexist pretty well in my current recordings, although there is a certain song where our drummer does a pretty intense double kick assault at the same point where I am doing some stuff on the bass that I kind of like and would like to make heard, but I don't think there is enough sonic space to let everything through.

Instead of just shelving I use a lot of hi pass/lo cuts. Using them with lo shelf can work too weird as it seems. I first saw this live, a guy didn't strike the board for me and I was checking out his settings (which by the way sounded awesome). He had the hi pass engaged AND rammed the lo shelf all the way up on snare. Sounds fat.

[Nubus]

Just re-read what I'd typed and realized the coffee wasn't kicked in yet. Maybe the cold medicine is working by now so let's see...
For that sort of metal-ish sounding stuff I'd have the guitar living above the bass and the bass living above the kick using hi pass filters. Then using the peak eqs cut out an area in the kick where the bass can poke through. I have a hard time cutting out very much of the bass guitar because it can lead to missing entire notes. 150 seems to build up a lot on the amp, but it can be a dangerous freq to remove. I kinda feel like when I'm recording bass I don't end up cutting too much of it away other that with the hi pass.
To me bass is more nice at 80 hz than 100. That can depend on the key of the song too.

[Whoopysnorp]

Maybe I'm expecting the wrong things out of my mixes; I dunno. I'm getting my current mixes to sound pretty good with some EQing, and you can certainly tell the bass is present. You can't catch every nuance of the playing, but maybe I shouldn't expect to be able to make all of those come through. It's weird; it doesn't seem like it's the kick drum that's getting in the way of the bass, but more like it's the guitar. But then when I solo the guitar and bass I can hear the bassline a lot better. I should probably post some clips so you guys can critique them.

[dagosto]

Try eq-ing some of the rumble out of the guitar with a HPF. It may not just be the kick but both the kick and guitar. Frequencies build up on each other so instead of extreme filtering from one track, mild filtering from 2 tracks could do the trick.

[Whoopysnorp]

I've got the lows rolled off on the guitar already but maybe I should do some more. Thanks for the tips!

[Nubus]

Hmmm you're already getting rid of the murk in the bass and balls frequencies. For note definition in the bass guitar you could look up around 400-800 Hz. They might be getting lost on the bass or covered up by other instruments where the low mids are over powering.

[abarnett]

i agree with nubus. Hearing what the player is doing is in the 400-800hz range. sometimes up to 1.5k. don't cut so much of that out.

Are you tracking live?

your issue may be a phasing issue. sometime this can be solved by listening to the other tracks and saying, "can I hear that muddy part of bass on this track" if that's the case, try finding that frequency and cutting it out of that track a bit. Most of the time it is low mid. This has helped make things more defined for me after a sloppy placement but every time i have to mix like that I swear I'm gonna spend more time on mic placement.

[Whoopysnorp]

With one exception, in the project I'm working on right now all of the bass was overdubbed after the fact, with the drums and guitar having been done live. This means no bass guitar in any mics at all.

Interestingly, one the one cut where the bass and drums were recorded simultaneously (with plenty of bleed into the drum mics), the bass seems to sound a bit better than on the other cuts.