Mixing Guide Bass

A few important bass facts when recording, editing and mixing:

The bass is a low instrument (obviously), responsible for being the glue between the kick drum and the rhythm
guitars or piano.
It is a rhythmic and a harmonic instrument meaning its rhythm and timing are just as important as the notes it
plays.
In metal (and some other genres), the bass in recording is divided into two areas of interest the low end
thump and the high end grit a bit like the kick drum with its low thump and high attack or slap.
Its the thump that make subwoofers shake and pump along with the kick drum.
Its the grit that sounds metallic, clangy and sometimes distorted that blends the rhythm guitars to the low end
of the track. (Think of the bass as glue for your rhythm section).
If you want that grit, the bassist must have new strings!
Basses, like guitars, are either passive or active. Passive means no battery is required for the pickups nut active
means a 9v battery will have to be used to power the usually more sensitive pickups.
The bass is tuned E, A, D, G (lowest to highest) but alternative tunings from Drop D (D, A, D, G) to Drop G# (G#,
D#, G#, C#) can be used.
The low E string is at 60Hz, so lower tunings will be even lower dont cut it out if you need more low end in
your track!
Using EQ, the bass is often put lower than the kick drum in fast songs because of rapid kicks.
The bass mainly fights (frequency-wise) with the kick drum and rhythm guitars so use EQ to separate them in the
mix.
Inexperienced bass players will often play inconsistently, so dynamics and volumes are all over the place (you can
see this from the waveform), more compression will be needed for these players.
If using MIDI, ensure your bass is locked in with the kick drum if a song has no depth or low end but a lot of
bass turned up, its probably the timing.
Unless using MIDI, you cant sample replace bass! A great recording is needed that is in tune and in time.
If your low end isnt gelling its probably the bass!

Recording Bass
Recording bass can be done in two ways: DI (Direct Injection) or by micing up an amp. Which to use? If the bassist has a
very specific sound he gets for his live shows, they may want to bring in their amp and effects and it is probably easier to
capture that sound from the amp using a mic. If the bass part is just to be simply tracked, DI is probably the best option
because it offers a more relaxed environment of the control room and the producer can tackle the song section by section
with easy communication. Amp simulation/emulation can also be added after to DI tracks.
Micing up a bass amp/cab:
Bassists, like guitarists plug their basses into either combos or heads. A combo is an amp with the dials and input jack
combined with the speaker:

A head is just the input and control area for the amp and this must be hooked up to a cabinet or cab for short. A head and a
cab together is usually referred to as a stack or rig. Bass cabs can have speakers such as 1x15s (1, 15-inch speaker
inside) and 4x12s (4, 12-inch speakers inside) and more:

When recording, allow the bassist to set up their preferred tone from the amp if they are experienced enough. This tone
should be genre appropriate, for metal it should have a slightly boosted low end, cut mids and boosted treble. A decent mic
to use would be a condenser or reliable dynamic like an SM57. Be careful vocal mics often have a high-pass filter built in,
rolling off bass frequencies to counter-act the proximity effect when the lips get too close to the mic. (The proximity effect
is a weird audio phenomenon that when a mic is closer to the source it picks up more bass frequencies). Experiment with
different mics but any decent one is usually good for bass.
When placing mics to capture the sound from a cab, shine a torch into the combo or the cab to see the speaker. Imagine the
sound following the shape of the cone when it comes out and angle the mic towards the centre. This is called off-axis mic
placement:

Conversely, on-axis mic placement is pointing straight at the amp and can get a different sound all together:

If you have a cab or combo with more than one speaker inside, get the bassist to play and listen to each once closely to
figure out which sounds best and mic that one up.
DIing a bass:
Using Direct Injection to record a bass is usually the simplest way to track and can often yield the same results as micing
up a cab. The bassist simply plugs into the jack input of the desk and you can record. But first, a little bit about pre-amps:
When a signal is recorded, it is usually extremely low. These need to be amplified before we can record that signal. Hence
the piece of equipment preamp. Recording desks and interfaces have preamps built into them, and these have a certain
sound. Many people like to run their instruments through external preamps before the desk so the desk can concentrate on

being a desk and the preamp can work on just amplifying the signal really well. Preamps inside the interface work great and
most people wont be able to tell the difference, but some external preamps give the sound a subtle pleasing quality most
of the time and when used on each instrument, it all adds up and can give mixes a pleasing sound.
When recording bass (DI or micing up), you have a choice to use the preamps in your interface or an external one before
you record. If you want to use the desk ones, just plug straight in and youre good to go. With an external preamp, you plug
your bass into that and then that preamp into the desk. It just adds one more piece to your signal chain. See if you like the
sound. A typical DI signal chain would look like this:

Bass
Preamp
Interface
Audio Track
If you decided to record a mic from a cab and a DI track your signal chain would look something like this:
Bass
Preamp

Amp

Mic
Interface
Audio Track

If you use this method, the signal will record at slightly different times because of the different amount of equipment it has
to go through (The DI track will get there faster). This means your waveforms will be out of phase like this:

Its therefore important that you line them up or you can get phase cancellation which is where you lose some frequencies
because they overlap with each other. Once lined up, your bass is full and punchy again:

Applying tracking processing:

Whilst its important to get the sound right at the source, sometimes a little help is needed for the signal to come in at an
acceptable standard. If the player is quite erratic and the dynamics are all over the place, tracking compression may need to
be applied. This is just another step in your signal chain before the signal is recorded and just like the preamp, compressors
can inbuilt or can be external.
Here is an example of why we might want to use tracking compression:

The bass playing is very dynamic so it wont be solid and consistent, some parts will be too loud and some too quiet. By
adding an external compressor to our signal chain like this
Bass
Preamp
Compressor
Interface
Audio Track

We can obtain a much smoother recording:

This is great because it saves us time in mixing and ensures our raw recordings are of a high quality. If you have an external
compressor, this is easy you just add it into your signal chain. But how would you set this up in your DAW with a compressor
plugin instead? Rather than just inserting an Audio track to record bass on, like we normally would, we insert an Aux Input
track first to put our compressor on:

The compressor is on
the Aux track

Ensure the Audio track

is record enabled

Input channel from

interface for bass
Compressed signal goes
from Aux to Audio track
using a bus
The Audio track is played
through the monitors

Above you can see how Ive used routing and busses to get the signal into Protools, compress it on the Aux Track, and then
record it on the Audio track (named Bass DI). Once weve recorded the compressed, smooth bass part we can delete this
Aux track as it was only for tracking purposes. Which compressor do you use? Each plugin, and external compressor, gives
a certain sound even if it is subtle. So experiment with different ones you like for tracking bass. The settings should be
fairly mild, only squeezing down those peaks of your bass track into a more consistent performance, so a ratio of 4:1 doing
about 5-6db of gain reduction with a fast-medium attack and fast-medium release will do just that. Dont overdo it; you can
always add more in mixing but not take away. Experiment as always but my settings for bass tracking compression are here:

You can also apply other tracking processing such as EQ or effects by the same method but be absolutely sure youre not
going to regret it! Its permanent when you record. I like to use a high-pass filter at around 30Hz because I know Im not going
to use that low information in my mix. I add this on the Aux track just before the compressor so Im only compressing the
frequencies I like about my bass tone. My entire bass recording session is shown below. Tracking processing cannot be
undone so use it knowledgably!

Tracking MIDI Bass:

MIDI bass can sound consistent and solid in a mix where a human is often not. It can be used to replace or enhance the bass
without sounding robotic as the bass is so buried in the mix. To do this, open up a new Instrument track and load up a plugin
instrument that has a bass guitar sound such as Kontakt or XPand. Then use your MIDI keyboard (or press record and double
click on the new brown square you just created to open the MIDI Edit window), to input your bassline. This will often be the
root notes of the chord being played, the same as the guitar riff and matching the kick drum pattern. Ensure that notes are
snapped to the grid for tight playing or quantized. To quantize quickly, highlight notes in the MIDI edit window and go to
Event>Event Operations>Quantize and follow the dialog to snap your notes in time. Ensure that each MIDI bass note takes
up all of the beat to sound realistic in driving sections like this:

Once your MIDI bass part is musically correct, use the velocities at the bottom of the MIDI Edit window to humanize your
performance (not every note is played the same volume in reality!) Then, route the output of your Instrument track to a new
Audio Track and record the audio onto it. No tracking compression or EQ is needed as MIDI is very clean and consistent but
you may want to experiment and use them as effects when tracking. Take note that the note E1 is the low E string on a
bass (C1 and then Ab1 are shown here, meaning the bass is in Drop C).
The Player:
The most important part of recording is the performance and the bassist has to really dig in for the playing to sound powerful
and aggressive. A pick may be needed to get the most grit out of the sound and new strings help here too. The bass must
be in tune with good intonation and the player cant be bending any strings as they get higher up the fretboard, unless desired,
as this will create tuning problems. Lower tuned basses will need to be checked more frequently for tuning issues as the
tension on the neck is often slack. Timing is crucial. Zoom in on a bass players performance to see how well it lines up with
the drums or grid. It is okay, usually, for them to be slightly behind but slightly ahead can cause problems when editing
(unless this is matched by the drummer and is intentional).
When setting a good level for recording bass, anywhere in the green is usually good: -18db is a good place to aim for, like
most instruments:

-18db on the right hand

scale of the fader

Editing Bass
Providing the player is fairly experienced, a smooth and in time performance should be no problem for most bassists. On the
occasions that playing is not in time it is advisable for the producer to take each part in sections and then learn to edit as
he goes along. Editing consists of pocketing the bass (moving it in time to align with the grid and drums), cleaning up the
track, and using fades to regulate long sustained notes and pops.
Cleaning up your track:
Start editing by deleting any space the bass isnt playing in that youve recorded. This can be filled with amp/pickup noise
and hands sliding on the strings that you only notice when you begin to work on the track. This tidies up your part and ensures
there is only sound when you want it.
Using fades:
Ctrl+F (or Cmd+F on a Mac), brings up the Fade dialogue. This is useful if youve just cut a piece of audio and you hear any
clicks or pops. It can also be used between two pieces of audio as a crossfade which acts as glue for the two separated
sections. Fades are an important part of editing when piecing joining audio together as this removes clicks and pops and
smoothens out edited audio. To delete a fade, click on it and press delete.
Pocketing the bass:
Like the guitar, the audio waveform of a bass can be quite ambiguous as there is a lack of transients when youve applied
tracking compression or a decent player has performed consistently. Whereas the kick or snare track has easy transients
to find and place in time on the grid, the bass and guitar tracks often have to be done by ear. Zooming in and judging where
each new note starts in order to place on the beat is easier said than done.

As shown above, this playing is consistent and generally accurately on the beat. Therefore, only minimal editing needs to
be done (if any at all). It is easier to bring a piece of audio forward in time, but harder to push it back as this often creates
empty space between what we pushed back and what was before it. This is why a bassist playing behind the beat is often
easier to correct than one playing in front. Despite this, the section well look to edit is this one:

Here we can see a note has landed just before the beat. To correct this, we make a selection and then a cut in the audio
using Ctrl+E (Cmd+E for Mac), and then move it backwards, being careful not to cover up anything on time after the
offending section:

We then use fades in order to smooth out the performance and get rid of clicks and pops. Notice how the on time note after
our out of time section was not covered up. As mentioned before, the issue with moving things back in time is the space it
creates. In fast music, this is less apparent and not noticed as much in the mix for bass. In this case, the note was left
ringing before so it was easy to make it sound natural with a longer fade. In other cases, MIDI may have to be used to obtain
the tightness and make the performance seem less gappy after you edit it. Try not to over-edit it can ruin a mix very easily
although a tight performance is the most important part of any mix.
Gluing it together:
Finally, to glue all your newly edited tracks together, select all the clips that youve edited on one track and go to Clip>Group
or press Ctrl+Alt+G (Cmd+Alt+G on a Mac) to group your clip together complete with all your fades, edits and cleaning. Be
careful once this is done and saved, fades cannot be undone.

Mixing Bass
Once the bass part has been recorded well and then edited, it is time to make the bass sit in the track as a primary source
of low end and mid-range glue. Bussing is important in mixing as it allows us to process individual tracks, and then process
a group of tracks, then a section of tracks and keep branching out until we have our master track to process. With bass, we
have three main stages:

Bass Low

Bass Grit
Bass Bus

Low End Bus

This allows us to process the low end and the grit of the bass track separately, and then process them together (using the
Bass Bus) and then finally, process the Bass along with other instruments going to the Low End bus like the Drums and
Rhythm Guitars. This gives us greater control over each instrument of the track and gradually gels and blends them together.
Youre looking to mix a track these busses that gradually incorporate more and more instruments help you to mix those
instruments together to sound like one solid track in the end. The Bass Low and Bass Grit tracks are the audio tracks with
our recorded bass parts and the Bass Bus and Low End bus are stereo Aux tracks. On a session, it looks like this:

Bass Low and Bass

Grit go into the
Bass Bus

The Bass Bus (and Drum

Bus and Rhythm Guitar Bus
which arent shown) go
into the Low End Bus

Use your fader to set a level. Your bass level should be just audible under the kick drum. You know youve hit the volume
sweet spot when you cant really hear the bass clearly, but when you mute the track, you really notice it. Now that the
principle of mixing bass has been established and the way in which we get single bass tracks to finished product, we can
begin looking at inserting plug ins to mix bass.
Firstly, with your bass track, duplicate it by right clicking on the track name and selecting Duplicate. Name one Bass Low
and one Bass Grit. You can then route these to a stereo Aux track called Bass Bus and route this Aux track to another stereo
Aux track called Low End Bus. When you press play, all four tracks should have a signal coming through and there should be
sound at the end. If not, look at my routing above.
Bass Low:
The first thing I did on Bass Low was isolate my bass frequencies to work with them. I did this by choosing an EQ with steep
filters that got rid of a lot frequencies I didnt want. The best Ive found is REQ2. I then use a Low Pass to roll off everything
below about 150Hz but sometimes leave it higher at 200Hz, depending on where my Rhythm Guitars are. Because I recorded
with a High Pass at 30Hz, theres no need to add another. I then, using the same EQ, make room for the sub frequencies of
the kick drum by cutting at 50Hz. Here is my first plug in, REQ2;

Now that I have isolated just my bass frequencies to work with and cut out an area for the kick drum, I can start to enhance
the sound of my low bass. Never listen to the track in solo beyond this point, you need your ears to listen to the changes
your making to the overall song. At least always listen with the kick drum, if not all the drums if you can. Remember to keep
your hand on the fader because changing the level as your mixing is an important thing to do to get the balance correct as
you add more processing.
Secondly, I bring up the volume of the low bass by using a limiter. This limiter will force the level of my bass so high that it
hits 0db where it would usually clip but instead, a limiter prevents a signal from clipping by harshly reducing (or
attenuating), any signal over 0db. I use the L1 limiter, and pull the threshold down to where I recorded it (around -18db to
begin) until I see -3db of attenuation or so, to further smooth out my bass track:

The Out Ceiling set at -0.1 prevents the signal clipping at 0db, although any processing after this will clip the signal again. A
limiter is just a very extreme compressor, so the dynamic range of my bass is now very evened out and the apparent volume
has been increased heavily too. This dynamic consistency is massively important when dealing with low end frequencies as
this builds a solid foundation for the track.
Finally, on my Bass Low track, I added REQ4 to boost a desired bass frequency (100Hz, which I then cut on the kick drum
track), and to add a High Pass at 60Hz. Even though I recorded with a High Pass at 30Hz, the kick drum was at 50Hz and to
make sure it definitely wasnt in the way, I cut the bass up to 60Hz, but with a wide Q, so not to take away too much bass
frequencies. As low frequencies also take up the most headroom in a mix, this made the master fader drop in volume too
helpful for making the track louder later:

Bass Grit:
The first plug in on the Bass Grit track is Pod Farm, in order to emulate a grindy bass tone. The best Ive found for this is
the Line 6 Brit Invader Bass Amp with the following settings:

This is followed by the 4x15 Big Boy Cab with 0% room and the Tube 47 Far Mic, although different mics work well for
different basses. Use the Drive knob on the amp to determine how distorted and gritty you want it to be. It can help to
have the rhythm guitars playing while you do this to get the Bass Grit to blend.

Secondly, we only want to process the high frequencies as weve already done the low ones on the Bass Low track and the
gritty frequencies are in the upper midrange. I added an REQ2 with a High Pass at 600Hz and a very wide Q, to ensure some
mids definitely came through:

Without this wide Q, the cut-off point for the filter is often too steep and unnatural sounding. Notice how the low pass on
Bass Low was at 150Hz and the high pass on Bass Grit is at 600Hz leaving out the lower midrange of the bass completely.
This is unwanted information and rather than cut it from both tracks later, it is easier to just use these filters to get rid of
it in the first place.
Finally, on the Bass Grit track, I added VEQ4 which is great for boosting frequencies on basses and guitars as it doesnt
boost the harsh upper mids too much. I found the grit of the bass around 1.8Khz and boosted this heavily to be audible with
the kick and rhythm guitars and used the fader of the track to get it at a volume where you can hear it if you listen closely
but it isnt in your face.

As you can see, Ive used the High and Low Pass filters to cut from below 270Hz and above 3.9Khz as Im focusing on one
specific area with Bass grit. I cut around 1.2Khz, where the bite of the guitar is and around 3.3Khz where the attack of the
kick is and boosted 2.7Khz with a High Q (steep and precise).
Bass Bus and Low End Bus:
On the Bass Bus and Low End Bus it is all about gluing the tracks together and making them gel. This is done with very
slight compression. On both busses, I used an SSL Bus Compressor to do around 3-4 db of gain reduction with 2:1 ratio.
These figures are low because compression adds up and eventually sounds muddy and over compressed so its important
to be light handed. Fast-medium attack and release times glued everything together and gelled the bass tracks with
themselves and the drums and rhythm guitar. Finally, I added some EQ using REQ2 (my favourite for high and low pass
filters) and cut below 30Hz and above 16Khz like on all my busses in case any processing added these unwanted extreme
frequencies. I did this on my Bass Bus and Low End Bus but was a little more specific on my Bass Bus, bringing the High
pass up to 40Hz and the Low Pass down to 7Khz, affecting both Bass Low and Bass Grit together. On my Low End Bus to
finish, I did a cut of around 3db where my vocals are sat with a broad Q so it wouldnt be noticeable. This meant my drums,
bass and rhythm guitars left a small space for vocals to cut through with the bass still being aggressive and punchy.