Lessons

Lesson Info

Tracking Bass

So they say we're going to start we're going toe plow right through this and start tracking base um on the cabinet so we were using a am paige what is it? A class sbt classic with the mpeg fifteen inch cabinet? I've got a fifty seven and a norman one seventy on the cabinet um and I'm gonna try to see if we can get these up and running and then, yeah, I never used to like so many before, okay, so I was wondering what? Like, why ok, so in this particular set up, I'm using the well, I'm not familiar with this new women one seventy so what kind of hear how it happens? It is a large diaphragm condenser mike, so I can assume that the bottom end on that might be a little bigger and like a little bit more of ah arounder sound than a fifty seven that might have more like mid range attack. Um, so I'm going to be using the two of those to kind of blend together so it's almost like instead of adding cube, you can play with the balance of the microphones to get a tone that makes sense and I kind of...

go through it and kind of show you how to do that and as well as if you've never used to microphones before uh, this could be pretty useful because I'll show you how to actually get them in phase with each other and how important phases not only with drums but with everything else. Okay, so let me have you just start kind of playing a little bit and I'll get a get a tone, no signal so the phantom power on these mike preempts is on the back of this print which is why I'm kind of heading around the back here to turn that on like we talked about in the first class microphones that have phantom power or they need phantom power like condensers didn't make sure you have a pre empted khun supply that which is why, if you noticed this base one seventy track was not seeing any level and then it seems that turn on the fan power then it works, so give me a little bit more of that. Okay, so now to check that these air in phase, a cool kind of way of just quickly doing it is, um what I want you to do is just give me a like, uh is just give me a quick little lecture not even a note just like a street but just real fast now you can kind of zoom in real tall, check with these aaron face um I probably should have done a worse job making it up um like I said, I just know a fifty seven so well from doing it so many times I'm pretty right on here uh but just for the sake of showing you what it looks like when it's not in phase um I'm just going to quickly move this back a little bit so now I've got the fifty seven right up on the grill and the the norman one seven his back up about an inch so I'll show you what that looks like in here so give me another one of those when they're out of face and the reason why so see how it's just very minimal but you can see toe where like the peak of this top wave form is about here and the peak of this wave form is about their, um it doesn't seem like kind of a big deal as you're kind of dialing in a sound, but just like the as I was, I forget what I was showing yesterday, but I think it was the base tracks, but as you bring in different microphones, you'll start to hear things kind of get a little uneven um and just for the sake of that, let me just show you that real quick so just play like just kind of like open your whatever your team to just kind of pedal on that for a little bit so I'm just gonna kind of blow through the stuff so and then let me go through and put these back in phase and then give me another chika um and now do that same pedaling for me so here's what it sounds like when they're in phase and granted these differences going to preach small but they may be big I don't know it really depends on the tone of each of each base sometimes it's accentuated mohr sometimes the cabinets accentuate things more other times having microphone slightly out of phase sounds cooler so it's really a creative decision so here's just the fifty seventh the one seventy here how much like a thicker and you're the one seventy is compared to the fifty seven combining them both e so here they are that's both of them in the face and slightly out a little more of that clank range gets kind of a little bit starts to get a little scooped out um with basements where it's such like low frequencies that takes so long to develop you're not really gonna it's not like I guess, as critical to be super on point but like for guitars it will make a huge difference to the top end of the guitars um and I just believe it's always a good idea to be in face um as best you can so with that being said let's go back to a group and you're ready to start blowing through this thing yeah you want headphones let me know yeah let's get a little am I messing with their level in there? I apologize fan just ok sorry about that okay uh ok um we may not be able to give you your base in the headphones but you're cranked up so let me know if you have enough click and then a little start I'll start here was in where he was at and then let me know if you have enough yes punching right there okay it clicks than urine it's another good reason about being on the grid if you're trying to work fast you know that it's just eight clicks four clicks for bar and you just quickly back in awesome called click s o I turned off the click track like that I can't stand click track hate it so much any chance I get to like mute click track I will especially because uh at the end of a track sometimes you can have quick track get picked up you know and it's you know when you're in headphones you need click track loud for it to just kind of be blasting into your head, but then as soon as you're done playing all of a sudden you realize how loud it is and it can just they give you a headache real fast um as well as for drums um I'm not sure if I did it in those takes and may have but like at the end of like your last hit sometimes it's cool to just within pro tools or whatever d a w you're in to just automate like a uh so for like the last kick um if this were like a record I would be doing all these extra little things which I should probably be doing here but since I'm moving so fast I'm kind of just trying to cover the basics so at the end of like your last crash it's always a good idea to kind of your click tracks so you don't get like that bleeding through the drummers headphones so you can automate it like this to where it'll just mute out at the end any time you have like a quiet part of the song if your drummer needs to have the click track loud, you just you conduct it if you want you know and it's and it's all things that is just kind of it's like well, we had uh you know, but they're all things that I feel like slit people's brains when you're actually tracking like oh yeah that's right? I can just turn it down I'm not stuck with that um and okay, anything else about that? Um okay, so base feel like that was pretty good let me just quickly listen to this we'll kind of see where we're at fifty seven versus the one seventy um as you can hear, the one seventy is much round, especially when it starts getting into like those kind of mid range and like kind of distorted sounds. So the one seventy eight versus the fifty seven way more aggressive on the top end but as you're listening to just the clean sound huge not as drastic, you know? I mean, eh? So that's why the two mikes air cool because then you can even use little things like maybe I like the sound of the fifty seven on the verse and then the one seventy on the course or separate parts or if you want that part to jump out a little more, you could just bring up to fifty seven when it comes time to kind of balancing all of your levels out. Any other questions about that? Okay. You think that's good on base? I think so, yeah, yeah. Neil drum take wonder everyone take yeah, and then before you get started on guitar what I'm doing here is just creating a little cross fade to make sure there are no pops as you go you're puncheon's post production on this theme making set up with the base and yeah you're talking about the large die for him. My captured a lot more of the bottom and having a smoother transition response and said on that, have you it? Would you ever, like cross filter those high pass on one low pass on the other, and treated like multi van compression almost of the bus afterwards? So I won't necessarily do that perm. Well, it's hard to say, um most of the time, like if it comes time to like for post or mixing whatever you want to say, I really look at it like there are no rules. And sometimes I think, you know, there's been super crazy set ups where it's like, ok, I have a d I and then I have, like six mikes on amp that someone sent, and I have to make it sound like this crazy bass sound. And every single mike that they gave me is wrong and it's out of phase. And even when you have mike's there out of phase, when you move them it's different like when you line up the tracks, it sounds different than you. Then, if you were to actually just have them invade to begin with, so I mean, it does sound better when you move the men, but it's still not the same certain frequencies were canceled out because now like those mid range frequencies that we're hitting the mic separately or at the wrong time then now they're in phase but now your bottom and top is maybe shifted out so and you have to be careful with that because if it's a different band and they're paying you to mix it then you have to worry about okay well yes, these maybe out of phase but this is the sound that they were working with and this may be the tone that, like they wanted, you know? So you have to be careful not to mess that blend up because people are very sensitive to like, I don't know man like that weird like, you know lapel mic that we put in front of the night you know or like the kid pulling your mike that we put on the guitar like cabinet just sounds so cool when I missed that mike but as far as treating bass, yeah, I will do whatever it takes if I have to duplicate a track you know and like do a total low pass on on ly getting like a certain frequency and then compressed the crap out of that sometimes that's what a good way of getting a salt of low end throughout your track because especially like on these intro notes here there's just not a lot of like low frequency information there. Um, I don't even know if that's something that we can get out of here. Try it pretty quick, but chances are it's probably not gonna work a ce faras to level that I would be satisfied with. But like this, you know, a lot of what we're talking about is ok. Well, is this is this better than not having it at all? You know, is there so you can d'oh bring that up as much as you want you want, tio. I mean, yeah, you can do that. And, you know, I mean that's kind of the beauty of a d a w because there's no rules you can duplicate that you can throw, you know, you throw sub exciter on there if that's what it is. But I find that sometimes the subject sighters will get a little little faizi, you know, and like, because there not completely accurate with the active that's being played, sometimes it gets the wobbly, um, does that help you? Okay.