electric bass recording techniques

One of the funniest things I have is my corner door. One of my corners cannot be bass trapped because the door in and out of the room is there. I put a bass trap from ceiling to top of door (battle of inches) and because of the acoustics in the room, when you stand in the doorway, there is NO bass. It just drops out. But if you sit on the john in the next room with both doors open, it is second in sound quality only to the actual listening point at the monitors...:laughings: Great bass, great highs, just weird.
 
I've come to the conclusion that to get superb sounding bass you have to have REALLY good monitors. Cheaper speakers don't seem to give a true reading of the bass.

Usually when a mix sounds good on cheaper speakers the bass is what dosen't translate.
At least for me anyway.
 
The bass guitar is neglected in recording terms, in my opinion; why isn't it given the same attention as lead guitar in terms of tone, guitar and amp setup, sound-shaping options? Too often it's just D.I.d. Find a good-sounding amp and find a way to record that amp, is my advice. All my favourite bands have fantastic-sounding bass guitar. Except, perhaps, Radiohead. But what that bassplayer plays is more important than his tone. He doesn't need to take centre stage. Bring on the bass! For an appreciation of what I like in the bass guitar, check out The Stranglers, Magazine, Joy Division, Siouxsie and the Banshees, The Clash and any other band where the bassplaying is as much an integral part of the sound as any other instrument.
 
Bubba po said:
The bass guitar is neglected in recording terms, in my opinion; why isn't it given the same attention as lead guitar in terms of tone, guitar and amp setup, sound-shaping options? Too often it's just D.I.d. Find a good-sounding amp and find a way to record that amp, is my advice. All my favourite bands have fantastic-sounding bass guitar. Except, perhaps, Radiohead. But what that bassplayer plays is more important than his tone. He doesn't need to take centre stage. Bring on the bass! For an appreciation of what I like in the bass guitar, check out The Stranglers, Magazine, Joy Division, Siouxsie and the Banshees, The Clash and any other band where the bassplaying is as much an integral part of the sound as any other instrument.
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I totally agree with you IN PRINCIPLE B.P. But!

The electric guitar is difficult enough to capture properly in a HOME recording situation. Sure, we (well, not me!) would all like a smoking stack of something tasty kicking 100dBSPL+ and the space and time to it justice but how many here can do that due to cash, room and, probably most importantly, SOCIAL constraints?

A good, "tuneful" bass rig is about 1/2 of a very powerful hi-fi amp/speaker system. The bottom, very expensive half! Then playing it at "sweet spot" volumes is just not practical for many people. DI inputs at least give you a flat response as a raw starting point.

On a wider note, it has come to my notice that about the only people that care or even HEAR bass "quality" are bassists and good mix/mastering engineers! Most people seem incapable of hearing a bass line as a musical event.

This lack is brought to the pinnacle of naffness by the ICE equipment of Subaru Man!

Dave.
 
I always smile on this subject - being a bass player. If you search some of the bass forums, you'll find that there are many you tube tracks featuring just the bass track from very famous and well known recordings - and if you listen to some of the heavy metal tracks you will hear just the bass, and often a bit of spill if recorded with a mic - and the sound is universally dreadful. You hear strings rattling away, maybe a few hums, and quite thin sounding guitar sound. However - in the mix, when the engineer has done his thing, the thing sits perfectly. A nice example is this who track.

So I've been recording my bass plugged in direct to the interface, and I can dirty it up (which for my music is a bit rare), or treat it inside the machine, and after the tweaking, it fits. We were playing live over the weekend and the plan was to record the show - but my amp DI output is a bit temperamental in some venues with ground loops - so I used a 57, and the spill was pretty horrible, so I've re-recorded the entire show - and swapping the clean for the real version, the clean is infinitely easier to mix, because of the spill. The miked cabinet does sound on first listen nicer, but I can simulate that sound simply with a bit of eq. So I really don't worry too much any more, because it's how it sits in the mix that matters. Loads disagree, I'm sure - but for me it works.
 
Bubba po said:
The bass guitar is neglected in recording terms, in my opinion; why isn't it given the same attention as lead guitar in terms of tone, guitar and amp setup, sound-shaping options?
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As a bass player I have tremendous affinity with this. I remember when I was new to HR and I noticed in a thread, EZ Willis saying to someone who was looking for great details of his bass sound that "it's only the bass, it's not going to be the make or break factor in whether the song is a hit or not" or something to that effect. It's stuck with me all these years because in one sense, it's true ~ most people I'm aware of simply don't listen with both ears to the bass guitar and what it's doing in a song and how it can hold the entire recorded tune together, much less appreciate it's variety of tones.
It's funny, despite the improvisatory nature of jazz, the double bass was rarely, in my mind, truly powerful or integral to so much of that music. The irony is that it took rock in it's various forms, supposedly an inferior species, and soul {mutating into funk}, to truly liberate the bass guitar and show the true power inherent in the bass line {apparently the concept of the moving bass line in Western music is some 300 years old !} and as it became taken more seriously, became more crucial to songs per se and not "the instrument played by the fat boy at the back" that no one wanted to play, different bassists ploughed their own furrows and came out with many different tones.
I've long felt that it wasn't really till the mid 70s that the bass began to be recorded in a more standardized way and the beginnings of a generic sound began to emerge on recordings. Up until then there were many fantastic bass tones flying about and as a lover of music from the 60s and 70s, I've never seen why the quest for different and groovy bass tones should end, which, I guess, is why I tend to record the bass in many different ways and configurations. It's all great fun, really...........{until mix time !
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The way I finally got some good recorded bass tone was to use my Peavy Rage practice amp's pre-amp output into the Interface. It's basically doing a very similar thing as the folks that go Preamp } D I} Interface.
 
Ive always had some good luck with combining the DI and cab sound simultaneously on separate tracks. You can easily adjust the sound levels and sonic characteristics on each mic. After that its all about mixing in the levels together to achieve the sound you like.
 
I have a tee shirt with the famous John Peel Quote: "nobody cares about bass players, except their families of course"

When I record my bass, soloed it sounds as Rob said earlier, full of finger noise, buzzes, clunks, pops even a bit of distortion (when using the 1975 precision) but in the mix it sounds great. Also if you have a listen to the John Entwhistle track Rob posted, there is a ton of compression on it. Love this clip watched it many times, John's right hand technique is what I have used for years.

In the studio I used a DI and a AKGC4000B and or a SM57 sometimes a Sennheiser 421, out live I ask the sound guys to use a DI and a SM57 (on the 10" cab). I often mix the bass through a DBX 163A limiter. It all works for me.

I think people nowadays hear the sampled keyboard bass in so many songs they have forgotten what a real bass sounds like.

Cheers
Alan.

Alan.
 
Over the years, I've tried recording through a mic'd amp, through a DI, through a simulator, etc. - I've finally settled on the following:

Bass Guitar -> Sans Amp Bass Driver -> D/A interface.

The Sans Amp allows a lot of tweaking to the pre-recorded sound - and then I have an insert on the channel on the board to add some compression and EQ as needed to the recorded sound.

I have a few bass axes - but my primary go to bass is either a Peavey DynaBass or a Yamaha Motion Bass (the Yamaha is very light with a shorter neck - really easy to play)
 
Ive done it a few ways. When my band went to a studio to record we sent 4 signals to the desk.
1 Clean DI
1 DI line off of my Hartke Bass Attack pedal (pretty dirty)
2 cab mics (real dirty)

Doing my own recordings, Ive gone straight in to my Tascam but what worked for me the best was using my Bass Attack pedal and sending both the output and the parallel out (uneffected signal) to the DAW,

I also found that my favorite bass for playing live is not my favorite for recording. And make sure the strings are fresh !
 
My father is a tremendous musician and spent much of his early years as a professional bassist for rock bands and top 40 wedding bands. We now have a studio project together and release everything from singer songwriter to modern rock, arena rock throwbacks and some metal.

He and I also live in different states which means 95% of our recording is long distance. He has 10+ basses in his home studio. For each tune he chooses the bass most suited to the song, then records his part DI. He ships it off to me and I typically apply no more than tonal EQ shaping and moderate compression to sit it in the mix. Occasionally I will toss some saturation or mild distortion up front if it needs a kick.

I have never used an amp sim on his tracks. He always tells me that his primary concern as a bass player is to sit properly in each song. Most of the time, that means NOT dialing in a great solo bass tone, which will quickly overpower a mix.
 
I use an old Line-6 POD... Thing is shaped like a kidney bean but my bass sounds better going through it and then into my interface than just going into my interface...

Bought for peanuts on eBay
 
I can't believe that people have so many problems with this, the amount of recordings that are out there that have a bass plugged into a DI and recorded are massive, however it is a good bass and good player to get the sound. Also the amount of recordings that have a bass amp miced up and recorded are also massive, again a good bass, ggod player and good amp.

The trick is the source, if the bass and the player are rubbish then rubbish in - rubbish out (being polite).

Alan
 
witzendoz said:
I can't believe that people have so many problems with this, the amount of recordings that are out there that have a bass plugged into a DI and recorded are massive, however it is a good bass and good player to get the sound. Also the amount of recordings that have a bass amp miced up and recorded are also massive, again a good bass, ggod player and good amp.

The trick is the source, if the bass and the player are rubbish then rubbish in - rubbish out (being polite).

Alan
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Or/and perhaps it is because bass sound reproduced through monitors or cans is so far removed from a good amp/cab rig (further even than a sixer?) that the two are hard to reconcile?

Dave.
 
witzendoz said:
however it is a good bass and good player to get the sound. Also the amount of recordings that have a bass amp miced up and recorded are also massive, again a good bass, ggod player and good amp.

The trick is the source, if the bass and the player are rubbish then rubbish in - rubbish out (being polite).

Alan
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Bit of a slap in the face to Punk rock as a whole ;-)
 
Punk? Well how about a good punk sound played by a good punk player on a good bass? Horses for courses.

I think the problem is that people here are comparing bass sounds in their mixes to the sound of the bass amp sound, the amp sound has multiple 10" speakers or 15" speakers, you are listening to studio monitors. You should be comparing your bass sound in the mix to bass sounds in commercial mixes.
I have learned a lot about bass sound over the years both as a bass player and a sound engineer.

Alan
 
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