Hi,

Posting an unfinished track for the first time here and seeking mixing advice. Generally what do you guys think I would have done to improve the bass and low end? My gripe is that the bass guitar is not as 'fat' as I wanted it to be. Also, it's not 'glued' well. How are vocals sitting in the track? And what do you think of the overall mixing in this track? Any advice will be very much appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Note: 80% of the sounds are from free libraries.

 

Try the bass in mono

Chain:
■ Compressor
■ EQ
■ Chorus fx (just a lil' bit) or Delay
■ Reverb (optional)

 

very nice song !

mix is a bit bass heavy. use more hp filter on non bass insruments ( guitars,harp,fx, vocals,piano,strings), the bass will stand out more. A hp filter at 100hz, a narrow q -5db cut at 245, 540 clears out the mix greatly on non-bass instruments. i also hp the bass guitar and bass drum at 35Hz. At the mastering stage, make sure the mix is mono under 140Hz (no phasing issues) , cut out ugly resonant frequencies (they live around 240 and 540hz again, use lp! filter around 16k to take out harshness, or use a deesser. compress,limit.

other than that, it's a perfectly balanced mix, well done mate !

 

Last edited by a moderator: Oct 24, 2015

If this is in it's entirety you don't have much work to do. You asked for feedback in regard to mixing the bass. First off, the song sounds pretty good to my ear. And I think you are correct in detecting the bass as the biggest problem area. The first thing to focus on is that it's a wide open track overall. You have plenty of headroom for the bass. There's nothing in that frequency range for it to fight with other than the infrequent bass drum hit so the starting point is simple.. just turn it up until it's presence is staged better with the rest. If you use an EQ, give it a subtle mid dip afterwards. After that, put a stereo imager on the same bass channel and widen it (my guess) by the smallest increment first, then narrow it by the smallest increment second, and see if one of those bears any subtle improvement to your ear over the original position. If not.. don't use the imager. If so.. you know which direction to keep going in increments until you're most satisfied. Then, if you are going to master I would concentrate on tone shaping and how hard you are going to limit any areas of the track, or the whole track itself. It is clearly not an EDM track. And much of the advice you will hear these days will be repetitive copy and paste "default signal chain" advice. But there are no "must use every time" tools for mixing. In my opinion that's where many mistakes are made when fixed routines cause sweet to turn sour. Each track has unique symptoms, requires a unique diagnosis, and a unique surgical operation.. never pull out a heart when there's something wrong with a kidney. Have a good day. And much luck on your project.

 

Last edited: Oct 24, 2015

What do you mean by free libraries?

 

Always record your bass guitar/bass synth in mono. If you're laying off your instrument tracks to audio, first hard-pan your sampler or soft synth to one side, then bounce the audio to a mono audio track, and the resulting bass mono audio track should be panned dead center. If you're just bouncing VIs in real time, try to load up a mono instance of whatever you're using for your bass and keep it panned dead center (some DAWs, like Digital Performer, don't support mono VIs, so you may still have to bounce the audio to get true mono bass). Second thing, use a high-pass filter on everything that doesn't need bass. Whatever DAW you're using will have a bundled multi-band EQ, and the lowest band is usually a high-pass filter or has a high-pass filter option. I usually cut off everything below 80 Hz, though that might be a bit too much. The general rule of thumb is, solo a track that isn't dependent on bass (i.e. - everything except whatever is serving as your bassline and your kick drum) and start turning up your high-pass filter until it no longer sounds muddy. You don't want to have your HPF too high on these tracks, or everything else will sound tinny and lose impact. Once you've done that, you should be able to hear your bass and kick without having to boost your mix's bass EQ or volume to unnatural levels, and your overall bass sound should be balanced with your midrange and high end.

You'll also want to consider keeping both your bass and your kick drum dry (no reverb or delay).

 

Am extremely grateful to all of you for your tips and suggestions.

@thantrax : Thank you for the chain of plugins. I will try them.

@korte1975 : Many thanks for your kind words and advice bro. I have bx_cleansweep (awesome free plugin) on almost every track. But the settings are just what sounds better to my ears. I have a default setting of hp at 20hz - 12db. From there I usually start equing, again according to my ears. Thank you for enlighten me about the problematic frequencies. I will certainly follow your advices.

@dbmuzik : I certainly do NOT use any pre-made chains and I strongly agree that mixing varies song to song. I have nothing loaded in my template apart from a reverb and delay plugin on separate buses. I just start with the faders (volume). Superb tips. Thanks a lot mate.

@Iggy : I will certainly consider mixing bass in mono and to be frank all available libraries are in stereo afaik. I don't have the opportunity to record my own samples so just use these libraries. And am too lazy to convert them to mono but now it's time to do so. Thank you very much for your tips as well.

@jiemayn : Free libraries means libraries that are available free of cost. I will post what I have used after a while.

 

@jiemayn : These are the free kontakt libraries used in this track.

Guitars:
HumbuckerFREE - Pettinhouse.
TheoK Yamaha Pacifica - not available now.
Project16 Bass V2 - Bass guitars.
Kick and snare - downloaded from loopmaster, used some effects on them.
French horn: Jasper blunk.
Trombones: Ivy Audio - Carpenter Trombone
Vocals: Ivy Audio - Clare Solo v2
WB Granulate v0.2
Audio Imperia Photosynthesis Engine

And not free ones:
Strings: Symphobia
Harp: East west

 

In regard to mixing in mono: You have a stereo mix that will more than likely be played back in stereo elsewhere as well. The RMS meter on the stereo channel in most DAWs is generally a sufficient enough mixing guide to tell you if the weight is balanced/centered. For exclusive monitoring and editing to the mono portion of your mix it's better to use a stereo tool and bypass the sides only than to use a mono switch and collapse everything to the center.

 

Last edited: Oct 24, 2015

No problem! I like the track, too! The stuff I mentioned are just things I picked up over the years, usually after asking many of the same questions you did. All bass libraries (and soft-synth basses, and hardware synth/sampler basses) are in stereo, and when you're working with a hardware or software workstation and you're recording the audio straight without separating tracks, it's not something you think about (and probably not a factor, so long as you keep the bass part dry). Again, I'm not clear if you're just mixing VIs without laying off individual tracks' audio, or if you're recording audio to individual tracks first. If you're recording everything to two tracks straight from your VI, you can try just loading up a mono instance of your soft-sampler (Kontakt, I assume) separate from your stereo instance, load your bass sample into it and mix the stereo and the mono instances that way. Kontakt also has a built-in mixer, but that might be trickier to use.

Certain sounds seem to lose cohesion when you record them in stereo, depending on what kind of material it is. I always record snares, kicks, hats, basses and guitars in mono, and pan the critical ones (kicks, snares and basses) right down the center, rhythm guitars hard left and/or right, guitar solos a little off center and hats a quarter to the left or right (depending on how you're mixing your drum kit).

I use Efimov Classic Bass, SR5 Rock Bass and I used to use Scarbee Pre-Bass and Jay-Bass (which are both pretty decent libraries, but too tubby for me as direct bass samples). Since they're all direct bass sample libraries, I record those from Kontakt to a mono audio track, then make a duplicate track of that, which I run through an amp sim (usually, IK's Ampeg presets in Amplitude 3) and print. It's me imitating recording direct and through an amp to two mono tracks. Then, I put a Melda Productions phase plug on both to make sure they're in proper phase and compress the direct bass track a bit. I bring up the direct track, then bring up the amped track to blend the two together -- takes a bit of work, but I like the sound and it takes the "sample curse" off of the bass.

Please note, I'm doing it the really, really hard way. If you have an Efimov bass library (and definitely consider it; they are awesome), it comes with its own built-in amp sim -- all you have to to is turn it on or off and it's premixed for you, no phase problems, no recording multiple tracks. For that matter, you can run your direct bass through a plug like Amplitude 3 or Guitar Rig (or dozens of others) and just use the plug's built-in wet-dry mixer without having to go through the headaches I do. And for maximum easiness … you can always just use amped bass samples instead of direct samples. I mainly do it the hard way because it gives me the option of using different kinds of amps and, as I said, I can compress or affect one track or the other however I want.

 

Last edited: Oct 25, 2015

Really awesome of you @Iggy . I am happy that I've posted an unfinished piece to collect the gems of information and the extract of experience from you guys. This way I have learned so much and next is to experiment what suits best according to my capabilities and of course the VIs' I own.

I record the main melody first in Studio one, then go from there. I was always interested in basses because it gives the 'body' to a track. My problem is and always had to find the right balance not overwhelming, not overpowering but sufficient for a dramatic impact. I do use subs to further fill the gaps. But the way you doing it is more professional and artistic. If you happen to find some free time, please check this free library out http://bigcatinstruments.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/project16-bass-version-2.html It has got some built in amps too. I am getting Waves GTR which is on sale right now ($69). I will use the technique you've described and run the samples through it. Hopefully it will sound good. Thank you. I have learned a lot and got new ideas for experimentation.

 

Last edited: Oct 25, 2015

All of the above. Good tips there. Plus, I'd also play with some little saturation (decapitator, devil-loc, etc in parrallel) to get some harmonics in the bass singing and let it cut through a bit better on small speakers. nice sounds, but very, very polished to my ears. this has lots to do with taste though ;)!

 

Thank you for your insight. After GTR3, I will buy a saturation plugin probably Waves J37 and for bass harmonics I usually use Waves Max Bass.

 

Another trick that yeilds good results is to split the bass track into low mid and high sub tracks to process
and level separately.

 

there's plug-ins for (cleanish) harmonics that do wonders on stuff where the root is either to low or very weak, like the RBass and Waves Max Bass like you mentioned. these can also easily "mud up" your mixes in the low mids. they can do wonders though, but i use them more in repair cases.

i would advice to search for flavor saturation and harmonics, (the ones you would preferably get by saturating good analog devices) that give tone and vibe. in the plug-in world we are slowly getting there with good plug-ins from soundtoys, sonimus, slate, ubk, etc. sometimes there's a world of nice saturation that can be found in surprising places too. SoundToys Echoboy for example, can be used as a pure saturation plugin with lots of great tones. I would also really encourage you to look to UBK and Sly-fi. The UBK-1 is a saturation wizzard.

Good luck on your quest.

 

Thank you! Like you, I use samples or soft-synths for everything (and before that, hardware workstations and drum machines), but I always thought the best way to achieve realism was to treat synth and sample tracks like I was recording the real thing. It depends on what you're going for, though. I mainly do rock, so I want everything to sound "real". Synth pop, electronica, dance music, rap, etc. aren't dependent on realism, and you can get away with recording a drum machine like it was a drum machine, or having a synth bass auto-pan left and right, or whatever. I figure, once you learn the rules, you can break them.

As for balanced mixes, I would strongly advise comparing your mixes to any commercial mixes in your preferred genre of music between 1990-1999, right before the "loudness wars" started. That era of mixes has a fair amount compression and limiting, and is loud and radio-friendly, but nothing so drastic (like now) where you can no longer hear dynamics or things have been drastically EQed and distorted so you can hear everything on cheap iPhone earbuds. It'll also help you figure out where things should go in the stereo field and relative levels. The only problem with A-B rolling your mix against a commercial one is, you have to compensate for whatever mastering the commercial mix have gone through, especially compression and limiting. Your mix isn't going to be that loud, but that's a completely different topic; what you want to focus on with A-B rolling is the mix itself the general relationship between the bass and drums, how loud the vocals are in relation to the rest of the mix, where everything is positioned, etc.

 

Thank you again. So the best use of Max Bass is basically repair...I see! I adore SoundToys, UBK stuff but iLok thing always holds me back. Could you please advise me on any other clean saturation plugins? What do you think of fabfilter, I think it's Saturn...or any other? Also I heard good thing about PSP warmer. I hope am not bothering you much

 

Last edited: Oct 25, 2015

Iggy...I agree with you word by word. I always try not to compromise on dynamics - first rule. Instead of using any compressor, I use Proximity by Tokyo Dawn Labs. Until now, it has served me well on individual tracks as well as on Pre-master bus. And lastly a limiter - overtone FC70.

The era of music you stated was majestic and nostalgic. I will certainly keep your advices in mind. Thank you for your time and efforts. Really appreciate.