How to Mix Bass Guitar with Parallel Processing

submitted by David Glenn Recording on 04/12/15 1

The Mix Academy: bit.ly/mixacademy Learn compression: learncompression.com Learn to mix hip-hop: mixinghiphop.com Ear training: quiztones.com Drum samples: weissdrums.com Mixing tips: theproaudiofiles.com How to mix bass guitar with aux tracks for multiple layers of parallel processing. Software: - Avid Pro Tools - UAD Studer A800 Multichannel Tape Recorder - UAD Teletronix LA-2A Classic Audio Leveler - Waves CLA-76 - Waves Bass Rider - FabFilter Pro-Q - Antares Warm Tube Saturation --- Transcript: Today we're finishing up a four part series on using aux tracks for 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 lead vocal. 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. I'm going to hit play and you'll hear what we got going on 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. Here's soloed, just the bass, the way it was sent to me. 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. Here's the studer. 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. 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. This looks like we're going to have some volume rider, bass rider. 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. 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 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. Now automation. 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. Whenever I'm mixing this type of music is go through and I'll listen to the keys, drums, bass, I'll pick the different parts where they want to be featured, where they kind of giving me something special. 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. And one more time with the bass, without the automation. Now if I take the automation off, you'll hear the bass kind of disappears. 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.

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