Bass

[Geir]

I usually have least trouble with placing the bass in the mix when I use the bridge pickup and roll the tone-control all the way down. On the BR800 I use the patch "P71: 4BandLMT", on the BR80 : "P131: CLEAN COMP". Everytime I try something else I struggle.

Some really good advice here! I'll try to remember that next time.

[Flash Harry]

For 'standard four string' basses, i.e. the Jazz, Precision, any of the livelier ones like the Warwicks and the Ernie Balls, I find that the basic settings I described above work OK. You may want to put a bit of lift in the mids ~2-3db to accentuate the instrument's natural tonal qualities but bass is a rhythm instrument unless you're Greeny and then it's fair game for the lead...
Some tweaking of filter frequencies may be necessary depending on key and fullness required, but caution, fullness for one ear is mud in another.

If you have a plank with some flappy strings on it, I suggest that you dispose of it under the cover of darkness.

For the fretless Jazz I put more top end in to get the fretless growl, extending the flat frequency range to 12kHz or even further, again depending upon the key and the fundamentals thereof. I don't have buzz and clack to mask.

The low notes of 5 string basses get muddy quickly and although you want to extend the lower range, you still need to control the low frequencies. I find that the fundamental, i.e. the note that you play is not the most important bit of the sound, generally an octave above is the one that you hear, particularly on modern audio reproduction systems and modern rooms. To hear a bottom B properly, where the sound waves are able to propagate without hitting a wall and setting up destructive reflections, would need a room of about 11 metres long, a room of 6.5m would be a reasonable compromise but you're probably a good few dBs down on the transmitted sound by the time you hear it. I knew a guy who built a folded horn under his floorboards to give him the length required for these notes. But he was an idiot. Stick a sofa into the space and you're lost.

Bottom B is around 31Hz, so extending the low shelf 3db point to 31Hz means that at 62Hz (an octave above) you're well into the pass band for the filter, you're still going to get the punch, particularly if you have a gentle compressor set to allow the string attack through; at 30Hz an attack time for a compressor of 33ms will let the first full cycle through uncompressed, 66ms will let the first two cycles through etc. Look at the WAV of a bass drum in something like Audacity and it will give you a starting point.    

I wonder if I should start a blog with examples and settings?

I also have a six string fretless which only whales can hear. 24dB high shelf cut at 10Hz for that one and it can only be played under water....  

[IanR]

I wonder if I should start a blog with examples and settings?

Yes please

I am a bass ignoramus so, I would like to hear your words of wisdom.

[Flash Harry]

I wonder if I should start a blog with examples and settings?

Yes please

I am a bass ignoramus so, I would like to hear your words of wisdom.

Not wisdom, I just mess about until I hear something I like, make a note of it and try it again. Everything is under constant review.

[chip]

OK. If you read my post on the classic vibe you will know I am still obsessing about the bass. I just can't seem to get it right. I have now bought new strings for the bass and will adjust the pickup, maybe closer to the strings?

Andy R. You it appears use the BR1600 which I would assume is pretty much the same as the 1200 as in patches etc. So, may I ask. Do you use any patches on the BR? I have tried the amp, mic-ed up and patches but the bass gets lost in the mix. I have a compressor pedal ( the joyo one) which works great on guitar. Saying it gets lost is not quite what I mean? E/A and lower register notes seem to boomy to low, D/G appear better as they are higher, so they aren't to bad. All this boomy stuff seems to happen on the bouncing and mastering part of the process? When I play a cd back on various systems the bass seems to go missing? sounds boomy or muddy, there is no punch too it. Perhaps I'm too bass-y. I even turn the highs up full turn the lows off, turn the mids up and now I can't seem to get anything right with it at all.

This is now driving me to despair, it is the only real problem I have with my attempts. I am not really into technical jargon so going on about shelves, dithering and all the rest, means I just get more confused. I get the sound I want? I think? but when it comes to the final hurdle something happens to the bass. Looking through various stuff on the net, it seems the bass is a hard one to record and get right.
Maybe the strings, standard 40 etc gauge and the pick up may help?
Cheers.

Edit... I play bass with my fingers which may or may not help. I suppose this makes it sound even lower.

[Speed Demon]

Playing bass with your fingers is not the problem. It has to be in the recording/mixing process that things are getting a bit bollixed.

Do you have spectrum analysis capability? If not, I will PM you and give you my email address.
Send me your bass track(s) so I can go over them and possibly recommend a fix for this problem.

I'd also like to know if you are mixing using a DAW or doing it on your mixer/recorder.

[AndyR]

Ah! We've all been there... the bass part that sounds good on its own and then... in the mix you can have it either too loud or too quiet, and when you get right - the bluddy thing disappears in some sections.

Originally I was using justy compression to try and sort it, and then, I had to use the fader during mixing - ALL the way through the bass part, learning where I had to push it and pull it throughout the mix. (In fact, I'll still do this anyway, to bring out fills or to quieten it down during the quiet bits of the song).

Anyway - I hardly ever use the preset patches (the instrument ones) for a final bass part (I do for the guide, I choose one of the bass amp patches that seems to work and go with it). For the real bass part I use a Line6 POD XT Live that has all the Bass POD XT patches loaded. I rehearse using various bass amps and then pick one. It goes into the BR via the stereo in, but I record to a mono track.

Now, since Flash Harry's suggestions above, I DO have a BR patch set up for sorting the bass sound out. It's one of the multi-channel patches that I've edited. I use it as I'm recording, and record it "wet". But I could easily record without it and then use it on the recorded track afterwards during a mix/bounce. To do it while recording, I set its Location to Input 1-8 (because my stereo is coming in on 7 and 8 ), and then it affects the signal coming into the box.

All the multi-channel patch has is a CUT-COMPRESSION-EQ chain for each channel, nothing else (my "bass amp" sound is coming from the POD). It's set up according to the ideas further up this thread. The only one I can remember off the top of my head (I'm not near the machine at the moment) is a CUT below 50Hz. But after that it's some hefty compression (and I'm making sure the bass is coming as hot as possible into the BR without clipping), and some rather severe EQ - lots of bottom taken off, and some upper mids. It sounds like nothing on earth when you're playing it - but in the mix it sounds like the bass amp you were using in the first place. I've used exactly the same settings on several different "bass amps" from the POD (and different basses) - and all it really does is make the bass and amp sound I chose "come through" on the mix.

I've saved it as a User Patch called "Bass Squasher" and I haven't changed it since I set it up 3 or 4 songs ago. I have another one called "Guitar Squasher". If I'm tracking any guitar or bass, I just turn the appropriate one on on inputs 7 and 8 and record without even thinking about it.

I'll try and remember to go through my "bass squasher" settings and write them all down - but they pretty much are the ones that Flash Harry recommends above. If the BR1200 has got the same algorithms, you ought to be able to just dial the same ones in and get you close - but it might be the weekend before I get round to it.

===========

There is another thing that's been going on over the same period - how I play the bass. I was playing it like a guitarist - digging in to the strings to get the sound. That gives you lots of inconsistency (on a bass part) that's harder to control afterwards (booming, thuds that are too loud, too quiet). What I learnt was that an electric bassist with a "hit bassline" touch doesn't do that - he/she plays consistently softly and uses the amp to get the growl/punch/attack. I set the amp/etc up "too loud" and play quiet... took me a few months practicing with a LOUD sound to relearn how to play like this. And I NEVER play an electric bass without amplifying now - if you do, as a guitarist, you start pushing into the strings to get the tone again... and you have to unlearn it again.

It's made quite a difference - if I were to play as hard as I used to, all the inputs would be clipping with the way I set it now! The softer you play, letting the amp do the work, the more "powerful" the resulting bass part seems to be in the final mix (and it's a lot "cleaner" and cuts through nicely).

[bruno]

I was never satisfied will my bass sound, until I bought the Kemper. I know its an expensive solution, but it really does work :-)
B

[AndyR]

Here you go, Chip, my settings from my "BASS SQUASHER" patch. It might work for or help you - but it's a good starting point anyway... Like Flash says too - I just fiddle and make note of what I did, I listen to what other people do and try their thing, if I like it I keep it... but everything is under constant review.

Remember, I apply these effects to whatever bass + bass amp I'm already using (I suspect it would also work on a DI'd bass part with no amp modelling, or even on a bass part that had already been recorded using one of the BR's bass amp patches).

All it's really doing it applying some hi-pass filtering (a low cut), some compression, and some EQ.

I doctored one of the MULTI CH user patches. Hopefully you've got the same thing on a BR1200

Use these settings on whichever input channel or track number the bass is on. Mine is set on my stereo inputs, because that's where the bass signal is coming into the box as I'm playing and recording it - so I set effect LOCATION to "INPUT 1-8<NORMAL>" and then in the effect editor I put these settings on channels 7 & 8, linked.

If I was doing it to the bass after it was recorded, I'd set LOCATION to "TRACKS 1-8" and put these settings on whichever track(s) the bass part was on.

(I imagine the BR1200 will be saying 1-6, rather than 1-8).

Here's my magic numbers for LCUT, COMP, and EQ

LCUT
On/Off: ON
Invert: OFF
Freq: 50Hz

COMP
On/Off: ON
Threshold: -12dB (This assumes the bass signal is as hot as possible without clipping)
Knee: HARD
Ratio: 4.0:1
Attack: 45ms (Any lower than 45 starts removing the initial "pluck" of the bass note - sometimes you want that)
Release: 50ms (This was a guess! Flash Harry might have some useful input here...)
Level: 0.0dB

EQ
On/Off: ON
High Type: SHLV
High Gain: -3dB
High Freq: 1.00kHz
Mid Gain: -6dB
Mid Freq: 200Hz
Mid Q: 1.0
Low Type: SHLV
Low Gain: -12dB
Low Freq: 50Hz
Level: +6dB (Adjust this to get the volume level back up again, +6 happens to work for me)

I record all my bass parts through this now. And I've found that I very rarely have to do anything else to the bass afterwards in the mix - I just set it where I want level-wise and there it is.

First set your bass sound up like you want, then turn this effect on.
DO NOT be put off by how "weedy" it sounds with the effect on. Instead, listen to the bass part in the mix when it's done - it works by MAGIC!

Incidentally, since learning how to do this, I've found that the MULTI CH effect algorithm is one of the most useful things in the BR, nearly everything goes through it at some point now - even the onboard drums. I think of it like a channel strip on a mixing desk. It enables me to use a LCUT on everything before mixing (VERY important for clean mixes) and it enables me to use more than 3-bands of EQ (I can use the EQ here and the usual EQ on the channel during a bounce) - that last bit is probably a bit dodgy for purists, but it gets the job done!

I have ended up creating user MULTI CH patches for:

GENERAL INPUT 1-8 (for recording)
GENERAL MIX 1-8 (for bouncing)
GENERAL MIX 9-16 (for bouncing)
- these three get edited depending on what I'm doing

And:

BASS SQUASHER
GUITAR SQUASHER
- these I don't change much, they're set up for using on the stereo inputs without thinking when recording bass or guitar

The only pain is remembering to adjust the effect LOCATION depending on whether I'm recording a part or bouncing.

[danieldesete]

Thanks for sharing your bass secrets AndyR