Recording bass

I read Marcus Miller saying something akin to that many, many moons ago. He said "Black guys don't hear bass, they feel it."
I wanted to chuck him in the river, too !
I definitely feel the bass. But I flaming well hear it, big time. That combo of the tactile and a good hummable line that musically moves a song.
This. McCartney’s bass lines were an integral part of the song and you can definitely hear them, ESPECIALLY in a song like With a Little Help From My Friends.
 
I was just reading an old article which offered this as done in the studio:

Record one DI line, one mic on the amp's speaker line, and one mic aimed at the pickup you're using - to capture attack and other sounds.

I've not heard of mic'ing a bass guitar's pickups/strings/plucking in this manner, but I know there's some sound coming from down there.. so what the hell, right. It's a different attack sound than what you get with a compressor.
 
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Record one DI line, one mic on the amp's speaker line, and one mic aimed at the pickup you're using - to capture attack and other sounds.
Interesting, are you able to get the initial click or pop from the bass with that method? How can I get more of the bass guitar click, instead of the thump or thud? Like the bass drum impact, how it sounds like a click at first.
 
In the band I was using an 8x10" cab and I was loud - remember this was a Beach Boy tribute, so the majority of the baselines go duh, duh, with only a few songs needing attack - and I'd use my finger nails. It was a real pain to take about. I always DI'd from the amp, or sometimes from a DI box into the PA and we moved to in-ears. The FOH guy told me my fader usually stayed close to off - I was loud enough. So I started to use the cable DI not the amp and gradually move the master down over a period of maybe 6 shows. The last show not one Watt of me came from the cab, and the next show, I left the amp in the van along with the cab. The next gig, the keyboard player spotted no amp and cab and said I needed to get it because he'd never be able to hear me across the stage. That's when I told him I'd stopped making any noise quite a few shows back and from that moment, the amp and cab was history and I brought a small 2 x 10" combo with me for emergencies. I haven't plugged any of my bass amps or speakers in now since christmas 2019. For me, I just don't see the need. The music doesn't need it.
 
Interesting, are you able to get the initial click or pop from the bass with that method? How can I get more of the bass guitar click, instead of the thump or thud? Like the bass drum impact, how it sounds like a click at first.
I suppose doing that and using a pick would do it - I use thin picks and they slap a lot. I don't have a dynamic mic to try this with, but I could try it with my condenser - see what happens.

You might also try playing with the attack setting on your compressor.
 
In the band I was using an 8x10" cab and I was loud - remember this was a Beach Boy tribute, so the majority of the baselines go duh, duh, with only a few songs needing attack - and I'd use my finger nails. It was a real pain to take about. I always DI'd from the amp, or sometimes from a DI box into the PA and we moved to in-ears. The FOH guy told me my fader usually stayed close to off - I was loud enough. So I started to use the cable DI not the amp and gradually move the master down over a period of maybe 6 shows. The last show not one Watt of me came from the cab, and the next show, I left the amp in the van along with the cab. The next gig, the keyboard player spotted no amp and cab and said I needed to get it because he'd never be able to hear me across the stage. That's when I told him I'd stopped making any noise quite a few shows back and from that moment, the amp and cab was history and I brought a small 2 x 10" combo with me for emergencies. I haven't plugged any of my bass amps or speakers in now since christmas 2019. For me, I just don't see the need. The music doesn't need it.
That's very much like my story. I went from an Ampeg head & 8x10 cab down to a GK head only into our PA or FOH. Then downsized further to a Roland GP-8 rack unit. Then my GP-8 was stolen and I went to a Boss CS-3 pedal into the PA/FOH. I sure didn't miss having to haul those amps and cabs around - it was the loading and unloading that wore me out.
 
Exactly my thoughts. I loved the big cabinet, but I think it was 80kg or something daft like that! It’s in my store sideways and I just can’t get even slide it out on my own!
 
I spent all day yesterday with Amplitube 5. Most of the day and early evening was spent uninstalling and reinstalling stuff to get it working ok with Reaper. After all was straightened out, I relaxed with guitar in hand, checking out some new amps for guitar and bass. I found a good clean amp for my Strat, plus a really nice metal amp with great sound for power chords and lead - not harsh at all.. very smooth. Way better than OD, Dist or Fuzz pedals. Then the bass head..

This thread got me thinking of my old GK head, which I preferred over the SVT it replaced. Amp 5 has a model but it's locked up in their Custom Shop as a Try or Buy. So I'm trying it for 72 hrs. and it sounds fantastic. It's pretty much exactly the sound I've been looking for, with everything else I've tried being to harsh - mid-rangey with no buttery low end or too much low end booming away. For $25 I'm going to go ahead and buy.

Anyway, it's another leg in the evolution of a bass player's gear. From the "tall as me" Ampeg setup down to a few microchips and some excellent software. I'm afraid to think of what's next in this chain.
 
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I'm often struggling to get a decent bass tone on my songs. They often sound 'woofy' or 'flabby' The strings are in decent nick and I'm not quite sure where I'm going wrong. I record DI into a focusrite solo and have tried a couple of plug ins along with reapers own cockos compression preset for bass. Any tips, tricks and advice would be greatly appreciated!

Mark
Lot's of great, real, experienced advice.

What are the common threads?
1. Every bass player works on "their sound" until they take their last breath, me included.
2. True with all electric instruments is that the combination of bass, amplifier, speaker and player make up their sound and some have come to find out that with experience the amp/speaker can be eliminated and still get a great sound.
3. The basic principle that we hear the bass relative to all the other instruments and voices is always true just as it is on the stage and in the recording (ask Rob's keyboard player). Therefore if the end goal is the recording, check how a change in the bass chain sounds in the total mix before abandoning it.
4. Try to find an example of how you want the bass to sound in some other recording and reverse engineer it.

Cheers to all my Bass playing friends.
To boldly go where no one has gone before. ;-)

Tom eh
 
Am I too picky? Am I wrong?

If you have a punchy solo'd bass track you want to share, I'd like to hear it. Monitor it through subwoofers and listen to initial signature. My tracks don't pass the subwoofer test, unless I layer it with a sample on top of the analog.
 
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Plugin-Alliance has a GK emulation that I like. As always, wait for sales. Free demo.
 
Plugin Alliance has Bass-Mint a sub harmonic shaper. That could be cool.

Or they have Bx_SubFilter for free that might help the lows. Brainworx makes excellent plugs.
 
So I don't know how everyone is doing their bass tracks but I thought I would run down the most common set ups I use for anyone who is interested to try.
First I found that I get the best tone using a direct box and going in balanced. Depending on the song I may also record a live amp in the room using a LDC fet approx 2 feet from the grille/speaker . When I DI straight into most interfaces I seem to get too muddy a signal and it takes me too long to fix.
Once I am in the box I will create one aux channel if I have both a DI and live track or two aux channels if I only have DI. One Aux just get's labeled "bass bus" and all other bass channels feed into it. If DI only then the second aux gets labeled "Bass Amp" and will get the amp sim treatment. So at this point I have three channels: DI, Amp sim or live and the bass bus that the others feed into.
Next I choose an amp sim and some sort of IR or room simulation if I don't have a live track laid down and it goes on the Bass Amp channel which has an input from a SEND off the DI(not the Output) and it's output to the bass bus. The DI channel output is also sent to the bass bus channel. The DI channel gets an out send activated(usually a PRE fader send so it won't be effect laden) which is sent to the Bass Amp channel.
Then I start compression and eq. On DI channel I almost always start with a basic filter to reduce any noise down in the 20-50 hz area, then an 1176 emulation which may or may not be compressing. Sometimes I will turn the compression part off and just drive the gain to get some sweet harmonic distortion. Lastly , eq to get the fundamental and the first harmonic area to stand out and the top end to recede cuz I prefer the top end of the live or amp sim channel.
Now I will do approximately the same sort of thing with the live/sim channel as the DI but here I am Eq-ing so that I can hear the strings the 800-2 k range and the low end in the 1-300 hz range with special attention to mud reduction around 250-350 hz.
Now a bit of volume balancing and tweaks back and forth while listening to the track as a whole.
Once I have it most of the way where I want it I can throw a "glue" type compressor on the bass buss channel, maybe I will need to add a single or two band eq to get rid of any nasty bits or bump up any tasty bits. And finally, if needed I might add some sort of sub enhancement or waves maxx bass which actually adds upper harmonics to make the bass more present on small speakers.

This is just my most common practice. There are variances of course, it's just sort of a basic road map but it leaves enough room for experimentation.
 
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