Hey what's up guys? David Glenn, of davidglennrecording.com and theproaudiofiles.com. Today we're going
to finish up this four part series on how I use aux tracks to give me a greater level
of control when I do parallel processing. We're going to be talking about a live bass
guitar today, but if you haven't seen the other videos, we've covered kick, snare and
the lead vocal. If you've seen those videos, don't be afraid to try these on anything.
We got acoustic guitars, beat production elements, toms, anything you can think of.
These just happen to be the four main things that I'm using parallel compression on and
the aux trick with pretty much every mix that I'm doing now. So we're going to jump right
in, the song is called' Keep Holding On', it's by Antoine Jordan, produced by Rico Clark
out of Atlanta. Shout out to his son Devonda Davis, just 16 years old and tore up the drums.
I'm going to hit play and we're going to dive right in and hear what we got going on with
the bass.
[music]
Alright very cool, so lots of energy in this track, loving what's going on. Let's bypass,
I'll tell you what, before I jump into what I'm doing with the bass, let me explain for
those of you who haven't seen the other videos. We've got an aux track right here; it's called
the bass level. That bass level receives a signal, bass level; it goes out to the low
land. Which I have the low land going to my stereo bust. The DI appears to dry signal,
that's going out to the bass level.
You see I also got the bass DI being parallel compressed and I'm sending that from the dry
signal to the parallel compression chain. And they're both meeting and that's also going
out to the bass level. So you got a dry bass and then you got a parallel compressed bass,
blending in and they're both meeting at an aux track that I've labeled bass level. That
bass level track I'll use for additional EQ, maybe a little bit compression.
In this case I'm using the auto, not auto tune but the Antares warm plug-in and then
I'll treat the bass level with some automation for some volume rides and I will also send
the kick into the compressor and do my side chaining from the kick to the bass. At the
end of the chain, on bass level. So kind of an overview of what I'm doing there, but the
signal as it was given to me, let's kind of walk through one thing at a time and then
we'll... hear it in the track. Here's soloed, just the bass, the way it was sent to me.
Okay cool. So it sounds like it's just the direct signal, plugged into an audio interface
and then shipped off to me. So, nothing wrong with that, it gives me some extra control
that I can do with it. But I want to bring some life into it. The first couple of steps
are just some very subtle changes, so I'll kind of do a before and after. But this is
pretty minimal, here again the dry.
Cool and then here's the studer. So a little bit of love to it, let's pull that up, you
can see what I got. Pulled up the bass preset, I like what it was doing, kind of dialed in
some input there. Let's also do the same thing for the LA-2 here, before. Cool and then the
LA2A engaged. Cool, so we're not killing it, but just a touch. And then we're sending that
signal to a parallel compression chain. The parallel compression is down here. And let
me get this guy over here, pull that over. I got the waves, 1176 and there we go medium
attack, fast release and probably about 10 DB of reduction there. Let's hear before parallel
compression one more time.
And then after. Right, so we're really bringing that forward in the mix and then I didn't
want to stop there. I wanted to be able to take that blend that I liked, and control
it a little bit more. So let's go to the bass level and let's see what we got going on.
This looks like we're going to have some volume rider, bass rider. And we'll see what this
is doing; kind of take a look at that. Cool. I like the way that felt, so we'll leave that
one alone. And we jump over to an EQ that I got, the pro Q. I love this EQ but it's
a little top in, kind of cleaning it up, dialing in a little bit of the frequencies to get
it to gel with the kick and actually let's play a before and after this. And after. Very
cool. And it looks like we didn't stop there, we went through the Antares, what is this
play called? The warm plug-in, add a little bit of saturation. And let's hear what that
is doing before. After.
So still some subtle changes but it's contributing to the overall sound. And then we got the
D3 I'm using here. The DigiDesign compressor, sorry an Avid compressor. For side chaining
the kick and if we want to show that off, we can come up here and solo the couple kick
drums that I'm using. And hear what that's doing, here's before. And after. Alright cool,
so there's kind of what I'm walking you through it, going through some of the stuff I'm thinking
and contributing to the overall sound. Now what I want to show you guys is this down
here, the automation. And... This style of music, you got a bass player who's going to
get pretty fancy, you got some sick musicians in the gospel world. And he's going to do
some fills, he's going to do some stuff, he's going to pick his spots and he's going to
do his thing.
So what I do, whenever I'm mixing this type of music is I'll go through and I'll listen
to the keys, the drums, the bass, I'll pick the different parts where they want to be
featured, where they kind of giving me something special. And I'll go in and I'll lift them
up for those parts and kind of put them back down. And that's the case with this bass guitar
here, so if you look, let's take a listen without the automation on... Disengage that
for a minute, so this won't be active right now. My bad, let's go take the kick out. And
one more time with the bass, without the automation.
Now, let's put it back in. Cool, so you can hear how in just those spots, you've got...
excuse me, the bass pulled up. It's going to sit on top of the track a little bit more
and you can see I've done that throughout the song in these different parts. Maybe let's
play a couple more of these, let's see what he's doing right here. Alright cool, so there's
one, let's play another one. Cool. Now that sounds like a good one to go with, let's play
it in the track and then I'm going to mute the automation and then we'll hear the difference.
Right cool, now if I take the automation off, you'll hear the bass kind of disappears on
us. I shouldn't say disappear, because it's still there but what I wanted to do was bring
that up so that you can really feel the fancy work that he had going on there. You got great
players, you got great musicians, you want to be able to bring, those up whenever they
play something worth hearing. Above the mix, and then put them back down so that they can
be a part of the foundation again. So, man I hope you guys are learning from this, this
is the bass guitar; it's kind of a quick overview. But if you have any questions, feel free to
hit me at David@davidglennrecording.com and man I look forward to bringing you more videos.
We've got tons more to come now that we're jumping away from this aux series. Feel free
to hit me up with some messages, I'll talk to you guys soon, bye.