The Mix Academy: bit.ly/mixacademy Learn to mix hip-hop: mixinghiphop.com Learn compression: learncompression.com Ear training: quiztones.com Drum samples: weissdrums.com A tutorial with some bass mixing tips using Waves RBass and the iZotope Ozone 5 stereo imager. — Transcript: Hey guys, David Glenn of davidglennrecording.com and theproaudiofiles.com. I’ve got another one on mixing bass. I’m gonna treat this as a update to my mixing bass tutorial that I’ve released, had a gospel bass on that, and walked you through start to finish. I’m just gonna do an update and show you how I’m still using the same techniques and I’ve got a few things I’m doing differently. This is the song ’Until I Have You’ from Dasha Moore. I start with the bass DI. In this case it was a key bass, a virtual instrument. Probably Massive. 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. I used Alloy for saturation. I did multiband saturation with it with the iZotope Alloy 2. I applied different saturation to the low, subs — 200 and below — then I did to the 200 and above. Play with that, great plugin if you have it. I treated it with a little bit of compression, I used the grey — sorry — the silver from UAD. You’ll see it’s probably 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. I have the same compressor over on the bass amp. This is Sansamp, I’m driving it a little bit to kind of blend some of that in, give it a bit of character, boost the mids. What I really want to show you is — I can even put the parallel compression down — I’ve showed that in the other video. On the bass level track we’ve got RBass. Dave Pensado on a recent ITL, I think he used RBass on a kick and he mentioned he uses an app. Well I did a training course called The Mix Series, you can check that at davidglennrecording.com, and it’s got like five hours of training, 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 show you a little bit about how I’m using an app called Producer’s Tools. iPhone and Android compatible. What I do is I go to my guitar, listen to the song, figure out what key it’s in and I find a note that resonates well at the chorus or consistently throughout the song. [mix playback to find key of the song on guitar] I’m hearing C, the note C is resonating well throughout the whole progression. What I do is I’m pulling open Producer Tools and going to the frequency translator. The first note up is C but you can cycle through. You can find a note that you want to use and it’ll tell you octave 0 is 16.35 Hz for C. Octave 1: 32.7, octave 2: 64.41 and so on. What I do for bass guitar is I find usually octave 1 or octave 2 works 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. Let’s hear before and after. You guys are probably familiar with Rbass. Let’s solo the bass so we can hear it. [bass guitar with/without Waves RBass] So it’s a bass tutorial dealing with subs, so if you’re listening on a phone or laptop you’re not gonna hear it. My apologies, but if you are listening on monitors, some good headphones, you’re gonna hear the fullness that RBass generates for us. I use it on pretty much every mix with bass guitar. Then it just depends on what intensity. Sometimes I’ll automate the intensity so it can gradually build into the chorus and be super full. The other thing I’m doing is a stereo aux for both my parallel compression and my level that I’m using here. 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 come here and take, you know, 200 or below or a lot of times just the subs and make that mono. So with the iZotope Ozone 5 stereo imager you can pull that down and make whichever frequency band you want to be wider or more focused and central to the middle. So that’s what I’m doing with the bass. A lot of times with synth bass, this is a keyed bass, but with synth bass that has some grit, I’ll push the upper mids and highs wide, gets a nice crazy sound. Automate that on and off depending upon where you want it, at the hook is always fun.

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