Bass Advice Needed

J

JDWhite

Inspired
Hello All,

I have a question about how to construct a bass patch for metal recording. I think I have a decent grasp on ballady type stuff, or even rock.

I also like fast double kick metal stuff, but find that when I take a trusted (and very basic) bass patch from a simpler song that I used previously, it
is too (flubby?) I don't know, it just doesn't translate well to the more extreme sort of music.

I am sure that there will be compressions and a multitude of other things that I don't understand, involved. If anyone can help explain this, and possibly even share a patch that I could
analyze, that would be great.

Thank you in advance,

JD
 
For recording I would really use a side chain compressor with the kick drum as the key, that way the kick will lower the bass volume and poke through on those flubby fast bits and sound tight and not muddy. Also try boosting eq on the bass of the same frequencies you cut on the kick, and cut the same frequencies on the bass that you boosted on the kick.
 
Thank you very much, both of you. Jimfist, those patches sound amazing. Thank you for sharing. I cannot wait to look at these. I appreciate it very much.
 
JDWhite said:
I need to learn how to do side chain in Protools, never used it
Click to expand...

It's pretty easy, but you have to have a plugin that supports side-chaining. It's basically the same as sending a track to an aux channel for reverb, but instead you send it to a plugin on another channel.

Just send the kick to an open bus, then put a compressor plugin on the bass (such as the stock Pro Tools compressor). Using the stock comp, click on the key icon near the upper left to choose the key input, and select that bus channel you just setup on the kick track, and there you go. Sidechain compression.

The same trick works with gates to create ducking and other effects. You can add a sidechain gate on a reverb or delay aux track to create ducking reverb or delay.
 
Awesome! More videos on creating those bass songs please??
Thanks so much for sharing this vid, tool is my favorite 'bass' band.
 
I have been rethinking this. I get the frequency thing, and can mix a halfway decent rock or slow song (probably not that hard, if I can do it) That's not it. I think what it is, is that I need to figure out a bass patch that has the quickness to it. I doubt that a full bass sound that is used for something like comfortably numb would work for a double kick song. I know that sounds like an obvious statement, but what do those guys do to their bass sounds to be able to play with those fast guitars and drums. A not so good example would be Pantera, they jammed to what they called "Groove metal" or something like that. Vinnie's kick was pretty heavy, and the music had plenty of room to be a pretty big sound. But, if you went to something like, I don't know, Shadows fall or KSE, or LOG. Some of those songs get very fast, and I don't think there is a way that a bass sound like Rex's would translate over. So how do they do it?
 
You could try to eq the bass like a guitar, roll off a heap of low end, make it sound metallic, play with a pick and put a distortion pedal in front, also gate and compressor settings will help a huge amount.
 
A lot of metal songs mix the bass with a dry(low end) and a wet distorted tone(high end). They low pass the dry signal at around 3khz, and scoop the mids. Then they take the distorted track, low and hi pass it, so its range is around 800hz - 3khz. this track provides the grind that sits in the mix, and the dry direct track is what actually adds the low end. I have messed with this kinda thing and find it hard to get right. Although I'm pretty much crap at mixing bass to begin with...been something that has given me hell recently. I assume you could go about making a patch a similar way if you wanted.
 
The faster and more aggressive the bass line, the more you have to mute the strings you are not playing. Concentrate on only letting one string ring at a time; like a monophonic synth.

Once you track tight like that, then you can put a lot more low end on the track without it getting away from you.

Any excess ringing or wash on the track will prevent you from making the low end huge.
 
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