EQ'ing bass and electric guitar

S

satch203

New member
I was looking for suggestions on mixing electric guitar and bass. I'm pretty much a newb and have made several recordings. Each one seems to get a little better but I've never been completely happy with the bass and guitars. This applies to distorted guitar and bass. I've tried rolling off some of the low end eq on the distorted guitars which helps the bass " punch through " a bit but I usually end up compromising my guitar tone. I've also tried cutting back the bass frequecies in the final mix around 100-250hz witch seems to help some. Basically with my eq attempts I end up with a non existing bass or too "muddy" of a tone. I was hoping someone would be willing to share some of their techniques in this area.
Thanks in adance.
 
There is no magic answer to everything. The best way is to get a killer tone recorded that doesn't need any help. This comes from knowing your equipment and how to record it. But even then, sometimes you need a little EQ help. But without hearing your mixes, it's impossible to give you ideas about where you need to fix things.

Post up a sound clip.
 
As Greg said, best solution is to get the sound right at the source. The problem with noobiness is that you don't necessarily know what that is and how to achieve it in the final recorded context. Takes practice. Hard to give you solid advice without hearing anything but if you're killing your guitar tone to get your bass to punch through, then perhaps the bass tone you're recording is problematic and needs to sharpen up a bit at the source, rather than via EQ later.

Post a clip. There's a "get your 10 post here" thread in noobs if you need to run your post count up to 10 to do the posting...
 
Thanks to both of you for your replies...I will try to post a clip here in the next day or so... Armistice with that being said when recording bass tracks do you prefer D/I route or mic'ing an amp?
 
satch203 said:
I've tried rolling off some of the low end eq on the distorted guitars which helps the bass " punch through " a bit but I usually end up compromising my guitar tone.
Click to expand...

This is actually, paradoxically, entirely the point.

Your guitar tone and your bass tone should fit together - in fact, you should really stop thinking about them as separate entities. They support each other,so don't worry about what cutting the low end out of your guitars does to "your guitar tone." Really, the bass should be providing the low end.

For distorted guitars, I've found having some grit in the bass sound really helps it stay defined in the mix. I literally just posted this in another thread, but I've been recording with a Sansamp pre and using the effected output to track a present, crunchy sound and the dI output to record a perfectly clean, un-EQ'd sound, and then layering the two in the mix, compressing the DI and using that for body and using the Sansamp to capture attack and dynamics.

As a starting off point, I'll usually either low pass or cut with a low shelf my rhythm guitars around 60-130hz, depending on the tone, the part, and what I hear when I start cutting. For me, the rule of thumb is I don't really want to hear the cut when I'm listening in the full mix, so much as cut out all the low end garbage that I can't really hear but that's hurting low end clarity. However, I also try to get guitar tones that work pretty well with the bass guitar sound already, so I'm not recording terribly bass-heavy rhythm guitars anyway.

Basically, rhythm guitars in modern hard rock and metal tend to be awfully bright, and not very deep. They don't need to be, the bass is carrying the low end. They're just adding midrange crunch.

I tried listening to your clip, but it's only a couple seconds long so it's tough to really latch onto what's happening. However, your rhythm guitars sound awfully dark and distant, almost like they've been low-passed.
 
Thank you very much Drew!! That gives me plenty of ideas to try!! I will have to expirament with some of these ideas and see what happens. Thanks again!
 
I listened to your clip. I can hear what you mean. Your bass is there BUT not clearly so - it's a bit of a rumble behind everything else.
Gettinga good sound is hard but can only be achieved through experimenting - OR paying an engineer to teach you.
DI is good Mic'd is better blend of both is best.
The Behringer BDI21 is GREAT, solid & VERY cheap clone of the Sansamp bass DI.
In terms of tweaking the track you posted.
Try the motown bass technique -:
do a cut of 5bd at 100Hz with a narrow Q (say 3)
do a boost of 5db at 200Hz with the same Q
That moves the "energy" up a little higher than the unheardish range.
They used to do that - with variations on the Q & # of dbs depending on the track.
My personal addition is to add a little peak at 3Khz (same Q) raising that peak until the bass is defined in the mix.
Try those things as a starting point with the track you posted.
For future tracks do what Greg & subsequent posters have suggested.
 
satch203 said:
Thank you very much Drew!! That gives me plenty of ideas to try!! I will have to expirament with some of these ideas and see what happens. Thanks again!
Click to expand...

Fastest way you can try that approach is before you start EQing either individual track, throw the two into the same bus and then pull up an EQ with a deep notch. Slide it around listening to the bass in the full mix until you find the range that cutting out makes the overall mix jive the best. THEN go through and start work on your bass tracks.

Even if ultimately this approach doesn't work for you exactly as laid out, the basic idea of combining clean DI and amped/distorted bass tracks is VERY common.
 
satch203 said:
View attachment 73183

Here is an example of an unfinished track I am currently working on. Any suggestions based on my above complaints are appreciated.
Thanks again!!
Click to expand...

Your rhythm git tracks are back there in the mix. I think you need more mid-hi freq. to bring them out and maybe some level increase. What setup are you using for guitar? It sounds pretty tame on the clip. Also, you seem to have a lot of low and low mid in the guitar, to my ears anyway. The lead tracks cut through pretty good and the eq actually sounds good for those.

Not sure about Armistice, but I always di bass through a joemeek pre/comp box.
 
not4ne1,
it doesn't always work but when it does it terrific. There's also the "Motown Exciter" trick for vocals that you should do a search in the forums for. It's not always a winner but it does work & is tweakable.
OR look here...
http://www.recordingeq.com/MES2.htm
 
Im not in a position to listen to what you posted, but some of what makes something muddy is that the low end isn't balanced by the midrange or high end. For bass, I tend to add definition and growl at 800hz. This lets you hear the notes and adds the definition needed to offset the rumble. If the bass is still dull sounding, I will add some brightness around 3k or so.
 
After listening to the clip. I stand by my bass suggestions. I would brighten up the guitar with a high shelf at 7k and add upwards of 9db to it. In fact, I would do that to a lot of the instruments except the lead guitars.

You might have a monitoring problem because this is really dark sounding. Try turning the tweeters on you monitors down and it might start translating better. It's really not a bad mix, it's just really dark overall.
 
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