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Mixing Bass Guitar

Lesson 69 from: Recording Metal with Eyal Levi: A Bootcamp

Eyal Levi

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Lesson Info

69. Mixing Bass Guitar

Lessons

Class Trailer
1

Intro to Bootcamp

13:44
2

Purpose of Pre-Production

15:54
3

Technical Side of Preproduction

11:32
4

Pre-Production: Setting Up the Tempo Map

12:05
5

Pre-Production: Importing Stems

10:10
6

Pre-Production: Click Track

15:26
7

Creating Tracking Templates

17:03
8

Intro and the Tone Pie

04:51
9

Drums - Lay of the Land

10:44
10

Bearing Edges

03:09
11

Wood Types

10:36
12

Depths and Sizes

04:00
13

Hoops

02:38
14

Sticks and Beaters

07:38
15

Drum Heads

07:30
16

Drum Tuning

1:03:54
17

Drum Mic Placement Intro

10:37
18

Basic Drum Mic Setup

53:36
19

Cymbal Mic Setup

35:24
20

Touch Up Tuning

46:55
21

Microphone Choice and Placement

40:34
22

Drum Tracking Intro

01:01
23

Getting Tones and Final Placement

34:51
24

Primary Tracking

31:54
25

Punching In and Comping Takes

20:11
26

Guitar Setup and Rhythm Tone Tracking

01:59
27

Amplifiers - Lay of the Land

10:00
28

Amplifiers & Cab Shoot Out

27:12
29

Guitar Cab Mic Choice and Placement

03:56
30

Guitar Tracking and Signal Chain

29:07
31

Finalizing Amplifier Tone

51:24
32

Guitar Mic Shootout Round Robin

05:21
33

Intro to Rhythm Tracking

07:46
34

Setting Up Guitars

15:02
35

Working with a Guitarist

05:04
36

Final Guitar Tone and Recap

04:10
37

Guitar Tracking with John

15:19
38

Guitar Tracking with Ollie

32:03
39

Final Tracking

22:08
40

Tracking Quads

33:44
41

Intro to Bass Tone

01:26
42

Bass Tone Setup

07:35
43

Bass Tone Mic Placement

16:42
44

Bass Tracking

45:08
45

Intro to Clean and Lead Tones

02:15
46

Clean Guitar Tones

34:04
47

Lead Tones

10:58
48

Vocal Setup for Tracking

11:26
49

Vocal Mic Selection and Setup

02:38
50

Vocal Mic Shootout

09:13
51

Lead Vocal Tracking

38:09
52

Writing Harmonies

07:44
53

Harmony Vocal Tracking

23:25
54

Vocal Warm Ups

11:39
55

Scream Vocal Tracking

18:56
56

Vocal Tuning and Editing Introduction

01:35
57

Vocal Tuning and Editing

29:26
58

Routing and Bussing

25:16
59

Color Coding, Labeling and Arranging Channels

17:54
60

Setting Up Parallel Compression

30:50
61

Setting Up Drum Triggers

10:41
62

Gain Staging and Trim

1:00:54
63

Drum Mixing - Subtractive EQ

25:38
64

Drum Mixing - Snare

23:00
65

Drum Mixing - Kick

11:39
66

Drum Mixing - Toms

24:47
67

Drum Mixing - Cymbals and Rooms

17:23
68

Drum Mixing Recap

08:57
69

Mixing Bass Guitar

16:26
70

Mixing Rhythm Guitars

1:16:07
71

Basic Vocal Mix

1:08:59
72

Mixing Clean and Lead Guitars

58:55
73

Mixing - Automation

43:35
74

Mastering - Interview with Joel Wanasek

31:01

Lesson Info

Mixing Bass Guitar

As far as bass goes there's nothing too complicated going on. (Heavy bass music) I'm gonna move the bass track up next to the aux so that I can walk you through what I did. (mouse clicking) I don't know if you remember but we put four microphones on a base cabinet. In all honesty, I never use base cabinets. It's a very rare thing. I don't feel like they go quite low enough and I always have to do way too much work to get them to work. There are some guys though who do a great job with base cabinets and, more power to them, but they're just not my thing so. Generally not my thing. (Heavy bass music) Okay. So... we've got. Right here, bass DI. I'm going to get off narrow mix. Just make it easier for you guys to read. Okay. So, we got the bass DI the regular bass DI. The bass pod, and then a duplicate but I got that turned down all the way so that doesn't even matter. Bass pod, I've got a low cut on it everything below about 298 is gone and then on the DI, I've got it at a hundred and dow...

n. You guys are familiar with how to do this, this is one of the most talked about bass techniques ever where you have one sound for the low end and another sound for the mids and high's so that you can affect them differently normally you would get that by splitting the DI into two. I guess technically this is kinda like that, except that this DI went through the bass pod first. But it would still play it at the same time. They're both limited, the bass pod has a little more distortion from decapitator and then, they both have 1176's on with quick release, quick attack, low ratio. Very, very low input so it just kinda kisses it and keeps it from peaking out (Heavy bass music) which is important because he plays really, really hard and this song goes back and forth between pick and fingers and it's absolutely man-handled, which means that there's all kinds of transient spikes and even volume things happen which is the exact opposite of what you want on bass. You want bass to basically be like a flat line holding down the bottom of the mix. So, yeah you've gotta handle things appropriately. Then we've got this bass bus where these are all sung together and a little bit more learning. Here I did some EQ to get it to fit with the drums a little better. I cut out, 80 is kind of where I'm emphasizing on this kick I mean on this bass I want the kick to emphasize around and the bass to emphasize around 80. So I boosted 80 and I've cut 60 harshly, outta here as well as DI, all the way down to this 200-ish range, I'm just trying to get it outta the way of the guitars. If I was really being crazy, which I might be right now. I might... Might do that. To get it even further outta the way of the guitars. Because that's where the very low of the guitars is gonna be sitting. I did a very steep cut off, 35 and below you don't need that stuff. Just adding headroom into the mix. I cut out this garbage area of the bass I mean I'll let you hear it with and without. (Heavy bass music) Good. There's a lot of note in this 800,900 region so I boosted that a little (Heavy bass music) It's important to start to play back some music with it because you can get lost in the sea of distortion and totally lose track of where you're at you may think that you're adding too much of a certain frequency and then you start playing everything back and it disappears, you want enough between eight and one in the bass so that you can have some note definition and then at two k again you can help it out a little more but you just gotta be careful when you're using distortion. Because there's gonna be some nasty, nasty ringing frequencies, I basically just roll off past that because who needs it anyways in base not a lead instrument. Also... I've got the kick side chained in to duck the low end of the bass. What that means is that every single time that the kick hits, let me just show you. I've got a sand on the kick. Called bass ducker. You can see. Goes in to bass ducker right there on the multi-band, that's on the bass And basically the low end of the kick is ducking the low end of the bass so every time the low end of the kick hits it turns down the low end of the bass an appropriate amount that keeps them from muddling together, it's just one more trick to use. I've also got the high mids and the high's compressing so that they just don't stick out weird because that's what bass will do to you, so... (Heavy bass music) It's a little subtle, but listen to how much more unruly the lower end gets and how much more distracting the high end gets when I turn that off. (Heavy bass music) going to be a little more subtle. Check it out. (Heavy bass music) cool, then we are headed to the bass aux which I did just a little bit more EQ-ing I got rid of a little bit more of this garbage 500 area, boosted a little bit more of two the two-ish area and got rid of some more high's and rolled off a little bit more. Sometimes I feel like I need to emphasize what I already did once before for whatever reason. We'll try before and after. (Heavy bass music) One thing that might be useful we turn 80 up just a hair. (Heavy bass music) notice I have it on bell because otherwise it's a shelf, I want just 80 coming up. If you notice when I don't have that on, the low end shifts a little bit lower which by itself sounds cool but that's exactly what I'm trying to have it not do, I'm trying to have the low end come up a little bit so that we can focus 60 on the kick, I want the kick beneath the bass on this. (Heavy bass music) I don't need two instances of that. That is a mistake. (Heavy bass music) And I think this might work or at least it'll get us started. Just a combination of... (Heavy bass music) You know I feel like one more stage of multi-band might be appropriate here. (mouse clicking) On the low end of the bass (Heavy bass music) (mouse clicking) (Heavy bass music) It's a lot more controlled now. (Heavy bass music) Probably hard to hear that stuff for some of you guys that are on headphones or small speakers. It's hard for me to hear it too it's got not sub in here so I'm kinda flying blind a little bit, hopefully it helps. (Heavy bass music) (mouse clicking) (Heavy bass music) (mouse clicking) (Heavy bass music) alright, now that's something I'm probably gonna just keep coming back to, it's always the part that takes the longest is getting that low end right. Sometimes it takes five minutes, sometimes it takes a week. You never know how long it's going to take, but now move on to some guitars.

Class Materials

Bonus Materials with Purchase

Eyal Levi Bootcamp Bonuses
Drum Editing - HD

Ratings and Reviews

Ron
 

I'm on lesson 19! Already worth every dollar!!! Priceless insight! I have already incorporated some of the ideas (preproduction common sense stuff that I never thought of, but damn). VERY HAPPY with this course! ALWAYS LEARNING and looking forward to the next 50 (or whatever) lessons!!! Excellent course! GREAT PRODUCER/ENGINEER, GREAT DRUM TECH, and GREAT BAND!!!! THANK YOU!!!!!!!!

ceeleeme
 

I'm just part way though and I'm blown away by the quality approach Eyal takes to getting the best out of the sessions. I love how well everything is explained and Eyals calm manner is just awesome it really makes you want to listen to the gems of wisdom he offers.

Will
 

Wow is all I can say. This bootcamp goes in so much depth from tuning drums, setting up guitars, to recording and mixing. I have learned so much by participating in this bootcamp. It has taught me some new recording techniques and signal routing for my mixes. I just want to thank Eyal, Monuments, and Creative Live for taking the time to do this. It has been amazing and I will keep going back to these videos.

Student Work

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