Recording DI bass guitar

Chili said:
Yup, neither am I. I just want to make sure Arm looks at all possibilities.
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Yep.. I've been considering whether it's room / standing waves etc. I've taken to checking the bass at quite low volume levels so I don't have stuff reverberating around the room. It's probably a combination of all the points mentioned thus far, and before I commit this beast to master I'll have listened to everything on numerous systems to isolate any particular problems...

Funnily enough it was Fraud that pointed me in a particular direction. Didn't hear anyone else having problems, you included, with that bass when it was in the Mix This forum, so why am I? Oh wait... maybe it's the room coming into the equation here... :laughings:
 
Yeah, nothing is cut n dry with this stuff. It probably is a combination of several different factors. The good thing is when you send it out for mastering, the engineer will have the right monitoring environment and can compensate for the deficiencies in yours... and all of our poor home studios.
 
Chili said:
Yeah, nothing is cut n dry with this stuff. It probably is a combination of several different factors. The good thing is when you send it out for mastering, the engineer will have the right monitoring environment and can compensate for the deficiencies in yours... and all of our poor home studios.
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LOL... there goes my plan to more or less randomly adjust EQs and do some limiting... :laughings: Anyone have Bob Katz's number? He owes me a favour... :)
 
Armistice said:
Yep.. I've been considering whether it's room / standing waves etc. I've taken to checking the bass at quite low volume levels so I don't have stuff reverberating around the room. It's probably a combination of all the points mentioned thus far, and before I commit this beast to master I'll have listened to everything on numerous systems to isolate any particular problems...
Click to expand...

You can download a file with LF sine waves at Mike Seniors page:
Mixing Secrets For The Small Studio: Additional Resources (Cambridge Music Technology)

They all should be equally loud if your monitoring is fine.
 
Armistice said:
:D

Didn't want to jack the other guy's thread...

So I do the real bass / DI thang like lots of us, but I'm having big issues with individual note volumes across strings and even on the same string with different notes... seems like some notes just resonate more...

Now... I know, I should change the strings.. I have new strings and just haven't gotten to it because I'm not actually doing any more bass recording in the near future so figure I'll do it when I need to, but having just spend an eon applying volume envelopes on individual bass notes in Reaper, it has me wondering if this something endemic with DI-ing bass, or just my crap strings?

It's a quality Schecter active bass and I'm not that bad a player that I can't hit the notes at approximately the same velocity. I do always play with a pick, however, like lots of guitarists... :D
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The bass guitar is an "imperfect" instrument by all aspects.

Muddy low end, unwanted core-mids, mids with weird string sounds all over it BUT.
It's also the No1 Instrument that can handle a shitload of compression or EQ and still sound "unprocessed".

Well I always advise to record better takes with better strings and generally, better gear but I've read that you don't have time/money
to change strings and stuff so... let me give you some tips that will make your bass shine.

1. Use the Waves Bass Rider. It will save you lots of time automating and also will help the compressors to not work like maniacs.
2. Compress in Series. try to share the load between 2 compressors.
3. Consider Multi Band compression on the lows only. You want that low end "almost" not moving.
4. Use an L1 Limiter to keep steady, especially if the genre is metal go nuts with it.

ALSO:

Use 2 tracks.

Preferably for low end use the low end that the DI track has to offer.
I won't go deep why I prefer - most of the time - the DI for the lows.
Low Pass till 200Hz.

Now Hi pass around 700Hz.
Add a sansamp modeler VST for grit.

Send these 2 tracks to a bus. Blend to taste.
EQ and Compress the bus. Maybe send the high passed one to a subtle chorus.

Voila!


Let me know how it sounds, cheers!
 
Paschalis I. said:
The bass guitar is an "imperfect" instrument by all aspects.

Muddy low end, unwanted core-mids, mids with weird string sounds all over it BUT.
It's also the No1 Instrument that can handle a shitload of compression or EQ and still sound "unprocessed".

Well I always advise to record better takes with better strings and generally, better gear but I've read that you don't have time/money
to change strings and stuff so... let me give you some tips that will make your bass shine.

1. Use the Waves Bass Rider. It will save you lots of time automating and also will help the compressors to not work like maniacs.
2. Compress in Series. try to share the load between 2 compressors.
3. Consider Multi Band compression on the lows only. You want that low end "almost" not moving.
4. Use an L1 Limiter to keep steady, especially if the genre is metal go nuts with it.

ALSO:

Use 2 tracks.

Preferably for low end use the low end that the DI track has to offer.
I won't go deep why I prefer - most of the time - the DI for the lows.
Low Pass till 200Hz.

Now Hi pass around 700Hz.
Add a sansamp modeler VST for grit.

Send these 2 tracks to a bus. Blend to taste.
EQ and Compress the bus. Maybe send the high passed one to a subtle chorus.

Voila!


Let me know how it sounds, cheers!
Click to expand...

Thanks dude. It's a time thing, not a money thing. Everything's all recorded and I've largely solved the issue via extensive volume automation, but it's not perfect, so I'm scouting for final tweaks and to avoid the problem in the future - so I'll try some of your tips at this evening's session and investigate the Bass Rider plug in for future works... Cheers :thumbs up:
 
I picked up a used bass, not a top end bass, but my playing bass as a pro for many years compensates for this and after a set up, and a tidy up she's good to go! Every time I recorded bass in a studio I mic'd with half of whatever stack I was using at the time, usually Orange, or sometimes a bass combo, so I never got into DI'ing the bass, now I need to know the in's and out's of this art! I have Cubase Daw and a Steinberg UR22 interface, I plugged the bass straight in, it worked but had too much of everything, plus in the 'phones it sound like a Rickenbacker on the back pick-up! through speakers it sounded like an Alembic but not with Stanley Clark playing' so I then ran the bass thro' a small Behringer mixer, this was quite a bit better but still not what I wanted, then I remembered an old no-make bass graphic pedal I use to use, now things were almost usable, I should have mentioned at the beginning I do not have a DI box, I'm after something close a nice clean Fender P sound, I used a Fender a lot back in the day, but fretless, I don't expect that sound but something nice and clean that also moves the belly! any tips or advice would be much appreciated, thanks...
 
Dave J said:
I picked up a used bass, not a top end bass, but my playing bass as a pro for many years compensates for this and after a set up, and a tidy up she's good to go! Every time I recorded bass in a studio I mic'd with half of whatever stack I was using at the time, usually Orange, or sometimes a bass combo, so I never got into DI'ing the bass, now I need to know the in's and out's of this art! I have Cubase Daw and a Steinberg UR22 interface, I plugged the bass straight in, it worked but had too much of everything, plus in the 'phones it sound like a Rickenbacker on the back pick-up! through speakers it sounded like an Alembic but not with Stanley Clark playing' so I then ran the bass thro' a small Behringer mixer, this was quite a bit better but still not what I wanted, then I remembered an old no-make bass graphic pedal I use to use, now things were almost usable, I should have mentioned at the beginning I do not have a DI box, I'm after something close a nice clean Fender P sound, I used a Fender a lot back in the day, but fretless, I don't expect that sound but something nice and clean that also moves the belly! any tips or advice would be much appreciated, thanks...
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I use my mixer going straight in, switching to the instrument in switch, compressor to interface, amp sim for amp and speaker modeling.
 
Thanks for that, David, so' I could run the graphic pedal thro' the effects loop on the mixer and also use the onboard compressor in the mixer, which would make almost like the pre-amp on a real amp [I think!] Thanks again.
 
Dave J said:
Thanks for that, David, so' I could run the graphic pedal thro' the effects loop on the mixer and also use the onboard compressor in the mixer, which would make almost like the pre-amp on a real amp [I think!] Thanks again.
Click to expand...

I did that with a neighbor who I had tracking some guitar (I am just not a rock lead type), Guitar, Line 6, mixer, compressor insert (on the mixer), hard pan on the mixer (to make it mono), to interface, level check, no amp sim (in this case), but you could. After the line 6, the guitar is already so over processed not sure what you would simulate.

I use a straight guitar/bass input, with compressor insert and walk through IK's Amp Sims for processing. Key here is, there should be a place to direct connect an instrument.
 
There are way too many Daves or Davids in this thread. :mad:

I'm going to have to thin the heard :D

I DI my bass directly into the interface. I used to use just an 1176 plug and EQ, but now I have the Ampeg sim plug from IK Multimedia and throw that on top. More tools in the toolbox.
 
Chili said:
There are way too many Daves or Davids in this thread. :mad:

I'm going to have to thin the heard :D

I DI my bass directly into the interface. I used to use just an 1176 plug and EQ, but now I have the Ampeg sim plug from IK Multimedia and throw that on top. More tools in the toolbox.
Click to expand...

'king oath... they're a plague and need to be culled.
 
Hmm yeah I'm sure new strings plus an instrument tune-up would help. I don't think it's really any equipment error though. I find that when I have the same problem playing around with the tone knobs helps...

But yeah smash the hell out of it with a compressor. Can't really hurt :)
 
Chili said:
There are way too many Daves or Davids in this thread. :mad:

I'm going to have to thin the heard :D

I DI my bass directly into the interface. I used to use just an 1176 plug and EQ, but now I have the Ampeg sim plug from IK Multimedia and throw that on top. More tools in the toolbox.
Click to expand...


Dave's not here man.
 
All of my studio time with my bass (Headway) was done through the line out on the Yamaha B100 and a DI pedal. Always through compression. Always came out lovely.

Finger vs pick: are you using a guitar pick? If so, try a felt pick for a smoother, more natural bass sound.
Long story short, I had an accident as a kid and ring to pointer on my right hand are all the same length. Learned how to triple stroke for speed. But that's a unique thing. Not many people have three fingers the same length on their pick hand.
 
Wow, there are some convoluted signal chains in Dave land, (Cheech can't find him),
As previoulyl stated I use a Behringer BDI21 which is, shock horror, really good. I often split the signal & then blend mic'd & DI'd.
I sometimes, when I want to get the tone I used in the 80's/90's drag out my old Yamaha MT100 4 track & run it into that using the inbuilt pre and then out of that into the interface, (something about going to tape & then out seemed to work for that sound). I had a fiddle with the Sandford bass management VST last week. I used it to MONO the bass tones on a drum buss in a project, (with a variable slope the cut off freq is set and stuff below that goes to mono so the floor tom wasn't boom out on the left), and I also experimented with it on the master buss and it seemed to work nicely with all the bottom end.
On the track I've just recently finished and am about to post in the MP3 Clinic (WATCH) I did the DI thing with compression & EQ but had to do some automation as well because the combination of notes ringing on and me being too enthusiastic in some parts of the track mean a couple of notes popped their heads up too high. I did listen on 4 or 5 diff systems/machines/formats & was told by some good eared folk that it was happening. Funnily enough I've found the Blockfish "studio bass" preset much better than those in Reapers ReaComp.
 
By the way, my choice in cabs was always a Peavey with 2 18s and a 10. Never could mic it to sound like it does live, so always did the direct thing.
 
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