Ever recorded two basses? Lemme know what ya think.

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PoeticIntensity

PoeticIntensity

MagicJones.com (is a website)
I've got a friend who plays bass really well. He wanted to come over and jam, and we ended up recording a little something-something which is turning out to be a good mixing exercise. Bass, in my experience, is probably the most undervalued instrument in bands, generally, yet when played by a *good* bassist, can add a lot of texture to a song.

With this song, we started out with one bass-line (the beginning one), and then he decided to add another one. I've never mixed anything with more than one bass line.

The bass is an Ibanez SR-300, with a Kustom 100W amp (new to my studio), and recorded with a Trion 7000 ribbon mic.

The guitars (heaven bless them) are recorded with a very sub-standard Fender Squire strat - through an even more sub-standard Squier 10Watt practice amp.

I'm curious how you would have recorded the two bass lines.. / guitars differently...?

Song here
 
Dunno if it quite works with the song you posted. Seems ok in some places before the main brunt of the song kicks in, but for the rest of it the stereo image of it is kind of jarring. If I'm listening right, the two basses are hard-panned (or close to it) - the bass panned hard-right is deeper (lower in the register?) has more low-end than the one on the left. A 'wide' low-end never really works... tight and focused is the name of the game down there.

On the other hand, I know some funk-type bands which successfully pull off the two-bass thing.

http://www.myspace.com/toupe (listen to You Fell Over, which if I understand correctly is about personal injury claims)...

...nuff said :) They're a bit weird but a cool bunch of guys :p

I wasn't in on that recording session unfortunately, but I do have the multitracks archived away somewhere that I nicked from the studio one time :p Not quite mixed how I would have done it, but he still handled the basses in the same way I would have done... at any one time, one of the basses is treated more like a guitar and played with distortion whilst having very little low end.

So for that song you posted, I would try the main bass part (currently panned to the right, that locks in with the guitars) centred like you would normally mix it, then keep the other bass that plays the melody part panned off to one side how it is (but maybe cut out a bit more of the low end).
 
mattr said:
Dunno if it quite works with the song you posted. Seems ok in some places before the main brunt of the song kicks in, but for the rest of it the stereo image of it is kind of jarring. If I'm listening right, the two basses are hard-panned (or close to it) - the bass panned hard-right is deeper (lower in the register?) has more low-end than the one on the left. A 'wide' low-end never really works... tight and focused is the name of the game down there.

On the other hand, I know some funk-type bands which successfully pull off the two-bass thing.

http://www.myspace.com/toupe (listen to You Fell Over, which if I understand correctly is about personal injury claims)...

...nuff said :) They're a bit weird but a cool bunch of guys :p

I wasn't in on that recording session unfortunately, but I do have the multitracks archived away somewhere that I nicked from the studio one time :p Not quite mixed how I would have done it, but he still handled the basses in the same way I would have done... at any one time, one of the basses is treated more like a guitar and played with distortion whilst having very little low end.

So for that song you posted, I would try the main bass part (currently panned to the right, that locks in with the guitars) centred like you would normally mix it, then keep the other bass that plays the melody part panned off to one side how it is (but maybe cut out a bit more of the low end).
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Thanks for the ideas, man. Ya know... In some parts, the two basses are playing the same riff, so in theory, I could just axe one of em' and center the other one during those parts. Treating one like a guitar is also a great idea. I'll get on that and post a new mix.
 
Personally I'd have a guitar play the alternate riff as a bass/guitar battle. Two basslines doesn't work for me, but that's my personal likening.

Or get the bass player to take the best of both the lines and create one baddass bass line! That's a very good riff on the bass, both of them in fact, shame to waste them. ;)
 
Mr Clean said:
Personally I'd have a guitar play the alternate riff as a bass/guitar battle. Two basslines doesn't work for me, but that's my personal likening.

Or get the bass player to take the best of both the lines and create one baddass bass line! That's a very good riff on the bass, both of them in fact, shame to waste them. ;)
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Thanks, Mr. Clean! I'll be sure to let him know ya think so... and yeah... I've never heard anything commercial with two bass lines. I'm gonna see if I can work it out and learn from it, though.

Practice makes perfect!
 
I like the tune and the way it turned out. It's nicely balanced and panned. You could mix this a variety of ways with two basses, maybe four or five different ways - all would be right. I think yours works well and all the instuments have their space in the mix. Good jam, recording and mix! :cool::D:cool::D:cool:
 
PoeticIntensity said:
I've never heard anything commercial with two bass lines.
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Marcus Miller's recorded stuff often has two going, like on this album;

317Z6EBNH1L._SL500_AA240_.jpg
 
ido1957 said:
I like the tune and the way it turned out. It's nicely balanced and panned. You could mix this a variety of ways with two basses, maybe four or five different ways - all would be right. I think yours works well and all the instuments have their space in the mix. Good jam, recording and mix! :cool::D:cool::D:cool:
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Thanks Gerry! I did some critical listening tonight and found there was just a bit of weirdness going on in some places with the dual basses. We'll see if we can't fix it up.

jedblue said:
Marcus Miller's recorded stuff often has two going, like on this album;

317Z6EBNH1L._SL500_AA240_.jpg
Click to expand...

I did some searching on Marcus Miller, and heard some pretty amazing bass solos, but I couldn't find anything with two consistent bass lines.. Any specific songs of his I can tune into?
 
Okay... I spent some time and did a remix of this jam. In this one, I spread the guitars out a lot farther in the mix, and tuned the basses a bit more towards center. I also upped the gain a lot on one of the basses, and panned it dead center. I also got rid of one of the takes when the two were playing identical lines. My ears tell me this one is a lot cleaner. Let me know what you think.

Remix
 
Why should one be confined to conventional thinking with just 1 bass. This sounds really interesting, I would pursue it.
And man, do those drums sound good........:cool:

Joey :):):):)
 
Honestly I liked the first mix better. The "low" bass muddies up the middle on this one.

Listen to "Big Bottom" on repeat for a couple of hours until you figure it out :D
 
I record two basses a lot of the time.

I like the second mix. It sounds much more full. Though I'm not sure I agree with dropping the muddier of the basses when they're playing the same thing. It loses a lot of body when you do that.

I think there's a slight ritard going on through the whole song, but if you're just experimenting, that's probably not a big deal.
 
I like this mix too - but like I said there's many ways to mix it. The centering of the bass in this one makes it sound a bit more like a lead (bass) track. Makes the intro in headphones sound a lot more centered also. :cool::):cool::)
 
RAMI said:
"Take a Walk on the Wild Side" by Lou Reed has 2 bass tracks on it.

Also, "Big Bottom" by Spinal Tap has 4!!!! :D
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Thanks! I'll take a listen to these and see if I can learn anything from them.
 
I can't listen now, but I will when I get home - in the meantime, we could all learn a lot from Spinal Tap (bunch of references today in another thread, too).

PI - Here's my two bass line song from a while back - both are low freq and center, but one is distorted (which takes away some low end). I think I'm going to do more hard driven punjabi beat music, as soon as I can actually play the beat on the drums (you ever play stuff like this on the drums?)

 
The second mix is pretty good.
But the first one is firing !
There are some examples of two basses in songs ('One of these days' by Pink Floyd, 'Sick as a dog' by Aerosmith, 'Back in the USSR' by the Beatles - although that may be a composite) but the best examples I've ever heard are the bass guitar/plucked upright bass excursions of obscure jazz rock groups of yesteryear like Away and Trevor Watts string ensemble. When many people I know or read of hear the phrase jazz or jazz rock, they switch off and in doing so, as far as I'm concerned, miss out on some of the wildest, heaviest, most abandoned but inventive music ever. And the idea of two basses is no longer alien to me but it's hard to capture simply by the nature of the lowness (:D).
I've done the bass/double bass thing and I took much of the bass out of the double bass so it was twangy, but unmistakably a double bass. Didn't record the bass guitar well though. But you could hear them distinctly.

You've done a great job here and the kicking drums and guitar thrangs are basic and minimalist enough to make this song really work to the max. I wouldn't change a thing of that initial mix. It's exciting and energetic and melodic. I like it big style. When I put it on, my two sons had cushions up their backs (a la the mutant ninja turtles) and they were jumping about and writhing on the floor in time with the music. With the music going and their antics, it made for a surrealistic scene !

To antichef;
The piece you put up is mad ! Off the wall, noisy, it's a great little piece. Obviously not everybody's kind of thing, I like those type of pieces. It could maybe be a little tighter as the beat wanders a bit, but like Poetic's piece though in a different way, it has, if you'll pardon my analysis, balls, balls, banquets and balls !
 
grimtraveller said:
When I put it on, my two sons had cushions up their backs (a la the mutant ninja turtles) and they were jumping about and writhing on the floor in time with the music. With the music going and their antics, it made for a surrealistic scene !
Click to expand...

Heh.... Thanks for sharing that, grim! I can visualize that perfectly! Must have been quite a fun time!
 
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