Can't figure out how to get and mix this bass tone

S

scottyharp78

New member
Hello all! First post here. I've been teaching myself home recording and mixing over the past year. I also have been writing music for a new project I'm working on. Heavily influenced by one of my favorite bands, NOMEANSNO. I LOVE how NMN uses the bass as a lead instrument and the guitar more to just fill in some color.

The problem I'm having is trying to replicate the sound of Rob's bass itb. I know Mixing between the high end of the bass and the guitar is going to be important here, and I understand how dialing in a bass tone by itself doesn't guarantee it will work in the mix, but I'm just curious to get some ideas from you all about the sound you're hearing in the linked track. A place to start with regards to tone, EQ, compression, etc.

I know Rob used to use a Marshall 3530 (playing live, dunno what he recorded with) and a p-bass. I'm playing on a Sterling (Music man) Sting Ray and straight into the daw. I have plenty of amp sims, my fave right now is Neural DSP Parallax.

Thanks in advance for the info!

NOMEANSNO reference:
 
It sounds to me like he's rolling a Lot of the lows out of the bass and bumping the high mids. When it's used as a lead instrument he's panning it away from the center in sections where it's opposing the lead guitar. Other short passages it's sitting in the middle (where a bass normally sits.) Unusual treatment. mark
 
I can pretty much guarantee that a good part of that sound is coming from his right hand so I would start with getting your technique down before you go after tone. I don't use Neural so I can't comment on that but it's definitely worth experimenting with their amp models. There are also plenty of dedicated bass amp sims around that you can try and many are free. I have a bunch and they all sound different so you might want to do some googling and download some of those. Once you get in the ballpark EQ should get you the rest of the way and I would think for that style some compression or limiter might help to tame the transients.
 
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