Hey guys, David Glenn of davidglennrecording.com and theproaudiofiles.com.
I’ve got another one on mixing bass. Now I’m gonna kind of treat this as a update
to my mixing bass tutorial that I’ve already released, had a gospel bass that I pulled
in, and walked you through kind of start to finish. I’m just gonna kind of do an update
and show you how I’m still kind of using the same techniques and then I’ve got a
couple of things that I’m doing differently. So let’s jump right in.
This is a, once again, the song ’Until I Have You’ from Dasha Moore. Dasha, Dasha,
Gosh, I hope I’m saying that correctly. Forgive me guys, but the same, pretty much
the same concept applies for me. I start with the bass DI. In this case it was a key bass,
it was a virtual instrument. Probably Massive or something like that. But I’ve got the
Studer on it, and I’m gonna walk through every single one of these but I got the Studer,
pulled up very basic just a bass preset. Left the noise on. Turn that off. Anyways, moving
on.
I used Alloy for some saturation. I did a multiband saturation with it with the iZotope
Alloy 2. And I applied different saturation to the low, subs — 200 and below — then
I did to the 200 and above. And you can see that there. Play with that, great plugin if
you have it. And I treated it with a little bit of compression, I used the grey — I’m
sorry — the silver from UAD. And you’ll see that it’s probably just knocking down
a couple of, let’s pull it over here.
[mix + bass with UAD LA-2A Leveling Amplifier]
Nah, it’s not pulling down a couple, it’s slamming it. But it's sounding good, I left
it there. Moving on, I have the same compressor over on the bass amp. Which is kind of weird
because I usually go for the grey when it comes to the bass and pretty much everything,
but moving on. Not really gonna walk you through like I did in the other video, but just kind
of showing you a quick peek. And this is Sansamp, I’m driving it a little bit to kind of blend
some of that in, give it a little bit of character, to bring in, boost the mids. Yada, Yada, give
it a shot.
What I really want to show you is — I can even put the parallel compression down — I’ve
showed that in the other video pretty well. The bass level track, I’ve got this — use
this sometimes because I’ll play with the mix knob — but let’s put that over there.
We’ve got RBass, now Dave Pensado on a recent ITL, I think he used RBass on a kick and he
kind of mentioned he uses an app. Well I did a training course called The Mix Series, you
can go check that out at davidglennrecording.com, and it’s got like, I can’t even remember
how many hours of training. It’s got my Pro Tools templates and walkthroughs of all
my strategies and how I approach a mix and helps you get through the rough mix stage.
But I do this, I show you a little bit about how I’m using an app called Producer’s
Tools. iPhone and Android compatible. And what I do is I go to my guitar, listen to
the song, I figure out what key it’s in and I find a note that resonates well at the
chorus of the song or just consistently throughout the song. And you know, I can’t remember
what this song was. But, let’s go ahead and do it together, so if I hit play.
[mix playback to find key of the song]
Cool. And so I’m hearing that C, the note C is resonating well with throughout the whole
progression. So what I do is I go over here to my app as my accent changes. I’m a goofball.
And I’m pulling open Producer Tools and I go to the frequency translator. And so the
first note up is C but you can cycle through. You can find a note that you want to use and
then it’ll tell you octave 0 is 16.35 Hz for C. Octave 1: 32.7, and then you’ve got
octave 2: 64.41 and so on. So what I do for bass guitar is I find that for me it works
really well, usually octave 1 or octave 2 will work to use RBass and that’s the frequency
I’ll plug in. And generate the added — correct me if I’m wrong — but the added harmonics,
the extra oomph to it. So, for octave 2 at C, this is 65.41 and look at that, I’ve
got 65 selected. RBass rounds it down. And that’s what I did to bring it in. So let’s
hear it before and after. You guys are probably familiar with Rbass but I’ll play it before
and after. Let’s solo the bass so we can hear it.
[bass guitar with/without Waves RBass]
Yeah, so again, it’s a bass tutorial dealing with the subs, if you’re listening on a
phone or the laptop you’re not gonna hear that. So my apologies, but if you are listening
on monitors, some good headphones, you’re gonna hear the fullness that RBass just completely
generates for us. It sounds beautiful. It sounds big. And I use it on pretty much every
mix that I’m doing bass guitar on. And then it just depends on what intensity. Sometimes
I’ll automate the intensity so that it can gradually build into the chorus and then be
super full. But that’s a great tool to have.
The other thing that I’m doing — nothing earth shattering about this one — but for
me, I’ve got a stereo aux for both my parallel compression and my level that I’m using
here. And the reason that is, is because I used to use the Slate FG-MU compressor for
bass, for my parallel compression chain. And that is only stereo, they don’t have a mono
version of that. So I set it up as a stereo, and then what I would do is I would come in
here and I would take in just make, say, the you know, 200 or below or a lot of times just
the subs and I’ll make that mono. And so with the iZotope Ozone 5 stereo imager you
can pull that down and make whichever frequency band you want the wider or more focused and
central to the middle. So that’s what I’m doing with the bass there. A lot of times
with synth bass what I would do is, this is a keyed bass, but with synth bass, you know
with some grit to it, a lot of times I’ll push the upper mids and the highs wide, gets
a nice crazy sound for it. Automate that on and off depending upon where you want it,
at the hook is always fun.
Hey guys, thanks for bearing with my as I ramble on on this one. But hopefully you find
some good stuff in there, some useful techniques with the RBass and the fundamental frequency
and all that stuff. But feel free to message me, david@davidglennrecording.com and my site
is davidglennrecording.com. Great stuff over there, free content. There’s a free training
course that should be available right now. If not, shoot me an email and I’ll send
that to you. And then also theproaudiofiles.com, incredible content over there. And we’ll
catch you on the next one. Thanks again.