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Bass Tone Setup

Lesson 42 from: Recording Metal with Eyal Levi: A Bootcamp

Eyal Levi

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Lesson Info

42. Bass Tone Setup

Lessons

Class Trailer
1

Intro to Bootcamp

13:45
2

Purpose of Pre-Production

15:55
3

Technical Side of Preproduction

11:33
4

Pre-Production: Setting Up the Tempo Map

12:05
5

Pre-Production: Importing Stems

10:11
6

Pre-Production: Click Track

15:27
7

Creating Tracking Templates

17:04
8

Intro and the Tone Pie

04:52
9

Drums - Lay of the Land

10:45
10

Bearing Edges

03:10
11

Wood Types

10:37
12

Depths and Sizes

04:00
13

Hoops

02:39
14

Sticks and Beaters

07:39
15

Drum Heads

07:31
16

Drum Tuning

1:03:55
17

Drum Mic Placement Intro

10:38
18

Basic Drum Mic Setup

53:37
19

Cymbal Mic Setup

35:25
20

Touch Up Tuning

46:56
21

Microphone Choice and Placement

40:34
22

Drum Tracking Intro

01:01
23

Getting Tones and Final Placement

34:52
24

Primary Tracking

31:54
25

Punching In and Comping Takes

20:11
26

Guitar Setup and Rhythm Tone Tracking

01:59
27

Amplifiers - Lay of the Land

10:01
28

Amplifiers & Cab Shoot Out

27:13
29

Guitar Cab Mic Choice and Placement

03:56
30

Guitar Tracking and Signal Chain

29:08
31

Finalizing Amplifier Tone

51:24
32

Guitar Mic Shootout Round Robin

05:22
33

Intro to Rhythm Tracking

07:46
34

Setting Up Guitars

15:02
35

Working with a Guitarist

05:05
36

Final Guitar Tone and Recap

04:11
37

Guitar Tracking with John

15:19
38

Guitar Tracking with Ollie

32:03
39

Final Tracking

22:08
40

Tracking Quads

33:44
41

Intro to Bass Tone

01:26
42

Bass Tone Setup

07:36
43

Bass Tone Mic Placement

16:42
44

Bass Tracking

45:09
45

Intro to Clean and Lead Tones

02:15
46

Clean Guitar Tones

34:05
47

Lead Tones

10:58
48

Vocal Setup for Tracking

11:27
49

Vocal Mic Selection and Setup

02:39
50

Vocal Mic Shootout

09:14
51

Lead Vocal Tracking

38:09
52

Writing Harmonies

07:44
53

Harmony Vocal Tracking

23:25
54

Vocal Warm Ups

11:40
55

Scream Vocal Tracking

18:57
56

Vocal Tuning and Editing Introduction

01:35
57

Vocal Tuning and Editing

29:26
58

Routing and Bussing

25:16
59

Color Coding, Labeling and Arranging Channels

17:54
60

Setting Up Parallel Compression

30:51
61

Setting Up Drum Triggers

10:41
62

Gain Staging and Trim

1:00:54
63

Drum Mixing - Subtractive EQ

25:39
64

Drum Mixing - Snare

23:01
65

Drum Mixing - Kick

11:39
66

Drum Mixing - Toms

24:47
67

Drum Mixing - Cymbals and Rooms

17:24
68

Drum Mixing Recap

08:58
69

Mixing Bass Guitar

16:27
70

Mixing Rhythm Guitars

1:16:08
71

Basic Vocal Mix

1:08:59
72

Mixing Clean and Lead Guitars

58:55
73

Mixing - Automation

43:36
74

Mastering - Interview with Joel Wanasek

31:02

Lesson Info

Bass Tone Setup

Bass tone, I think, is like the hidden weapon on any metal recording. It's the most important part, next to the drums. Yeah, in my opinion, too. Well, because it's part of the drum tone and part of the guitar tone. A lot of people don't even realize that you don't get a really good and powerful guitar tone that has real teeth without a great bass tone and you don't get drums that really push without a great bass tone. It marries everything together. It's the hardest part to dial in, I think, and the mark of truly pro mixer is how well they balance their low end and it's the thing that people struggle with the most. It takes the longest to get right. It's the hardest to hear and I think it's the most fun to track also. It's definitely the most fun part, I think, as well. Yeah And another thing as well that bewilders me is the fact that a lot of metal bands have terrible bass players when it's like one of the most important parts. I think it's because the importance of it is ...

not a lead role. It is to those of us who understand what comprises a metal mix, but as far players go, it's a support instrument, so-- It's actually the lead instrument. In my opinion too. The guitars are supporting you with white noise on the sides of the track. I agree but, in the way that it's presented to the world, it's a support instrument and so it doesn't attract as many people, and often times even, it's the instrument that bad guitar players get demoted to. When in reality-- It should be the other way around. Yeah. Lots of my best mixes have been when the best musician in the band was the bassist. And also on the subject of having to redo other people's parts, I find that bass is the instrument that I play the most in the studio. I mean other than guitar in my own stuff, when I'm working with other people, I replace their bass with myself more often than guitars. Yup You find that too? I find that too, yeah. I also enjoy tracking it more than not-- Yeah it's way more fun, isn't it? And you only have to get one, so. Yeah Yeah, it's fun. Well, one but tons of tracks of, let's start talking about this set up. They've got a lot of interesting stuff with them, that we all wanted to try, but at the same time, I just wanted to capture clean DI. Not just for the reason of re-amping and not just as a safety net, but because I like to use it for generating MIDI and all kinds of different things. It just has lots of uses and I just do it as a matter of discipline. So, we had to figure out how to take one bass and get it into several places without murdering the tone on the way. So, the first thing was, we've got this Little Labs splitter. And what's interesting about it is that this is an XLR end, but this XLR has a guitar cable end put on the other side and it has a chip in here that converts it back to unbalanced. Originally, we were going from this Little Labs and splitting it and going straight to the front of this API for the DI, right? Yeah, that's correct. And then out to the front of this POD XT, however, as lots of people know, these APIs that don't have input and output trims, they really clip, very, very easy. That's why I have VP-28s, for instance, because you've got input and output, makes your life a lot easier. As a matter of fact, I know a lot of people who use, when they have real APIs or 3124s or whatever, they actually have, in their rack, a set of pads right after them where they plug in line pads to the outputs of their APIs, because a lot of the cool part of an API is when you drive it, that's when you start to get the cool distortion harmonics that it can provide. So, in reality, if you don't have the ability to pad the output, an API is actually crystal clear. It's actually kinda cool that it can go from crystal clear to just distorted and punchy. However, we want crystal clear for the bass DI. So, that wasn't working, so we had to rethink this. So we know that John's POD XT has a clean out, so we decided okay, instead of splitting this out to the API, we're gonna send one to the front of the POD, correct? No, we're gonna plug the bass directly into the front of the POD. That's right. Cause we've got the pad on the front of this. We can pad it. It goes through the unaffected out into the splitter and then we can-- That's right. Into the API, therefore you've got pad before the API which causes us to not lose much clipping. So you've actually got two pads on it before. Two pads and how low is the volume? It's pretty much on zero, pretty much, yup. Yeah, so I got that wrong that we're going straight into the front of the POD? Yup. Okay. So one of those is being split straight to the API and that's just a clean signal from the API right into Pro Tools. Done. Yup. Then, from that little Labs, this is where you might want to take over. Yeah, okay, we've split into another Little Labs. This is the Redeye. That's the Redeye. So we split into the Redeye which is this thing here and we're running two more signals. So one is going back into another API here which then is feeding through to the bass amplifier that we have in the live room which we'll go over a little bit later and then the other side is going to these pedals here. We have a Cali 1176 replica in the pedal, sounds great. It's a compressor which then is going into a B7K Ultra which is the new pedal from Darkglass and then that's going into Pro Tools as well. Yeah, that's going into another API? It's actually going into another API, yeah. (laughs) Wow, quite an intense signal, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. So then-- Oh yeah, one thing I forgot to mention, actually, about going to the bass sample as well. So from this API which is going to the bass amp into the other room, we're actually running through this compressor equalizer here by Audio Design, a vocal stressor, so we're going to compress the signal before it hits the bass amplifier, so we get a more consistent sound. Now what's crazy about that is, we'll show you in a moment that on the front of the bass amp, we've got a reamp box because this studio here puts out line level outputs and you don't want to put line level outputs into the input of an amp, but we wanted to use this sick compressor. So, then we have a reamp box out there converting it to high-Z signal. And so, let's continue this, go out there. Yeah, let's see what the mics are saying.

Class Materials

Bonus Materials with Purchase

Eyal Levi Bootcamp Bonuses
Drum Editing - HD

Ratings and Reviews

Ron
 

I'm on lesson 19! Already worth every dollar!!! Priceless insight! I have already incorporated some of the ideas (preproduction common sense stuff that I never thought of, but damn). VERY HAPPY with this course! ALWAYS LEARNING and looking forward to the next 50 (or whatever) lessons!!! Excellent course! GREAT PRODUCER/ENGINEER, GREAT DRUM TECH, and GREAT BAND!!!! THANK YOU!!!!!!!!

ceeleeme
 

I'm just part way though and I'm blown away by the quality approach Eyal takes to getting the best out of the sessions. I love how well everything is explained and Eyals calm manner is just awesome it really makes you want to listen to the gems of wisdom he offers.

Will
 

Wow is all I can say. This bootcamp goes in so much depth from tuning drums, setting up guitars, to recording and mixing. I have learned so much by participating in this bootcamp. It has taught me some new recording techniques and signal routing for my mixes. I just want to thank Eyal, Monuments, and Creative Live for taking the time to do this. It has been amazing and I will keep going back to these videos.

Student Work

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