Advice for recording bass

[almost_jason]

Hi there,

Over the last year or so I've begun recording bass on my computer through a Scarlett Mini. I'm now in a situation where I want to record play - alongs, and my bass teacher offered me some advice for better quality recordings:

1. I should try adding a subtractive EQ in the bass register of the song track, to make sure that the song's bass is not that audible. Makes sense, since I want to fill that role now. My teacher uses Logic Pro and they prefer -12DB at about 150HZ for most of their own play-along recordings.

2. A 4-string bass has its lowest note at about 41.5 HZ and any harmonics or other frequencies below that are noisy and hitting the limit of the human audio spectrum anyway. I'd like to erase those, and for that a high-pass filter sounds ideal.

I was wondering whether there is a widely used plugin for bass recording through reaper that does at least these two rather basic things I am also open to any other suggestions that you might have for recording in the low - end, but try to explain it if I'm 5, if you don't mind; I have 2 months Reaper / DAW experience ^_^

[zeekat]

Seems pretty basic EQing, so ReaEQ should be more than enough.

[bigtop]

ReaEQ might have some ready made settings in the drop down menus?
A little bit of ReaCOMP may help also

[41TWIN]

Yeah, I just high pass after I track. Pretty much everything at different frequencies. I don't always know where to do bass. But somewhere between 45-70....

Same with the kick. I'm not always sure. Kenny Gioia has a shelf for the kick going down all the way.... I tried it but still high passed really low. Like 35.... some say no one hears that down there anyways....

IDK. All I know is that getting a beautiful bass track, is not always easy. Understanding how it can muddy up the mix and figuring out how to get the mud out is not always easy either. But it's a good thing to strive for.

[foxAsteria]

Don't think so much about the numbers, they're just ballpark. But a reliable one is ~200-250Hz; that's where the mud lives.

Compression/limiting is indispensable for bass frequencies.

If you lack clarity, a little distortion goes a long way.

[vdubreeze]

Originally Posted by almost_jason

I was wondering whether there is a widely used plugin for bass recording through reaper that does at least these two rather basic things

For the convenience and simplicity advantage of an all-in-one bass shaping plugin, you get pretty much the same by putting a few plugins in the FX of a track and then saving as an FX Chain. As already mentioned, the Rea plugins can really get you pretty much anywhere. And there are a handful of presets in ReaEQ and ReaComp to start with, the latter showing how different attack and release times and ratios give different results. Give those two a try. Adjust the threshold so that it doesn't compress much, just takes it down two or three dbs. Sometimes a great compressor sounds terrible because it's being accidentally hit too hard, so go lightly on the threshold at first. I like to follow an eq and compressor (set modestly) with a limiter, set to nab just the peaky stuff that get past the compressor. ReaLimit works great for this. Have it just kick in very occasionally, using the graphic to set.

If you do want to try some free bass plugins, two that I like are Bass Professor and especially Bass Professor II from Sonic Anomaly. ( https://web.archive.org/web/20181203...ma.net/plugins ) That one is easy to over do but it's fun to fiddle with and has good controls for finding what you want, plus a LF cut.

There are some other freebie bass shapers out there too.

[foxAsteria]

Originally Posted by vdubreeze

If you do want to try some free bass plugins, two that I like are Bass Professor and especially Bass Professor II from Sonic Anomaly. ( https://web.archive.org/web/20181203...ma.net/plugins )

These are also included in Reaper as JS. Good stuff.

[jerome_oneil]

Originally Posted by foxAsteria

Don't think so much about the numbers, they're just ballpark. But a reliable one is ~200-250Hz; that's where the mud lives.

While I don't have any "always" rules, if I'm recording a guitar of any stripe, I put a 6db notch right in the fat part of that spectrum almost every time. It's amazing how much that cleans it up.