Lessons

Lesson Info

Layering Bass Tracks

What I'm doing with the fender and that you can maybe see at home is I bypassed the pre empt section I'm just using a power and a portion of the head and really letting the sands amp r b I b my entire front, and, um, I think I pointed out yesterday that if you're trying to get good bass tones at home, that's to me, one of the smartest purchases you can make is it's about three hundred dollars in it, other than that it can get very noisy, but you can get that and it's just been insane sounding for amp in very, very versatile for all genres of base, but right now we're using it just strictly to sound disgusting it's not plugged in right center. We're gonna have to deal with that a feedback without having a noise gate, but basically just the settings I have on the sands m r presence, absolutely mast, which is a lot of the whistle we're hearing now drive is it about seventy five percent base is at one o'clock mids our eleven o'clock and troubles at about one o'clock and it's just a very po...

werful, gritty sound, which I will be very into on this threat have a listen to it anymore. This is obviously a much a lot like what we were using at the end of that last track but we're gonna in a song like this I would utilize it straight across because I don't want a certain part of the song to have a punishing day stone I want the entire song to have just constantly pummeling in the base department on a song like this which to me allows goes a lot against what I was saying about having the one impacting part come in but I think this song this song was written so it definitely has its valleys and its peaks and what were you saying last night about bursts chorus in this song like this about like tension and really tension and release it's not the heavy parts don't feel heavy unless there's another part that has contrast exactly and I think in this song I felt like the song did that itself so I didn't I don't feel as much where I need to use a certain instrument especially the base to be like this party dexter bass guitar impact I think that this song structure and a lot of the drumming really did that itself toe where I'm just going to go I get kurt balloon made a insight one time I read an interview and since um obviously a big fan he said in heavy music he wants the maximum amount of six six, six and every sound and that's no offense I supported people very much um just like that's the sound is he wants just pure insanity constantly in his tones and then it really lets the songs breathe for themselves in humanity he might have nots amec's from six success you might have said maximum amount of satan but it was something something evil related I think you have a question because you got the mike yeah, I was just curious as to what you were talking about there is if you wantto say you have a section in the song that you really want to give some oomph or something it would that be something that may be bringing a like a sub yeah you really dio that's kind of john are specific and you can do a lot of the sub with the d I which is where once we're done ramping this obviously I'm going to do a couple more layers of ramping on this so I uh I'm not going to start tweeting my idea yet, but yesterday I you were in here for that part where I pulled up that once I'm using a diana mix all I'm taking out of that a sub base so and you could really depending on how you wanted to deliver the song you could do that yourself you could automate it in and out you could even cut sections in and out I generally stay pretty constant and heavy music and then I use it more sparse mix like the pop rock mix that we were dealing with earlier to use when I'm goingto bring in extra layers in less layers but with a heavier band I'm generally just everything just a buttload attracts just going wild the whole time okay cool cool so let me I'm gonna norman of patching the axe effects I'm going to tweak a little bit in the software and then uh we're going to go and we have another track I was just curious you're mentioning that you gate euro amp is it like a pedal yeah normally I would use a noise gay I forgot it at home so that's why you're hearing a lot of the whistling coming out when it stops is because I don't have a noise gate in that going on over there whatsoever but normally I would screwed up well which one do you prefer to use? I using an s two or sometimes I use a deep vx two sixty six which is a gate compressor I don't he's the gate or that I don't use the compressor I just used the gate but it's a rack now it has two channels so some if you're running a really noisy head you can run that through the front end and through the effects loop and it's very affordable it's like two hundred bucks so go thanks current this huh? And we deal with korea computer we dealt with this a little bit yesterday using the axe effects for ah getting more guitar related sounds some people run a guitar head in front of a base cab or whatever combination of guitar amps and basins and cabs when I'm getting that guitar like a fifty one fifty sound or I think I'm I'm gonna mess with a couple of things on this right now, but when I'm getting a guitar if sent on a base I'm weary of using a good time I really value to pass a base signal same with a cab so generally while I prefer using relapse in the studio if I'm getting a guitar sound to add that extra great I used a modeler because I'm superstitious and you khun blow out your guitar can very easily with the base this and right now I'm just clearing this setting out because I'm going to make my own kind of guitar ish sand say something I'm just gonna put this in luke mode and start tweaking with the axe effects to develop that guitar ish sounding based on that I want this's getting so I know that I'm getting signal and now kind of pick a cabin going with a triple rectifier sound today because I want something a little more less smooth and mohr grainy on the disk russian and yesterday I was doing the same thing through a fifty one fifty style and or amps him rather I guess get the level right still working on it same thing I'm sure you guys were hearing it's building up a lot in the loan and it's just it's not even distorting in a good way so I'm going to filter a lot of the lowland out so that all this is doing is adding a top and just top end of distortion for me cool I think that's what I want or closer to it you guys are here when it just blasted for a second but it's just it's really bringing just a metallic top into it and it's it's not pretty by any means but it's to me I hear it and it just sounds really angry and that's what I wanted out of this so I just had to double check that I wasn't to anything okay, so consolidate these and I'm going to put these two tracks and phase with the d I as well as the track that every after later now we're dealing with we're talking about dealing with a lot of tracks and at this point we have four so I think that kind of drives the point home of extra layers I don't normally I might go with more mikes and more layers, but I don't want to be revamping a thousand times one looks and phase it's always harder to see once I get these really distorted tracks that I'm so fun of the waves as you can see you're so much more difficult to tell what's going on which is where your ears are really going to come in handy hopefully okay I think these are all pretty good with each other and let's listen to it is just the whole of the on ly base wait just reported right now what's his by all intensive for intents and purposes it sounds absolutely horrible but once you play through where we have our d I our sbt which was the cleaner and will actually go through both of those that was a recipe to classic here's our d I going on really bland here's my favorite and and then here's what we just did and as I bring them all together starts to make sense it's still you can hear each element but it's once you start taking and it makes sense is the whole tone and it's obviously still really disgusting and it's nothing you would ever want to listen to on its own but once if I'm playing this and I take out that horrible sounding part it's immediately feels like we just lost something very important and saying if I'm playing the part on I take out the sands and track it loses some of the more mid focused up thank god the sbt and I'm losing lowland so it all starts to build itself and even though we haven't started e queuing specific elements once they all gotten phase with each other it was like ok, this makes sense even though like the s v t I would say sounds the most pleasant and then the ax effect sounds just makes you want to just throw up but once they come together they start to really deliver each other and make one cohesive sound yeah, I was just curious once you kind of get that you know you've got like those four tracks that then do you go in then and kind of lop off the areas where they overlap dynamically or sort of I don't really I don't like look at this uh, analysis or anything I just kind of use my ears and it's all start doing that that's ah that's really what I'll start doing at the in the next we'll kind of get to that right now and then more in the next segment but yeah, like obviously when I recorded the axe effects I cut off a ton of lowland and then I'm going to go weaken there's no better time than now to start doing that yeah start taking what I want out of tones and taking less of what I want out of other things so I'm going to get just start doing it going to focus my lowland on the d I and then lo meds and lows from the spd classic my meds from the sands amtrak and then I'm gonna get primarily my eyes from the axe effects track that we just did question for you why do you use the dye for the low end rather than you know, because it is pretty dry why not use you know, like something through the treaty with, like the sub cake or something like that? Lee why? Why the why the d I I like to avoid having a lot of distortion on my lowland because of the way they're so much wider and take up so much more room at that point, that distortion is just going tio muddy it up at least this my personal opinion and experience so that's, why I'll take the dye for the majority of my lowland if I'm just going one or two mikes and if I'm going just I think I used the example yesterday for bands really just this is our sound were a hardcore band were a punk fan this is my aunt, this is how I wanted then at that point I'll go more with something like this up kick and a condenser on the cabin kind of e q those even before they get into the box, he came on the board on the way and around a need primp and take what we get from that but if I'm have if I have my options and I'm recording with a d I having unaffected not having a lot of stuff gives me more options to use the queen signal finman had asked will you ever layer based track with a program based tracks from lord how you can layer drums with samples or programming yeah, we talked about that a little bit yesterday sometimes I'll use the sine wave trick where you're doing getting extra lowland using a sign wave or a program based with something like trillion um but I also usually if I'm going to do something like that I'll just take a d I you know it's kind of the same idea one way or the other you want something that really clean lois something cleaning that's a three iron I would never rarely have I used a uh anything distorted as faras a program based a band that I've worked with quite a bit called they're called destruction of a king we used like get really gritty since base in the vein of the band dead prez if we have any hip hop fans and that's once in a million I'll be like you know what's a good ideas let's use this since base for your hardcore band and it turned out awesome but it's since base for me is usually something that's very clean and I tend to use a d I unless we're dealing with really low tunings in eight string guitars or anything like that, at which point I may up to program any more questions, we have ah, another question. Kind of a couple questions along the same line, which is people kind of asking, like, how should I e q base in you know, I know that there's really no one question no one way to answer that. Can you kind of talk a little bit about how to know what? Like the right answer for your music? Iss yeah, for what I do, I usually we would say I'ii q base by I obviously route everything to a bus or in auxiliary, as they're more commonly referred to in pro tools. I lo pass my d I and ii high past my distorted or more amp driven tracks. And I use that as my general rule of film. And then from there I start shaping towards the guitars in the drums on the auxiliary channel. I think that answered his question. Other than that that's the only rule of film I can really offer for that. And then it's at that point, it's all your ears. Okay, there was a question that came in from james murphy. Who said in regards to your common about not writing the base, how do you deal with sections where the base should take some focused you just pull the guitars back already just hope for the arrangements to allow the base to cut through more I ride based despite compressing so curious what you meant, I I didn't mean that I'm not going to make some tweaks hey james murphy, by the way, um, I uh if I'm dealing with something, if it's necessary, then I deal with it if it's unnecessary than I let the song deal with it, but obviously if it's something where I need the base toe have more impact volume wise, that's what I'm going to dio is turn it up, but generally I like that's always my automation and things like better the very last point in my mix I try and get a balance of everything and let the song breathe before anything else because that's in my production that I like to consider myself a song guy more than anything else, I want to have this song portray itself the best it can and then I'm just the finishing touches, so if I need to automate based down or guitar out of the way, then that's where I will go, I would proceed from there okay sweet and they wouldn't keep going cool so yeah, like robert ass I'm going toe at this point I'm on the hi paths or low past the d I and then somebody else covered that as well in a question I'm going to start e queuing different things out of the way in a more simple form not going to try and get to complex or perfect because we don't have all the time in the world for me to overthink but this is my d I right here obviously all I'm getting out of this is lowland find a spot where a fart out by sweep the frequency, which I think most people understand what I'm doing there were why won't notes doesn't really sound good, but once I get over here, you just feel it in your chest and that's all I'm generally looking for from a d I in the same I know that this is my sbt classic tracks, so I'm not going to go I'm gonna end up high passing in low, passing this one for simplicity sake and just find us about where I think it's going to fit and I'm going to do the same thing with the same zeal and the basic way can do it is from we have the lohans here mids air here high under here I'm going to give everything its own blocked by using high pass and low past filters right here is I'm circling I guess it's harder to see than it was yesterday I'm not cutting a whole lot of the lowland out of the sbt I'm keeping my well maids and I'm just letting what my d I is really focusing on focus on that and everything else like the s v t staying pretty full range at this point about what what frequency or you backing that also have really bad vision I'm just kind of doing a kid's united nation I'm cutting my high passes at sixty one hurts and then my low pass is at eight point six k which on a roll back a little bit more because I know that my sands amtrak can really offer me a lot in their summit six came yeah cool and then I'll get moderately more extreme with my low pet or my high fast as I go up in the distortion range from high passing at one hundred at this point and then once I get to that ax effects trick I used I high past guitars it to wonder it and that's what I'm gonna high pass that I'm going to basically treat it like it's a little rock that gets hard at that point and then the same as I'm getting more aggressive with my high fast I'm getting less aggressive with my low pass because I know that there's more high end information I want from these and here's like I just said, I'm coming in two hundred at this point now everything's a lot more focused on to where it's sitting overall now are asif extract is literally just thie absolute garbage of the tracks in the best light now men around this to a bus so here just so everybody I guess I didn't play that very long but doomed now it's distorting and it's pushing the speakers too hard, but it is powerful shit at this point in that what I want my bass guitar to be in a song like this vice three four and I hear my low and starting tio my loans pushing too much at so I know that my d I is really acting up at that point or I haven't cut enough lohan from other sections of the song are sections of my based own something locate that right now probably went a little too extreme with my gain on this, so and again I'm going to go through and turn off different tracks so that we can see what starts to disappear that's what no d I so we lost a lot of bottom and here's without that ax affection track that literally sounds like garbage is doing a lot for the guitar tone at this point, which that's finn and I have talked about that a lot how much he hates that distorted sound but once you take it out of the context of a mix you really start to realize like I'm missing something a lot of what you hear like a cz thehe tack like on on chugs or you know any sort of like you know like accent in part on the guitar's like what you think is a guitar a lot of that is the distorted base like the deal of the threat rattle on the pick attack and stuff on that you don't necessarily hear it but it's in there and yeah and it's something it's easy to forget about it and think it's easy to think when you're recording anything that it's like all got to come from this one source and you're trying to tweak one base and to sound perfect and then you might have the perfect sounding bass amp interiors and then the perfect sending guitar into your ears and your guitars air sitting I guess I need to do two things backwards gets hard they're sitting over here and your base is sitting over here and your kitchen is over here but there's something in between my films that's missing and tying the two together and I hope everybody understands that I'm like doing any cue from high to low um in a lot of times it's just that little disgusting section of high end on the base and sometimes even that high end on the baseline of the living even north and hugh terms like higher frequencies than the actual guitars themselves and it's. Really? I get subtle. I don't have that loud at all, but it's something where it thinks it disappears and you're just you realize it. It's, just like something tiny is missing. And it something I neglected that for a long time because I thought I could always just get a really cool based own and never really I definitely I plugged him alive yesterday. But my good friend jeff dunn, was real into revamping through guitar rams, and he sold me and I've my bass tones in there two years or whatever since he really started pushing that down my throat like that's. That's really sick. That helps a time. Yeah, so probably just this. The question that you maybe just answered it so would you agree? Question. And, you know, I wanted a studio myself. You have nations come in. And you? You made a comment earlier about maybe a punk band. Say, this is how I sound. You try to capture that sound. I think one of the greatest takeaways that musicians and or engineers and our producers can can draw from this session is that often in recording your sound is not the sound that you need. It's the sound that you think you want and it's the marriage between you know the sounds that's really important that we're talking about base and you brought up a very good point and just like where can the base support guitars and make them absolutely sore? This is on the high end is it really you know in my opinion would you agree it sounds like you do you know yeah and that's totally and that's something with all tones that you always have to deal with and sometimes the cool thing about things like this is a player could come in and it's this's my sound in the cool thing with only an thing is you don't have tio or using multiple lamps if you have a lot of inputs and outputs and can get wild you don't have tio nowadays with technology you don't have to insult their sound or say well we're not going to use your aunt but you can supplemented with other things and be like well have you ever thought about this take your sound is still in there because you weren't here in the class yesterday but the middle of the sands lamp with the fender power and it's like if I'm playing live that's my go to basic break really and it's the to me I love it it's a perfect base and but I know that it's not everything there's other stuff around it and you can start to show that with all instruments it's like well a fifty one fifty might be your sound but let's revamp through a dual wreck too and start to blend that in and it's like you're sound on steroids and that's still my sound but thank you for bringing this to me and there's also bands where it's like that's your sound and that's your sound and I'm not going toe argue with you because some bands have a really focused image of this is how we want to sound and it's I think your responsibility with the tools in the amount of input that you're given to really take or leave things and so I've had bands where my sound is this amp in this cab and you're the engineer and producer and you can put the microphones on but this is how I want my antis and sometimes I've had times where it's like ok, well the record suffered because of that but you also have times where it's like you were right in your band was delivered because of this and you brought this to me and this is how your band should sound you're correct but it's definitely it given take thing ah question from feynman do you ever mix in the same performances but play on a different base where we're not like, do you ever double the performance on a different base no, never I think that based waves take up so much space that there's no way to get the performance tight enough to where it would sound like one cohesive thing without ending up with phase issues or too much buildup in it would take a ton of work to make for me I feel like it wouldn't be worth the work for the benefit toe have multiple layers in different base d ies airbase sounds to warrant doing something like that I have friends that have done it, but I think they're not heard of it being done that way but um do ever use a sands and blair that is not going through the cab? Yes, I used the rack mount r b I sands amp before I got really into the hippie put your head in front of a cab technique that I covered yesterday I used to use this scenes in without a cab almost exclusively and I would use an impulse after it and as someone someone's at home where they can't make noise or something that sanjay harvey I with an impulse or a good bass amps in which is harder to find but you can definitely do something great with just that and not have to make a cab so I have used that I don't like the sands and pedal is much because I really appreciate the mid control and treating that like an amp but the sands of the wraparound sands amps the r b I in the p s a. I think it's felt it might be wrong on that. Both of those work very well, without a cab as well. All right, let's, take one more, sampson said. When mixing based, you use a sub in your control room, or do you find it gives an artificial artificial picture of the base? Um, I use headphones for checking low end. Um, I've considered using a sub because my control room actually hides base a little bit too much, but I generally will check with headphones to check for the lowland, and I don't. I just don't want my room rumbling with itself all the time, so I use eight inch monitors, and that used that in headphones. Usually get me to where I need to be.