Lessons

Lesson Info

Tracking with a DI Bass

Now we're going to start getting tones I talked about the radio d I when we were finishing up on pro tools just froze again there goes um now we're going to talk somebody online asked about more colored dies they mentioned one by red I believe we're going to use an avalon, which I really like when I go through that a little fast because there's a lot of options on it I'm going to use the I'm gonna use the infinity again even though I said usually want to pair it with a more fancy d I but we're going to kind of show what the avalon khun dio and then we're going to get to actually tracking stuff and that will be a lot more fun grand folks sort of unarmed that, um let's keep this for that so usually if I'm recording an active base I was talking that there are a million options on this base, but I keep it flat just so that I'm doing most my e q with units that are designed to e q and offer tone this is the radio again still very dry now we're going to switch to the avalon and you might I d...

on't know if you want to come get kind of shots of this but the front's going to be hard to rotate too much wait, can we get a shot of this for people at home coming from over there, all right? The avalon has, like, boost and tone options and then active it can be passive and just offers you a lot more stuff if you're using just almost it's a pre empt as well as a d I box, you can always already here it's coming in a lot hotter there's boost with it as well so you can get really hot, which I don't need it right now, more color then before what we're using and it just offers different shapes that air you can hear it as I switched their very mild, but they give you just different contours to your bass sound and it's just a nice layer of thickness, especially if you're using a very thin, more passive base something like offender this can really thicken up your tone. Yes, so when you're tracking through that thing with the settings like that, you're putting it down like that. Yeah, so is there what's the advantage to like using that? And I'm sure there's a plug in that does something really close to that plug ins not really life plug ins yeah it's not a dreamy there? Yeah it's not I guess there's plug ins, they get really close now I've never heard a tomb emulation plugging that sounds like a real tube the, um there's like stephen slate has the rc two council, which is a really subtle to thing a new universal audio has theirs and they make awesome stuff but it's to me there's something really more fulfilling about using something physical that can make or break your tone because you do a bad job with a plug in, you exit out of it and you're fine, but I think there's ah of trouble engineers have said it, but most recently ah, of my friend sam pura said, there's art in commitment and that's why? If I don't have to use a plug and I'm not going to use a plug and when I'm being based or vocals or whatever vocals it's a big thing, but I'm going to distort the hell out of my vocals with a distress or compressor and that's how they're going to go in and it makes you a better producer makes you better songwriter everything by learning to commit so what you have and that's why I wouldn't use a plug in because you could definitely fatten something up within two of emulation it's not the same, though I think there is like something you feel in your heart like I don't my heartbeat doesn't speed up when I screw something up with a plug in, but if I screw something up with a real piece of gear like for better or worse, I'm excited from that so that's why would use something that's not software based um where we're at right now we went over this in the very beginning, but right now we have the base going into the d I going into the pre upon the apogee into pro tools which you guys see on the other screen when it comes up and that kind of shows us where we're at, where the most basic version of anything but we're really tracking now so I will check our will get a new trackman then we'll get moving on the base on actually recording stuff so I'm gonna track one through the avalon eventually, but I'm going to show you guys a couple of different options that I brought to this song just in case I don't remember exactly how to play this song because it's not my band but here's a song five my friends pop band and here's based through a couple different the eyes which is touches on what we're just finishing up talking on here is just a regular radio dye into a neave ten seventy three fram which is for nerds is a really cool for you it started a little bit when I was recording but you can hear the difference I'm sure different that's the need that I was talking about with the hollow body base the infinity and then here's that same one through a to preempt kind of like this avalon it's a universal audio six ten and it's not playing back because that's my luck you can hear already like there's a fat or low into that which is coming compliments of the two um go back to the other one again and that's kind of although I used this saying I used a radio b I box and just two different preempts what effectively it did what I was showing the difference between these two you missed out on the dry one I guess I started this segment for a second with it and also I have this with attract the song four times so I had this to show some pretty it's kind of nerve drunk still and it's really the subtleties but it's like I said it all makes up the big picture here's the steamer base through the need friend at this point like that's the most dry of all of them but it's also like it that's the purest tone to me is it really like there's? Not a whole lot of extra stuff going on, but I can hear the base and it's the most focused and that's it's sort of the two prettiest is well see you got a little bit more life, a little bit more distortion going on on so what I'm going to do now is start talking about a monitoring with am sims can I pull up the key note again so I don't know if you guys track at home using you mentioned plug and so I know that I'm sure you guys all have an idea there's all kinds of different guitar plug ins and base plug ins and usually I'm a a strong opponent of base plug ins for processing base I've never gotten to a point where I've done records with all am simulators on guitars, but I've never gotten to a point where I didn't need something analog on my base but I'm going to show you that's not always an option so I'm gonna show you guys how I would go about tracking with an am simulator to just get my ideas out. So if this was say that you're in this band the story line and you don't think that the I sounds awesome even though I know it sounds awesome what you could do it I'm back on brothels for is pull open something like easy mix if I can find where it's at anybody have any experience with easy mix or tune track easy drummer they really full software that can help anybody sound like a pro that's another company that I want to remember to thank at the end so I go you guys can see this I chose base I thought I did shows able fire amplifier says a pop band but that doesn't give me enough options so what this plug and does is it's got a lot of different like effects and you can it's not all amps but for this purpose I would choose just an amp simulator to kind of give the bass player more of a feeling like ok, I'm playing I'm not just plugged into a computer I'm playing through an amp it's just different options very simple settings on this but I'm running into pro tools confusing from my recent swiss so it's easy it's easy to kind of monitor better that way or for a lot of people I sometimes I like recording the die but you'll notice a lot in this will be a good time to show this up sometimes when you're recording a deal you'll hear a lot of ah stuff that you don't like and as much as a perfectionist as I am with you here little pops and little noises and an amp really compresses the tones and we'll get rid of a lot of pops and like we're just light subtlety noises like you guys heard how yes I can move this over and you know, prove my point um that first day I was playing had some distortion going on on the premium level because they recorded it too hot is over excited maybe track the screens a little a little so get me what I need so this I can adjust my input and output and it kind of controls like you can still hear a little inconsistencies and that's something that as an engineer of player you're going to have to learn to deal with is the bass player who happened to be myself screwed up when tracking and luckily I have three other tracks and this won't be the one that makes it but the more stuff that you start doing with the amps is you start to smooth that stuff out obviously these air more metal german amps but you can hear like the inconsistencies get covered up by the compression and the drive of the amps on so that's a reason like a lot of times I'll track with that because it's the same way that a vocalist wants reverb on their vocal is it makes you less concerned and less worried about the little inconsistencies and you're playing that are just part of playing an instrument you can't always be one hundred percent perfect but somebody's playing at ninety five percent you don't wantto break their spirits but you know I heard a little pop I heard a little distortion so that's why a lot of times they'll monitor with anam simulator and in real life I prefer to monitor running through a sand zamfir an axe effects or something really cool that sounds better than a plug in but once you it's easiest just to deal you're just dealing with a d I tracked you don't have to deal with groups and especially it I guess smaller level and when you're dealing with maybe you don't have a system that can really support a ton of channels that's the way to go is to keep it simple and then you can start to like once you get to your mixing stage you can revamping kind of go wild so I went the wrong way on the can I pull up the key note again? So this kind of what we're talking about is keeping signals in phase, which is something ah, once you run a lot of amps, sometimes things the polarity of the tracks will be inverted and it'll start to send hollow and it's weird because you're like, ok, three different microphones I got this head I have a diet should just sound huge and it can really start to thin itself out, which is ah, I'll have to draw to explain that once we get into microphone talk more it's easier to edit because I don't know how far you're morninto engineering so do you do a lot of editing stuff at all? A group editing is a pain in the ass where is editing one track sometimes is a pain in the ass I forget you need a much like editing a whole track with many yeah, like editing drums, is a lot harder than editing your vocal track and so on. So once if you can avoid group editing, it's a lot easier to deal with. So, depending on that, all comes into deadlines like if I don't have a long time to do a session, I'm going to get all my am so I don't have to read it. But if I have a day where I can react based and I'm going to keep it simple when I'm tracking and then kind of go wild later on and that's, none of these air edited so that's where we will start. Um, tracking, I think, is, uh, something everybody knows everybody's riggs different. But if we were to, we're going to say we, we've obviously shown the dyes work. We know that stuffs running and with a simple command zero on pro tools, we would have just tracked this, and we would be ready to roll as faras editing.