METAL MIXING BASICS: How to split your bass guitar

Bass guitar is the foundation of mixing metal guitar tones, and splitting the bass guitar tracks is often the first step to great bass tone that balances aggressive distortion with massive low end.


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[alexanderdenchev]

Classic and essential trick to make the bass happy. One thing I would add is to add all bass tracks to a buss and compress them together so as to glue them and make them move as a singular unit.

[ultimatefunktimegroovystan]

"Just play with the knobs until it sounds good"

that's my whole workflow

[bolillo]

This is the most clear informative tutorial I’ve seen in the subject, thank you for the info.

[Metalbass]

One if the many reasons I loved my Ampeg SVT 4 Pro was the on board crossover allowing me to send high and low signals separately into the board and into my cabs. That way they could be processed how i wanted in the live mix, and the high went to my on stage ported 4 x 10" Celestion and horn cab loaded cab while the low went to a sealed 1 x 18" ElectroVoice loaded cab. I always do this when recording. Good vid.

[sski]

I've been doing this for a long time, but I take things a step further depending on the project. Currently, for example, I'm working on a metal project where the 'sonic picture' of the band places the drum kit center, with overhead bleed out to 43-45% L/R. At the fringe of that 43/45% L/R sits virtual SVT stacks. Those 'stacks' were originally an Ampeg BA-115HPT combo amp close miked with an MXL tube mic and a Shure Beta 52A bass drum mic, and a clean line-in from the bass output. The bassist was already using the Dug Pinnick Tech 21 DP-1 pedal to drive the amp, so the clean line-in became important for countering the overdrive in the lower tones. Then it was just a matter of duplicating the three recorded sources and offsetting them just a millisecond in the grid so that when both sources are panned opposite each other they clear the drum kit, sitting on either side of it with a little bleed into it, as if you are looking at and hearing them on stage on either side of the kit. Sure, most folks tend to throw the bass down the middle with the drums and be done with it. But you should hear this. It's awesome and it works.

[NikolajChristensen]

Nice way of notching out the mids too.

[monkeyking]

This sounds just like bi-amping, where you send your bass signal to two separate rigs, one to handle the low end, and the other to handle the overdriven signal without ruining the tight low end. Billy Sheehan, Chris Squire, Doug Pinnick, I think even Les Claypool used this technique, just to name a few. Nowadays I think the same thing is accomplished with more sophisticated gear that includes a knob to adjust the "wet/dry" ratio, but I prefer the trick you are talking about, to split them up and adjust individually. Thanks for the info!

[rmps]

FabFilter Saturn can do all this in one track with one plugin. You lose some flexibility, of course, but it's SUPER easy and sounds killer.

[HALOWEENTHER]

This is cool
I've been using multiband compression all my life but this seems nice

[h.p.dominocus]

Excellent. Haven't tried this before but it makes sense. Will be giving it a test run on a mix I'm currently doing.

[aaron.durci.]

2:30 "see we got some meat back as i slid"☠️☠️

[CollapseWithin]

Do you put the eq and limiter first or the amp in the chain?

[WiiNC]

Love this trick, originally heard Acle Kahney from TesseracT using a similar approach on their mixes and had to give it a shot myself. Having that control over the bass is so nice!

[KenMasters-fisx]

Great tricks. It would be amazing to have videos of sascha paeth in Nail the Mix. Sacha is the mix enginner from Avantasia. Great metal band.

[jackclay]

this trick has become so popular that now bass plugins are incorporating this method of mixing straight out of the box. you could use a multi band distortion like Saturn by Fabfilter which is an expensive option but is used on more than just bass. most recently Parallax by Neural DSP have been the most popular option but to me it still sounds boxy at times so i prefer Mammoth by Aurora DSP for the clanky modern tones but they all have these options built in and will give you the best tones imaginable for any heavy mix. this is a tried and true method if you choose to split your bass and manually mix it, it’s always the better option if you wanna go the freeware route but these plugin options are just too good to pass up.

EDIT : Aurora DSP has a Halloween sale and the Mammoth plugin ($80) is listed at around $27, i’d take advantage of that while you can 😉

[Temperjames]

"We got some meat back as I slid"

I felt that one yeah

[BeHeardStudio]

It feels like seeing the internal of JW BG Bass!!! Rock on Joel!

[guinganfg]

Nice tips as usual from you guys..

I have a question:

If I use parallax in one bass channel, do I get the same results? As i’m treating bottom, mid and treble frequencies separately?

Thanks!!

[flacrisan]

Hey man! Do you feel the need to flip the phase of one of the tracks?

[alrecks]

the more i'm doing bass split thing, what i'm getting at is to use less top end distortion on more dynamic bass parts, whereas use more on more static parts.