The really deep tone is going to have to come from the DI side of things.
What type of DI are you using to try to get this?

It's a Radial Pro DI ... a pretty basic piece.

The Modulus basses I've heard all sounded like a million bucks in the hands of a good bass player. (a poor bass player usually can't afford one) If you can get your hands on a nice tube pre-amp, tube compressor, or active pre-amp - you might find what you're looking for. I use a Groove-Tubes Brick / TL Audio Fatman / or Avalon U5 for bass, depending on the sound we're trying to get.

Don't be afraid to experiment with mixing in the mic, but it had better be shoved up close to the speaker - or it might get 'phasey' with the DI sound.

You also have to EQ your bass so it doesn't conflict with the kick and other low frequency instruments to give it clarity. Give them all a place of their own in the audio spectrum where they can shine.

My 2 cents.

Good luck!

You also have to EQ your bass so it doesn't conflict with the kick and other low frequency instruments to give it clarity. Give them all a place of their own in the audio spectrum where they can shine.

+1 The bass drum and bass need to have separate boosted frequencies. I like boosting the bass drum around 40 Hz and the bass around 60 Hz, but whatever works for you.

Another thing you have to factor in to consideration is what is being used to play the bass: picks and fingers will require different EQing. I find that using fingers are pretty much essential if you want that "mushy earthquake" bass sound that is popular these days. I'm more about getting the bass to cut through the mix, but I still cut the extended highs a lot. An aggressive low pass at 4,000-5,000 Hz might get you closer to where you want to be. Also, finding a low frequency to boost helps a lot. If you boost around 110-120 Hz you should be getting the sweet spot that will fatten up the bass while giving it more girth.

While the bass being used is very nice, one thing to be careful with when using a DI is losing definition, that is, the bass just becomes a vibration and you can't hear the individual notes so well. Some people like this, but I hate it. Mixing in some mic signal will help bring the clarity back to the bass while retaining that phenomenal "mushy earthquake" tone.

In mixing I often get a "thin" bass track to have work with. If I am not able to get the bass player in to re-track it, I have used with some success plug ins like waves maxxbass to create low frequency hamonics that were not present in the orginal recording.

The best way is to record it right from the beginning. I like to use a Mic on the cabinet plus a decent DI.

Recently I got a great deep sound by using a U87 on the cab and Radial JDI Direct. I used a Neve Portico 5012 Pre without silk engaged into a Cranesong Hedd 192 with a some pentode on. The amp was a line 6 bass amp, the bass was a ibanez SG 4 string. I Shifted the DI track to match the mic'd track and that was it.

ALL of the definition of a bass track is in the hands of the bassist.

If the player doesnt dig the notes out and doesnt mute the strings to define the attack, you will get that blurred lowend. I dont care what recording method you use, what equipment is part of the chain, none of that matters when considering the attack.

The left hand has almost as much to do with the definition as the right.

Picks vs. fingers isnt an EQ choice per se. It is different. But doesnt mean it needs to be a different setting.

When choosing the placement of the bass as opposed to the kick I feel you have to consider the style of the music before deciding which will carry the lowest sub frequencies. Not all music is kick=low with bass above.

Country is a great example. The bass is almost always the lowest sub harmonic with the kick adding the essential thump for the movement of the beat. Sometimes this leaves the bass with very little definition but with the ability to move the chordal arrangement easily through moving the root.

Bass is hard because it occupies so much space. Putting a compressor in front of an EQ allows you to filter certain compressed frequencies into the mix. Time aligning the DI with the mic is essential.

These things are only recording techniques to clear up the bass path.

Without the initial clarity of the bassists technique, these are only surgical.

Also...

Sometimes you need to aim higher than you think. Don't boost frequencies below 100Hz (maybe even cut them?) and instead go for frequencies between about 150Hz and 300Hz approx. It often still suprises me how much of an illusion of low bass you can sometimes create by boosting in the low mids (or cutting those low mids in other parts.) I think that if your ears hear enough of the first few overtones of the bass, you brain kind of fills in the fundamental for you. Doesn't always work, but worth a try!

IIRs wrote: Also...

Sometimes you need to aim higher than you think. Don't boost frequencies below 100Hz (maybe even cut them?) and instead go for frequencies between about 150Hz and 300Hz approx. It often still suprises me how much of an illusion of low bass you can sometimes create by boosting in the low mids (or cutting those low mids in other parts.) I think that if your ears hear enough of the first few overtones of the bass, you brain kind of fills in the fundamental for you. Doesn't always work, but worth a try!

This is one of my favorites. But then I tend to go for an old school R&B style bass. Low mids were key to the sound of these old bass parts.

The philosophy of mixing bass can be very different now and can be drastically different in live sound. So much live music is all about running as much power as possible through the subs and smacking people in the chest with 40Hz signals. Don't confuse that with what you are trying to get on your recorded mix.

No more cab mic'ing for me, unless I just gotta' please someone...

REDDI

Cut out what you don't want

Print it

End of story

Done

Davedog, can you expand on the theory and practice of aligning the DI with the mic tracks?

thanks!

No more cab mic'ing for me, unless I just gotta' please someone...

REDDI

Oooooh. Almost makes me wish I did live shows again!

yeah... scored a pair of em'.....

WICKED fat, meaty, beefy bottom... with grunt, grit and plenty of gusto if you need it.

Sounds like Boris the Spider on steroids!

Wham, Bam, Thank you Ma'am! :-?

ThirdBird wrote: Davedog, can you expand on the theory and practice of aligning the DI with the mic tracks?

thanks!

Think about it in the realm of the time it takes the sound to hit the diaphram of the mic'd cab and compare it to the time it takes the DI'd signal to get to the recorder/DAW/collecter/ETCETCETC....There will be a bit of a difference. Enough to blur the sound somewhat. If you are recording on a DAW then this process is easy. as you simply overlay the two tracks and match the peaks and dips of the signals.

The low end will jump out at you when they are lined up the way Dave Dog explained it.

When choosing the placement of the bass as opposed to the kick I feel you have to consider the style of the music before deciding which will carry the lowest sub frequencies. Not all music is kick=low with bass above.

Country is a great example. The bass is almost always the lowest sub harmonic with the kick adding the essential thump for the movement of the beat. Sometimes this leaves the bass with very little definition but with the ability to move the chordal arrangement easily through moving the root.

Agreed, but the op did say he was in a rock band and that he wanted that live bass sound. At least that was what I gathered from the original post.

I did a dance song once for fun, and I ended up banishing the bass to the subs and low lows, and the kick sat above the bass. But for rock I think the bass would be above the bass drum in most cases, no? And of course, two people recording the same genre of music will have different opinions about where everything should sit EQ-wise, but to each his own.

NCdan wrote:

When choosing the placement of the bass as opposed to the kick I feel you have to consider the style of the music before deciding which will carry the lowest sub frequencies. Not all music is kick=low with bass above.

Country is a great example. The bass is almost always the lowest sub harmonic with the kick adding the essential thump for the movement of the beat. Sometimes this leaves the bass with very little definition but with the ability to move the chordal arrangement easily through moving the root.

Agreed, but the op did say he was in a rock band and that he wanted that live bass sound. At least that was what I gathered from the original post.

I did a dance song once for fun, and I ended up banishing the bass to the subs and low lows, and the kick sat above the bass. But for rock I think the bass would be above the bass drum in most cases, no? And of course, two people recording the same genre of music will have different opinions about where everything should sit EQ-wise, but to each his own.

Certainly. My thoughts were of a general nature and not meant as a do-all-be-all.

Although I have been right before.

Davedog, would you slide the DI track back, or nudge the mic forward, or a combo of both, or whatever sounds better?

I would move the track that is a bit behind the beat of everything else. So, checking each track separately with the drums is essential in choosing this.

There are times and styles that a little lazy lag of the bass is essential. So what I just said might not hold true every time. But in general I will move the lagging track....most likely the mic'd bass cab.

MadMax wrote: No more cab mic'ing for me, unless I just gotta' please someone...

REDDI

Cut out what you don't want

Print it

End of story

Done

Dang, another device to lust after .....

100% agree with Davedog, a lot of the tone comes from the bass player. And there are a lot of EQ variations depending on their technique (picks, fingers, thumb & fingers, popping, thumb-slap)

And I don't know about anybody else, but I find the frequencies notched out of a rock kick drum depend the key of the song? Rock is by nature very repetitive and there are going to be several freqs. that I don't want to cut out of the bass. I don't think you ever want to rob the bass guitar of fundamental frequencies relevant to the musical notes in the chord progression.

I generally only cut the frequencies out of the bass that are contributing mud and woof... and anything that may be masking some low end plank, and rarely keys that may be happening that need detail.

Needless to say, you only cut the minimum to bring out what's being covered. You don't really need to notch it too much... just whatever it takes to uncover what needs to be brought out.

Thanks for all the replies, been busy out gigging and recording.

The music the band plays is Grateful Dead music, so the bass is really vital to the whole thing, it needs to have that solid "move you" bottom and be very articulate at the same time.

(I realize the Dead is not everyone's cup of tea, but they certainly moved the bar a long way with live sound reinforcement back in the day, and actually were a driving force with the development of Meyer Sound.)

I feel the bass should be the lowest in what we're after, with the kick on top -- kicks, actually, two drummers.

It's pretty challenging to get it done with two drummers and 16 inputs.

We recorded last weekend with the bass -- Modulus Quantum 6 direct only -- results were a bit better but still not "there" to my ears.

It doesn't help that I'm a total newbie and don't really have much idea what I am doing ... LOL

Results are on archive.org and can be streamed ...

Melodyne

Two night later, I played in a 4-piece at a large pro-level club in Boston with the same bassist and a tremendous new sound system, bunch of 18" subs and a mountain of power amps ... now THAT was the bass sound we are looking for. Of course, we were just supporting with a 1-hour set, so I didn't get a chance to bug the soundman about it.

OK, listening through the set, a couple of significant things jump out.

Too much LF interaction between the kick's and bass. Trim a lot of that 60Hz stuff out of there. Bass is really much higher with only an insignificant bunch of harmonics down that low. They're important, but since they're sympathetic in nature, forcing them is just adding mush and mud.

Get some more brightness in there. If you define the attack, you "hear" the low thump a bit more. Get some added thump in the rump by gettin' a decent amount of compression on that thing too. Get the compressor breathin' a bit and you add some life to the bass line. As it is, it just kinda' lays there.

Kik drums are tuned a bit off as well, which is adding some additional mud. Work with your drummers and bass player to find the two most played bass notes. Get those kick drums tuned to each of those two notes' fundamentals. That and lopping off some of the stuff below even 100Hz will get you some "umph" when you start to compress the kicks a bit more.

Back the guitars down a few db. They're just a tad too loud... same with the vox... You've got the balance off a bit, which is probably cornfusing you a bit; Dynamically, this is how traditional mixing is done
Vox on top by 3db (odb)
snare (s) 3 db below vox
Kik, bass and toms are 3 db below the snare.
Guits and keys should be a nice blend at the same level, just separated more.

Madmax"Get those kick drums tuned to each of those two notes' fundamentals."
Not certain exactly what you meant here. Like tune the drum for example to E1= 41.20 Hz or C2 =65.41 Hz if they were the two most played bass notes? Granted I picked these two notes at random though the corresponding hertz are correct.

Exactly... E1 or E2, and C2 or C3... sometimes you can't quite get the fundamental because the drum just won't tune to it.

The reason to tune to two different notes is to differentiate between the two kicks.

You can tune them to the same note, but IIRC, that was one of the ways that the GD got their "sound"... tuning to two different notes.

What was interesting when I saw them live, many years ago, was that they actually panned the drums slightly opposite the side that each kit was on.

Fascinating!

Thanks so much for the feedback ... can you suggest some basic compression settings for the bass and kicks? I am try to learn as much as possible and compression is a dark mystery to me right now.

So you suggest high passing the bass around 60hz? I had the kicks highpassed around 120 hz, as I recall. I have only the compressor on the board, which has:

threshold
ratio
attack
release
gain

I'm the lead guitar player in the band, no surprise I mixed the guitar too loud. Lately I have been playing through a Fractal Audio AxeFX straight into the board, no amp, no speakers, no nothing. Works surprisingly well.

I had the kicks highpassed around 120 hz, as I recall.

:shock: Now maybe the bass really will be sitting below the kicks, but high passing at 120 seems rather extreme. Boosting from 100-120 Hz will really bring out the fatness of a bass drum, so if you want the kick to sit above the bass, you might boost around there somewhere and high pass around 60-70 Hz. But maybe I'm a bit biased since I'm a drummer first. 8)

If the bass really is going to sit below the bass drum, I probably wouldn't bother high passing, but you certainly can. Boosting the bass right in the area where the kick drum is attenuated should work well, so if the kick is high passed at 70, then giving the bass a couple db's boost there should help fill out the sound nicely, and most importantly, make it sound like all the subs that should be there are there. But I like to hear the subs, so I may be a bit biased there as well. :wink:

Not so much doing a 60Hz cut off...

A lot of folks start recording and think that they have to have all this super low end in the mix... say a nice big fat bubble around 60Hz that extends from about 120 down to 40. You don't need to boost that stuff.... AT ALL! Not unless you really know that there's stuff down there.

Boosting all that LF mud is just gonna cloudy up a mix.

Bass really centers around 400-ish, which thankfully, makes a kick sound pretty hollow. So, you can generally carve a bit of a hole out of the kick at around 400, and open up the hole in the bass to make it fit.

So, lets look at 400Hz. The downward harmonics of 400 are 200, 100, 50 and 25.

If you gently roll off from 200 down on the bass, the meat of a kick can be down in the same 100 to 200 range. So when you're boosting both bass and kick in the same range, they become additive and add mud. When you take into account 60Hz hum, room noise from air handlers, etc... it just gets nasty.

You gotta learn to control it a bit by first, not boosting unless its called for, and second, keeping kicks and bass from washing over the top of each other.

Again, one of the best ways to accomplish this is through gentle EQ. It doesn't work every time, but try approaching it that way, and THEN decide if you need cut the guts out of whatever is poo, and gas whatever is gold.

Make sense?

Golden Poo! Got it!

TheJackAttack wrote: Golden Poo! Got it!

God knows I've had plenty of that situation on stage before......

It does ... what I was trying to do with the high pass filters was keep stuff out of each other's way in the very low end, i.e., no high pass at all on the bass, kicks at 120hz, piano-organ left hand a bit above than that, drum overheads way up, and so on.

I did essentially zero EQ on the overall mix except a very slight brightening way up high.

Can you suggest a good online resource to get a rudimentary understanding of compression?

This sticky:
{old-link-removed}

Read Shotguns post about four down.

I'm just going to paste in an explanation I gave someone on another thread.

As simple as I can make it -

First you set a "Threshold" - any signal below that level is not affected by the compressor, any signal above that point gets reduced by the amount determined in the next step -

Secondly you will set a "Compression Ratio" - if you set it for instance at a 4:1 ratio that means that for every 4 dB the incoming signal goes above the "Threshold" only 1 dB will pass through to the output.

The benefit is - now you can keep the loud passages from getting out of control, which lets you turn up the quieter parts, knowing you have the compressor watching the peaks don't get too loud.

What gets 'compressed' is the dynamics. It is lessening the difference between the loudest and quietest parts of the track. If you know what I mean....

This is a very general overview I hope that helps.

Repairs can be the most crazy-making part of all of this.

You can sit there for hours and really, during that time, you can train your ears to hear what you think you want....only to play it back the next day and realize that you werent even close.

Which brings us to those words you've all heard before....'well recorded track....'

The greatest aspect about a well-recorded-track is that it will tend to mix itself.

In learning the song....by listening to it from the beginning before recording....an engineer can then chose the mic techniques he wants to use and these can tailor the function of the lowend instruments to his advantage at mix.

How the kick is mic'd and tuned....how the bass is recorded...what effect the guitars and keys are having on the bottom-end.....if you're doing it all at once and live, where your placements of the instruments relative to each other in the room effects the overall recording.

If you didnt do the recording originally and are mixing, then you can understand what those guys get the large dollar for.

If its getting really impossible to get the kick and bass separated, then you need to employ 'tricks'. BBE one of em. I dont usually recommend these thingys but they do work well in bringing a single part to the front or at least giving it some of its own space without a bunch of manipulation.

Access to an Aphex Compellor or an Expressor channel will help a lot.

Side chaining the kick with an EQ in FRONT of the compressor will give you dynamic control over ONLY the frequencies you choose.

Like I said.....tricks.