Old 05-17-2014, 10:02 AM   #1
ChetStrzepa
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Default ref tracks for bass balance

Looking for some suggestions for good reference tracks for well balanced bass. Any genres; although at the moment I am trying to balance a heavy metal electric bass/dist guitar, acoustic drum groove. It's been awhile so I need to do some good referencing.

I have a few tracks in mind I've used before, so I'll share those but and curious about comments on them:

Rage Against the Machine - "Killing in the Name of"

Sting - "All Four Seasons" (Full and even bass, but doesn't rumble on bass heavy systems)

Dream Theater - from Images and Words "Metroplis", "Learning to Live".

Tool "Lateralus", "The Patient"

Metallica - "Enter Sandman" maybe? On a side note, I've been listening to Unforgiven III from Death Magentic. Aside from the clipping, is the bass out of whack? The kick is weak but lower range of the bass guitar rumbles. Kind of weird.

Thanks
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Old 05-17-2014, 12:59 PM   #2
Repetition Compulsion
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I never actually listened to Death Magnetic, but the quality of its mix is definitely something that seemed to be universally hated across the internets...I probably wouldn't use it.

Gojira has an EXCELLENT mix for the low end, I prefer The Way of All Flesh (anything off the album, really)

Meshuggah is another go-to for me. The Koloss album or Obzen.

Neuraxis - The Thin Line Between is a good one, 'The All and the Nothing' has some good tom tone in the first few beats.

Opeth - Blackwater Park & newer (up to Watershed) is good if you're looking at a less extreme sound.

Lamb of God usually have pretty great mixes. As The Palaces Burn is a great raw sounding album

Bloodbath - Devouring the Feeble is a pretty good track for it, especially the intro

Amon Amarth - Twilight of the Thunder God is a good one, try Tattered Banners and Bloody Flags

Evergrey - Recreation Day (the whole album and that song in particular)

Since you mentioned Tool, A Perfect Circle might be another you could look at, 13th Step is a good album.

Those are some of the ones I use anyways.
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Old 05-18-2014, 02:26 AM   #3
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Repetition Compulsion View Post
Meshuggah is another go-to for me. The Koloss album or Obzen.

Since you mentioned Tool, A Perfect Circle might be another you could look at, 13th Step is a good album.



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Old 05-18-2014, 03:28 AM   #4
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Metal itself is too broad a term, as the bass mix can be anything from Les Claypool or Lemmy to Steve Diorgio on individual thought patterns.

What role is the bass playing ? Is it clean or distorted ? Picked or finger ? Is the song super fast ( death, black , grind ),mid paced, groove / nu metal / funk metal etc or ect ect ?

All cases and combinatiosn thereof will require different references.

From the reference tracks you mentioned it looks like its a mid paced song with clean finger bass in a secondary / supporting role, but again the RATM example has a different mix from that.
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Old 05-18-2014, 07:17 AM   #5
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Thanks for the responses.

The tempo is about 120bpm, moderate with style of recent Metallica such as the Day that Never Comes.

Bass is clean electric finger picked, support role. The main challenge is a pentatonic groove in E minor where the bass and dist guitars are playing together. The groove actually drops down to a D; could the low E string be detuned down to a D ? I'm most interested in refs for this type of groove. Some of those Rage Against...Machine tracks have similar grooves which is one reason I chose them.
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Old 05-18-2014, 07:24 AM   #6
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I guess 'Tallica's black album stuff like sandman etc is a good reference.

Also if you like slightly more modern, thicker bass tones ( still supporting role though ) latter Helmet stuff like songs off Size matters are a very good reference for bass AND drums mix.
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Old 05-18-2014, 07:50 AM   #7
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Quote:
Originally Posted by suleiman View Post
What role is the bass playing?
+1

You should mix the bass so it serves the song as good as possible and blends well with the other instruments. So I would not use a standard reference track, but handle each song individually.
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Old 05-21-2014, 11:30 AM   #8
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I find as a part time home studio hacker, having good reference tracks is very helpful particularly for balancing frequencies. One thing that helped me a lot has been just spending time listening to and analyzing ref tracks through my various monitoring equipment.
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Old 05-29-2014, 10:31 AM   #9
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You can detune the low E to a D. You might have to raise the action a smidgen to avoid rattles. We generally tune down half a step to Eb, without problems.
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Old 06-02-2014, 08:43 PM   #10
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I recommend against using any Metallica record, and most metal records in general, unless you are specifically working in that genre. Fast, low-frequency metal is an extremely difficult and unnatural style to record and mix properly, and always tends to be extremely bass-light and over-compressed. Normal references of dynamics and frequency-balance tend to fly out the window with fast-metal.

As a general rule, when starting a mix, it's not a bad practice to crank up the monitor/speaker volume, dial up the kick, snare, and drum OHs or room mics until you like the way they way they sound. Like, get the drums sounding the way you want the audience to hear them, at the volume you want. Then bring in the bass, once again, keeping the whole thing at a high-ish volume, the way you want to hear it, and the way you want it to be heard.

Now, turn down the overall bass/drum mix until it's hitting around -10dB peak on your digital meters. Adjust the speaker volume so that you are still hearing it at the loudness you want. Once you have got a good balance of the bass and drums at full listening volume, with the bass and drums hitting around -10 on your digital peak meters, turn the speaker volume way down, to like, barely conversation-level, or lower, and then mix in the vocals, compressing and eq'ing as needed to get a good subjective mix of bass, drums, and vox at low volume.

If you can get that, everything else will be easy, and will tend to fall into place. Staying at low-volume, bring up your guitars, your keys, your backing vox, percussion, and all the rest, and just get them to fit in and around the bass/drums/vox mix. Don't alter the bass/drums/vox, just make each new track "fit" with them, using whatever dynamics/eq/effects you need, keeping the speaker volume very quiet.

If you do this right, when you turn the speakers back up to full volume, it will sound huge, awesome, and well-balanced. Maybe you need a couple of additional tweaks, but do most of your mixing at low volume.

Good examples:

- AC/DC "Back In Black": Whole Album
- Ray of Light: Madonna
- Any Detroit-Era Motown
- Tori Amos: Little Earthquakes
- Mavis Staples: We'll Never Turn Back
- Chris Isaac: "Wicked Game" or "Baby Did a Bad Bad Thing"
- Michael Jackson: Thriller
- Beach Boys: Pet Sounds
- Almost anything on an oldies or classic-rock station
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Old 06-04-2014, 06:19 PM   #11
ChetStrzepa
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Thanks, this is quite helpful in general.

In this particular case, I am actually not mixing. I have the stereo wav file and essentially am trying to do some re-balancing of frequencies. I call this psuedo-remastering for lack of a better term I can think of. hence the desire for references in similar genres although I would use them also for references during mixing.

The particular mix has a problem with rumble, or boominess of the bass guitar. I am thinking that when it was mixed, the bass guitar should have been lower volume, compressed more, or perhaps even cut some in the lower couple of octaves. So far I have found that cutting in the 90-130 Hz range is helping. Also, some particular build up is occurring at certain frequencies in the 100-200 Hz range - I believe at certain harmonic frequencies as the guitars and bass play in unison. I'm playing with some narrow band cuts. The overall mix clarity does seem to be improving some.
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