How Do the big boys get those lows?

[FordVan]

I will still often DI and mic the bass and use the DI as a "compress the heck out of it, and filter out everything above 200Hz" sub color to the sound. Try a slow attack, and long decay compressor (the best you got for a bass!). Compress the hell out of that track! Then, on your mic track, put a high pass filter on it, set to around maybe 200Hz, compress and eq to taste, then blend the two tracks together. You should make sure that both tracks are VERY phase coherent as much as possible.

Here and there, I have found the mic to provide a more stable low end, and the DI to have better definition. So, the point being, try two tracks of bass, that they are different sources and get one of them to be your HUGE bottom end, and the other to be your definition. Blend to taste.

[FordVan]

I should say too that you REALLY need a pretty good DI to get a clean low end. Something like the Avalon U5 really give you an edge. Cheaper DI's just seem to much up the lows and not pass that clean of a signal.

[M-ManLA]

A good plug-in can help too. Waves have the MaxxBass.

[DonaldM]

Speaking of kickin' bass sounds, there's an awesome bass sound used in the song "Miss Independent" off Kelly Clarkson's "Breakaway" CD. It has a lot punch and low end. I'd love to know exactly what they used to get that sound! It's kickin'

[barismanco123]

Hey Derek,

I loved that mix you did - very powerfull.

[nst7]

Not to nitpick, but "Miss Independent" was actually on Kelly's first album, "Thankful". Doesn't answer your question about the bass, but I thought I'd throw that out there.

[tha]-[acksaw]

Originally Posted by O.G. Killa

sounds like it is just the bass guitar to me.

Listen to this and see if it has the same kind of bottom end you are talking about? This is a track I did which kind of reminds me of Sound Garden/Chris Cornell. If it gets the same bottom end that you are talking about then I can tell you how I got it.

http://www.megatrax.com/core/songdet...?songid=506911

Derek, that crawlin track is pretty dope. That should make the new Audioslave album for sure!

Even if its not what the OP was looking for, i'd sure love to know what u did to that bass. A thread ain't a thread till OG Killa ran on thru.

[O.G. Killa]

Originally Posted by tha]-[acksaw

Derek, that crawlin track is pretty dope. That should make the new Audioslave album for sure!

i'd sure love to know what u did to that bass.

Thanks man. The cool thing about that song is we did a drum and bass mix of it and had enough space to put it on the CD. so you can listen to the bass to really "hear" it without the guitars. If you didn't listen to the Bass and Drum mix listed within the link, go back and check it out. A lot of the growl and break up distortion actually comes from the bass, not the guitars. The guitars, btw, were a Carvin setup to Drop A with 13's on it, and we also had a regular tuned Les Paul, through a Mesa Boogie Road King II (4th channel, all tubes on, diode rectified) and a Diezel VH4 (4th Channel as well). Both went into a Mesa Rectifier 4x12 cab and was mic'd with an SM57, R121, and Beta52. The three mics on each pass were then blended to taste for the mix. We did two passes with each guitar, once through the boogie and once through the Diezel. So the guitars you hear are technically quadruple tracked.

The Bass was a 5 string singray. I don't remember what key Crawling is in, but for some of the songs we dropped the low B string down to A to get low A's in their. If Crawling is in D, E or A, then most likely the B string is tuned down to A and we tried to use it whenever possible!

We rented an Ampex SVT4PRO head and an Ampex 4x10 Cabinet. We had an MXR "Blowtorch" pedal between the bass and amp that we used to get really distorted tones. I Mic'd the cab with a 421. We also recorded a DI clean (before going into the blowtorch). The DI, when mixing, was sent out to a RAT distortion pedal and then brought back in. It adds some nice grit and a thickness. if I remember correctly, on this song we used the blowtorch pedal cranked through the amp and then also had the rat pedal adding some distortion to the DI. Oh, and no Maxxbass or sub-harmonic generators were used. More often than not, they cause more problems then good. If you are going to use them, use them sparingly. A little extra bass goes a long way!

When you listen to the Bass and drums it's surprising to hear how much distortion and breakup is on the bass. But you don't hear it in the full mix because the guitars smooth it out a little bit and some of that top end crunch from the bass meshes with the guitars. It's a good example of how things in "solo" don't always sound the same when combined in the mix.

That's it. Compress a little and done.

If you are into Football, NFL films has been using the crap out of this song and a couple others from this disc for their "Last season's highlights" and retrospectives and stuff. So this football season you'll probably hear it a lot!

[tha]-[acksaw]

Originally Posted by O.G. Killa

Thanks man. The cool thing about that song is we did a drum and bass mix of it and had enough space to put it on the CD. so you can listen to the bass to really "hear" it without the guitars. If you didn't listen to the Bass and Drum mix listed within the link, go back and check it out. A lot of the growl and break up distortion actually comes from the bass, not the guitars. The guitars, btw, were a Carvin setup to Drop A with 13's on it, and we also had a regular tuned Les Paul, through a Mesa Boogie Road King II (4th channel, all tubes on, diode rectified) and a Diezel VH4 (4th Channel as well). Both went into a Mesa Rectifier 4x12 cab and was mic'd with an SM57, R121, and Beta52. The three mics on each pass were then blended to taste for the mix. We did two passes with each guitar, once through the boogie and once through the Diezel. So the guitars you hear are technically quadruple tracked.

The Bass was a 5 string singray. I don't remember what key Crawling is in, but for some of the songs we dropped the low B string down to A to get low A's in their. If Crawling is in D, E or A, then most likely the B string is tuned down to A and we tried to use it whenever possible!

We rented an Ampex SVT4PRO head and an Ampex 4x10 Cabinet. We had an MXR "Blowtorch" pedal between the bass and amp that we used to get really distorted tones. I Mic'd the cab with a 421. We also recorded a DI clean (before going into the blowtorch). The DI, when mixing, was sent out to a RAT distortion pedal and then brought back in. It adds some nice grit and a thickness. if I remember correctly, on this song we used the blowtorch pedal cranked through the amp and then also had the rat pedal adding some distortion to the DI. Oh, and no Maxxbass or sub-harmonic generators were used. More often than not, they cause more problems then good. If you are going to use them, use them sparingly. A little extra bass goes a long way!

When you listen to the Bass and drums it's surprising to hear how much distortion and breakup is on the bass. But you don't hear it in the full mix because the guitars smooth it out a little bit and some of that top end crunch from the bass meshes with the guitars. It's a good example of how things in "solo" don't always sound the same when combined in the mix.

That's it. Compress a little and done.

If you are into Football, NFL films has been using the crap out of this song and a couple others from this disc for their "Last season's highlights" and retrospectives and stuff. So this football season you'll probably hear it a lot!

RIGHT ON! Thanks so much Derek. Detailed and thorough as always!

I'm a big fan of using using the bass to provide dirt. I've seen RATM and Audio Slave live many many times. I was always tripped out at how raunchy Tim Commerford's bass sound was. Fat, thick, well defined and dirty as hell. I'd feel safe saying that most of the distortion on the Audioslave records comes from the bass. I really do dig the way it sounds.

I think the use of distortion stomp boxes really does help with fattening the bass up. It tends to compress the hell out of it, as it distortes it. I use this techinque for lots of styles of music that I produce from Psych Rock to HipHop. It works great!

But there are several styles of music that don't fit using stomp boxes, cause distortion is not the right sound. I've been looking for a good way to get a nice even, thick bass sound, without the distortion that comes from stomp boxes. I've been using that Waves RBass as of late. I love the way it sounds. It's not 100% what I'm looking for, but its as close as I've gotten to date.

I was hoping you might have some secrets that don't involve distortion, but I think what you guys did on that Crawling track was just what the doctor ordered, for that style of music. I guess it's back to the drawing board, until I get the sound I'm looking for on these cleaner tracks I record.

Thanks again for the info, Derek. You da man!

[O.G. Killa]

What style tracks are you doing? For non-"heavy rock" to get a thick bass sound, for me anyway, it's usually in the choice of bass guitar (and the player's fingers).

Here's a song I tracked (but I didn't mix it) that is more of a bluesy rock with a clean but thick bass tone. The bass was some custom made 5 string Jimmy uses all the time into a DI, into an API console, into PTHD. Richard Breen mixed it. But comparing it to my rough mix I did at the studio that day, it doesn't sound like he is doing that much to it. Youtube might suck the life out of the track a little, but you can still hear the bass pretty well. I tracked another song on that album called "Where the wind blows" but couldn't find a preview of it online anywhere except iTunes. That has a great low thick bass tone on it too and a guitar line with a kind of "Kashmir" vibe to it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Tjiz...eature=related