From the course: Audio Mixing Master Class
Bass wide - Pro Tools Tutorial
From the course: Audio Mixing Master Class
Bass wide
- [Instructor] In situations where the bass is up front like with the synth bass or a bass in a power trio, sometimes you need it to be a lot wider than it sounds. The problem is you still have to keep most of the low end in the center to keep the track from leaning to one side. Here's a way to do just that with the wonderful wide bass trick. First thing we're going to do is listen to the song with just the guitar, bass, and drums, and this is a basic power trio song. (rock music) What we have is a bass amp here, and we just want it to sound a little bit bigger than life and a little bit wider. Listen to it just the way it is right here. (bass music) Sounds pretty good, it's big, it's fat, has a lot of high end, so it sounds pretty good and it's a good place to start, but the first thing we're going to do in order to widen it out is to add a couple of new bass tracks. So what we're going to do is come over here and we're going to say Duplicate. It doesn't matter how you do it. All you need to do is duplicate the track twice. Okay. So now that I have two new bass tracks, what I'm going to do is put one on the left and have another one on the right because that's the way I'm going to pan them. But first of all let's listen to one of the brand new ones that we just duplicated. (bass music) Okay this needs a little bit of compression so what we'll do is we'll just copy the compressor that we had from our main track here. Let's see what it sounds like. (bass music) Okay, that's pretty reasonable. Now what we want to do is keep the low end in the middle so we'll keep our main bass track, the original bass track, in the center, but first of all, we're going to just modify the frequencies a little bit so what I'm going to do is roll off the low end, and here's what we'll do. And roll it off so it's 150 cycles or so, 200 cycles, have a listen. (bass music) So what we want is mostly the high end from the bass, and what we'll do here is we'll pan it a little to the left. Now on our second new bass track, we'll do sort of the same thing. We're going to take a copy of our compressor and put it on there, so we have a fairly compressed and even bass track. Have a listen. (bass music) Now we're going to add our EQ again, and this is going to be a little bit different. First of all we're going to roll off the bottom again. Maybe not so much. (bass music) We're going to roll off the high end too. (bass music) We're going to goose it just a little bit in the mid range. (bass music) And to just make it sound different we're going to add a harmonic and it doesn't matter what you use, I'm going to use a SansAmp here, but you can use any guitar modeler that you want. I'm just using this 'cause it's fairly simple. (bass music) What I want to do is just overdrive it a little bit and make it sound different, and after we have that, then we're going to pan it to the right. Now let's balance up the left and right channels. (bass music) (rock guitar music) For those situations where you want the bass to sound more interesting and to take up more space in the mix, first duplicate the bass track twice, then pan one track to the left, and the other to the right. Place a high-pass filter on one of the duplicated channels, and set it to around 250 hertz, or whatever frequency that seems to work best in the track. Don't set it too low as we want most of the low-end frequencies to come only from the original bass track. Insert another high-pass filter on the other duplicated channel and set it to a slightly different frequency. Now insert either a distortion or overdrive plugin after the filter and set it to slightly overdriven. Finally, adjust the pan and the level of the duplicated left and right channels to add width and definition.
Contents
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The Abbey Road reverb trick6m 7s
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The Real NYC compression trick8m 52s
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The secret to "punchy" drums6m
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Give your vocal an awesome airy sound4m 13s
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Dr. Pepper 1176 setting4m 8s
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Low-volume listening for a great mix balance6m 59s
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The secret SSL buss compressor setting4m 36s
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Using a short reverb for a massive sound5m 43s
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Make your mixes hot and loud10m 11s
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The Van Halen guitar sound trick5m 40s
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Give your bass some low-end definition5m 42s
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Make your vocal shine with a stereo delay7m 13s
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Add some excitement to your boring pad tracks5m 2s
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Make your programmed hi-hat come alive5m 37s
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Get that old-school delay feedback5m 33s
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Eliminate unwanted track noises like the pros4m 37s
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Short reverb decay is your friend5m 17s
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The 1176 British "nuke" setting4m 8s
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The mono spring vocal surprise4m 6s
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Put some "smack" in your snare1m 52s
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"Space" for your keyboard tracks3m 1s
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The secret to panning background vocals3m 35s
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The “nail In the paddle” rock kick sound3m 57s
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The Hank Marvin multihued delay trick4m 21s
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Emphasizing the beat with a pumping rhythm guitar5m 17s
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Simulating a tape delay6m 45s
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Parallel compression for punch with dynamics7m 26s
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How to get reverse reverb7m 48s
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Tweak your track timing like the pros6m 9s
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The biggest sound from the shortest delay3m 53s
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The ultimate 80s guitar room sound3m 7s
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Taming the picked bass5m 18s
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The secret to gated drums4m 50s
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The exploding snare trick4m 11s
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The awesome double-effect trick3m 33s
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The moving filter trick3m 9s
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The terrific timed reverb trick7m 48s
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Acoustic guitar peak limiter trick4m 39s
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The Tommy Lee thunder drums trick5m 6s
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The mono listening trick5m 1s
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The pitchy vocal coveruo trick3m 48s
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Tighten up releases4m 1s
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The large and thick background vocal trick3m 31s
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The legendary layered reverbs trick6m 33s
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Bones Howe 1176 setting4m 17s
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The big pad reverb trick4m 26s
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Effective effects automation5m 33s
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Eliminating clicks and pops3m 35s
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EQing the mix buss4m 49s
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The magic of mono reverb5m 9s
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Adding presence with flanging3m 58s
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Insanely big room sound4m 19s
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EQ your vocal with multiband compression4m 19s
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The Abbey Road double-track trick5m 28s
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The secret Pultec bass setting3m 42s
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Increase your background vocal energy3m 13s
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EQing the perfect club kick2m 34s
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Another exploding snare trick4m
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Perfect DI and mic'd bass phase3m 34s
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Finding the Elton John piano sound4m 39s
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Effecting the effects5m 41s
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Panning outside the speakers5m 25s
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The wisdom of dotted and triplet delays4m 42s
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Increase your room mic presence5m 15s
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The dbx 160 punchy drum setting6m 8s
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Dual untimed vocal slaps5m 3s
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Tuning the kick to the song4m 28s
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De-essing the reverb4m 36s
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Let's hear it for mid-side processing3m 54s
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Dial in your low end with an RTA5m 36s
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Add some air to that piano5m 55s
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Lock the feel of the bass and kick4m 41s
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Swept midrange guitar trick5m 16s
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Hat pad trigger trick4m 9s
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Big thump snare3m 57s
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Single word delay3m 48s
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Drum replacement4m 47s
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Keyboard life4m 4s
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Balance kick and bass8m 51s
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Ducked reverb5m 52s
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Autopanning5m 38s
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Tame peaky acoustic guitar5m 9s
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Snare ambience5m 3s
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Pitchy vocal4m 13s
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Snappy snare4m 58s
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Super big reverb5m 52s
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Spectral widening4m 37s
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Clean overheads4m 38s
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Argo vocals4m 21s
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EMT short room6m 19s
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Massive snare5m 1s
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Compressed reverb4m 30s
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Bass wide4m 47s
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Vocal control3m 42s
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Compressed guitars5m 26s
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Snappy snare4m 47s
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Dry vocals2m 44s
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Bass trigger4m 15s
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Hard snare4m 51s
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Drum phase3m 25s
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Floppy kick2m 56s
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Rough mix5m 58s
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Make your drums fills more dynamic3m 23s
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The filter boost technique3m 5s
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Add some sizzle to your snare3m 3s
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That big wide guitar sound5m 53s
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Hear every hat nuance4m 25s
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Micropan for greater track separation8m 33s
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Make those toms bombastic5m 11s
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The power of the high-pass filter3m 53s
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Add some ambience to your percussion5m 9s
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Flat fader mixing8m 45s
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Get control of your cymbals2m 16s
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