Lessons

Lesson Info

Mixing Bass Basics

Okay so yesterday we covered a lot of the foundation of getting ready to make our getting ready to track as well as a little bit of tracking which I think most people if they're in an advanced class know howto press record and what not punching and everything so today we're ah kind of starting with the basics of mixing the bass guitar here's just what we'll be doing today is mixing base basics going into his choosing tones by john aura which will use some of the tones we developed yesterday as well as we're ramping slightly different ones and then that'll be a first half of the day will start building a mix and well we're implementing the base into the mix is that have already been kind of pretty built before we got here and then at the end of the day we're going toe go against everything I said yesterday morning and we're going to learn howto retune the base using melody line as well as saving the base if you received this session from a band and they gave you something not what you w...

ere looking for how you can go about using e q creatively tio make the bass sound more to your liking and have it fit into the mix the way you wanted to um here mixing base basics is what we're going to talk about real fast and then we'll really get going into the hands on stuff so here's a diagram of how I feel based in an instrumental mix really fits obviously don't have things like re verbs or symbols or tom's, but I think base is very central to the mix is there spoke about yesterday quite a bit and I don't know how you guys feel, but this is how if I close my eyes and I listened tio sound, this is what I feel everything fitting in, um and that's just kind of what we're going to talk about today is massaging the base to be in that center place without taking up too much room or detracting from the other instruments around it. Um, we talked about most of these yesterday, but using the base to deliver the guitar tone as well as the drums and then just having it kind of define your mix and now we are ready to go. So yesterday we talked about a lot of different tones and we did stuff that was really driven and less driven and started a messing with dies a little bit and showing where we could get body from die and high end from guitar and this's kind of ah remedial from yesterday, but I want to show that we are actively revamping weigh right now, we got a lighter tone because we're dealing with a lighter song and I promise everybody will have one new song today so we don't have to listen to the same four riffs that we listen to yesterday over and over so I'm just going to consolidate these together because I know they were lined up since I did it earlier um and then I'm gonna walk well, this does this I'm gonna walk over to the anthony just kind of burrito off what I have going on since we don't have a camera on that today basically for this song I have almost everything on an sbt classic dead center except for gaining master um everything's pointed pretty much straight up and down to just give me the rial round vanilla sound as I referred to it yesterday which just kind of the classic bass sound it's been used for? I have no idea fifty years or more it's just the quintessential rock bass amp so I think it's kind of perfect for our starting point of delivering tone then like yesterday I'm just checking to see how well aligned are phases again. This is something you should always check your fit check phase with your ears and really listen to what you're hearing to make sure that everything's getting aligned via drums, guitar, bass, whatever but here I'm not in the best listening vitamin or what I'm used to it, so I'm using my eyes quite a bit just reading this tune auxiliary so aiken getting more clearly what's going on this's the d I working hand in hand with the real and there's the if it's a lot warmer so but I do from there with this is I send these in my technique, which is not everybody's technique is I go through a heavy compressor limiter at the end so that I can layer is many different versions of the bases I want, and they'll build up together instead of getting much, much louder or much much yes, they're only going to get louder so that's a lot of people are more meticulous about gain and writing the fader, but I just push everything into one spot let it work itself out. This is what I was I definitely feel with the re of like I really liked the way that I just had the I working and song what we want and through just the most standard of standard clean base sam's the circle that is the base shows up a lot more for me once I bring that anthem the second layer in a cz well azat limiting it to really maximize the glue of the whole thing I'm going to do I want to come up with one more track of this I'm not going to revamp the whole song but kind of see how we could make this on a little bit heavier on parts and that would help it's even something you could kind of bring in and bring out of a mix like this where obviously a softer saying you don't want something really gritty the entire time, but there might be parts where you want to beef up the guitars and I'm going to show that right now walk over and I'm just going to turn this soon's ambon so that's obviously not my exactly ideal sound, but I don't want to waste too much time turning knobs because obviously I feel more passionate about experimenting and getting this sound that's right for you, but I am going to re in this last bridge, break down part of the song and show how that can add impact by since we're using the limiter it won't be that much louder, but there will be a more apparent new layer so right there since I recorded way too much to me a lot of times with a mix is if you implement new elements instead of just trying to e q and use the different tools if you actually have new tracks and new things to introduce to a mix, you're going to get a lot more accomplished whereas a lot of times you'll want toe compress and make things louder and pan them and re experiment and sometimes all you need is more stuff or less stuff and that's I mean that's how music works is before there were amplifiers, you couldn't just turn up. You needed to add or subtract things and really so the root of a mixes, people playing music together. So it's a good way to think about things. We don't have any questions about revamping or anything right? Since I kind of dove right into that well, sistine had asked who said super intrigued by the revamping process, but confused as well. Can you recommend a good place for information about the basics, like the inputs and outputs to utilize the techniques applied here? Um, we did cover this yesterday, by the way. So yeah is one a touch base on it. A tiny bit. Um as you most interfaces are capable of it as long as they have more than two outputs. You do need a re a box for impedance issues, which I would suggest over and over again checking out radio electronics for any ramping or die boxes and google radio electronics. We happen radio engineering, and they will find it right. Perfect. Thanks for that. Thanks, fan or we watched yesterday's workshop. You can also do that. You could buy head to again. I sorting this out, put back to the correct bus, which is the base bus making sure these air altogether. And if you guys do have questions jump in the chat room go in the queues doc and ask your questions for andrew all right sorry about that press play without wanting you I apologize okay so here we have as you guys can see on the little screen right? All I have on this part is that very last break down at the end of everything where the chorus kits heavy so to speak so we have just the two tracks and then we added the third track but the cool thing is since it's not a several performance it's not going to take up a ton of extra space it's just going toe implement that little extra element for us and we're going to use the limiter to kind of control how loud that comes in. What I'm doing here is you sees I'm just kind of squeezing the waves to make them less dynamic in that way I know when the next part comes in it's not going to just attack me out of nowhere it's going to be kind of pocketed in there it's really added just a tiny bit of dirt on top of everything and you can use that more to your advantage or less and obviously you can also go in and start automating so to speak or turning different gains down so right now what I'm doing is going to turn the game down in the regular sands amtrak or regular sbt classic track and let the sands and one be slightly more dominant e and that's I think everybody gets what I was doing there where I'm just like building upon and it's nothing groundbreaking because I don't want to ruin the vibe of the song by having it sound like let me for motor had came in and did a part probably be pretty equal no one had died back into my forte of heavy bass and we're going to get a lot more start dealing with a lot more channels I wanted to start out slow so to speak before I'm messing with five or so channels of base so I hope everybody understands the precursor of what will be building up just generally speaking what what's the how many simultaneous based tracks do usually have go on that guy wonderful I think we're going up with five right now what was this was for the most part two and then we got to three um and you just kind of integrate them all toe for exactly yeah and that's where the limiter I've bust them altogether for the most part a lot of people treat him differently where they'll send the high into the guitars in the low into the drum bus or compress off of the drums which I would really love anybody at home wants to chime in I know I have some friends that air super experts on recording that air checking in but you can compress it different ways you can trigger with the drums and so on to glue everything together different ways but I'll show once we get deeper into mixing with guitars where I cut the basin where I cut the guitars to make sure I try and fit everything with the accused more so than dynamics excellent cool one second this is still routed to ram way have they're not in phase yet, but we have a d I and then that speaking classic track I'm going to re patch that amp and get a heavier tone and we're going to go through a couple run throughs well, just choose one part a couple parts for now to kind of get this ongoing and then it break I'll probably run longer reacts on everything so we have called sons worth while you're doing that front lord had asked, can you explain about the room set up size and maybe cab placement in real life for what we're doing here? I'm I'm not really actually sure well, why don't you talk about what we're doing here? Because I think it's important for everybody note you know that we use this classroom for everything you know, four classes on xl toe yoga toe, whatever and what we're doing here may not necessarily be critically perfect, so yeah, what we did is basically, we took the best of what we had to work with with the cab, we moved it out of the corner so we didn't end up with a bunch of bad reflections or comb filtering. And then the way I talked about quite a bit yesterday pretty extensively actually got really would you say uppity? The word friend with the microphone very, very passionate was very fascinated that some microphones I love room sounds on base, but I try and use minimal microphones one possible I used the u eighty seven and I have it picking up the room and the cab. I put it about ten inches away, sometimes further, and then if I'm dealing with a room that's really well treated, I'll just put the bass cabin, the dead center of the room and let it take up everything, but here we my main thing is just avoiding reflections and making sure that it doesn't sound bad when I'm playing it in the room and then when I toss them like her phone on it generally, it sounds right to me. I hope that answered fred's questions, but generally also an acoustically treated loom with mohr absorption for base would be preferable for me, but obviously most people, you don't have that option, and you, khun generally do a lot just by moving your amp out of the corner. Don't face it against the wall. Just be reasonable and give it room to breathe. But I think it's worth noting that you know what you're doing here, you know, in real life, especially with d I y set ups, you never have ideal conditions, even in a student. You have an idea, okay? And it exactly. And what you're doing here with less than ideal conditions in many ways is still still sounds great, you know? Thank you know, everyone wants to, like, focus on the imperfections, but like what I'm hearing coming out of speakers sounds great. And I think, that's the big takeaway is that you could do great work in in perfect conditions if you just make the most of what you have and that's absolutely true. I got my start recording, I think he's watching right now, my dad would go on business trips, and he had a pretty nice master bedroom and okay, computer and I would record hardcore band demos in his bedroom when he went out of town. Um, like I was talking about yesterday's, a bulba, all of those guys there first band were recorded in my dad's bedroom when he was on business in hawaii, I think so, thanks, dad, hands ebola.