Please share your advice on how to record professional / studio quality bass

[PatrickJ]

Good Evening Folks,

 

I'm desperately trying to stay away from all the gear threads here on BC (sadly failing) preferring to focus on discussions that are going to help improve my playing and help me learn how to record more professional quality bass.

Although not a complete novice to home recording I don't feel I've really mastered it as a skill and I'm looking for any advice / guidance / tips that the BC community can offer me.

I use Cubase as my DAW and have a pretty good understanding of how it works. I also have some of the required equipment at my disposal:

- DI options: Radial Pro 48 DI box or DI out of my GR Bass head.
- Audio Interface: SSL 2 channel AI
- DAW plugins (IR cab sims, Cubase's standard suit of tools (reverb, compression, eq etc.)

I'm willing to invest in other plugin's if needed and potentially a decent microphone for the cab.   Please do share your wisdom with me; any links to articles or YouTube tutorials also very welcome  - I really want to be able to record more professional / studio quality bass.

Thanks

Edited December 16, 2021 by PatrickJ

[Velarian]

I’m also thinking about this and will follow along with interest (also trying to stay away from going down the BC rabbit hole and spend more time learning, practicing and playing - that will be my new year’s resolution). 

[skidder652003]

your SSL Audio Interface should give you an excellent sound straight out of the box.

Saying that I have invested in the Waves SSL EV2 VST and its bloody excellent.

Lots of great advice on this very forum.

Edited December 17, 2021 by skidder652003

[xgsjx]

Get a good sound from your bass to start with is a good starting ground. 
Something I’ve recently discovered is to add a send  buss on your bass track & send it to a reverb, increase the send until you can hear the reverb, then take it back a very slight amount. It works wonders. 
 

But I’m following this, as I want to get a more pro quality sound too. 

[WinterMute]

One of the biggest problems you face is not being able to hear the content of the audio accurately, this is especially true of bass, monitors and rooms have a terrible time reproducing bass frequencies accurately and most issues around bass come from simply not being able to hear the frequencies involved.

 

Learn a bit about speaker placement in rooms, learn about your speaker/monitor specs, if you can then make changes to how your room is laid out to make the best use of the system you have.

 

Once you can hear properly, you stand a chance, there's tons of good guides on speaker placement, some of the Hifi manufacturers do some great stuff. No need to go mad and treat your room unless you live in a shipping container, but rudimentary understanding of placements and some acoustics will help.

 

After that source is everything, get your bass sounding the way you want it to sound and you have everything you need to record well, don't push the level up too far, tracking at around -14bd in the DAW is fine you'll gain absolutely nothing by pushing the levels up. This is not the case for any analogue gain stages in your bass tone chain, beat the sh*t out of them to get the sound you want, then track it at -14db.

[Velarian]

9 minutes ago, WinterMute said:

One of the biggest problems you face is not being able to hear the content of the audio accurately, this is especially true of bass, monitors and rooms have a terrible time reproducing bass frequencies accurately and most issues around bass come from simply not being able to hear the frequencies involved.

 

Learn a bit about speaker placement in rooms, learn about your speaker/monitor specs, if you can then make changes to how your room is laid out to make the best use of the system you have.

 

Once you can hear properly, you stand a chance, there's tons of good guides on speaker placement, some of the Hifi manufacturers do some great stuff. No need to go mad and treat your room unless you live in a shipping container, but rudimentary understanding of placements and some acoustics will help.

 

After that source is everything, get your bass sounding the way you want it to sound and you have everything you need to record well, don't push the level up too far, tracking at around -14bd in the DAW is fine you'll gain absolutely nothing by pushing the levels up. This is not the case for any analogue gain stages in your bass tone chain, beat the sh*t out of them to get the sound you want, then track it at -14db.

Would monitoring on headphones be a more reasonable way to achieve a consistent sound as this would remove any issues with speaker placement or room acoustics? Or does that present some other challenges?

[WinterMute]

7 minutes ago, Velarian said:

Would monitoring on headphones be a more reasonable way to achieve a consistent sound as this would remove any issues with speaker placement or room acoustics? Or does that present some other challenges?

 

Same issues, most modern headphones are shaped to provide the kind of sound the manufacturers imagine people want, which seems to be bass heavy muffled b*ll*cks, you're always at the mercy of your playback system, if it's lying to you, what chance do you stand? I bought 3 or 4 sets of ever more expensive headphones/in-ears before I found a set that actually managed to reproduce the audio I was putting through it properly, they turned out to be the B&W Pi7 

 

A quick nod to Sonarworks SoundID Reference system, which will help iron out problems with room induced frequency changes, but isn't particularly cheap as you do need the reference mic they sell to make it work properly, but it does work very well once you've measured the room. I've not had very good results with their headphone playback system however.

 

https://www.sonarworks.com/soundid-reference

Edited December 19, 2021 by WinterMute

[JapanAxe]

This has been an ongoing quest for me too.

 

What has worked for me:

- DI into my interface - has to have plenty of headroom, otherwise transients cause clipping;

- Cali76 compressor;

- Two Notes Torpedo CAB with IRs based on 6L6 power amp, speaker to taste;

- Line out from Demeter head.

 

What hasn’t worked for me:

- Behringer BDI21;

- Korg PX4B.

[BigRedX]

Go to a professional studio to record your bass parts.

 

Seriously.

 

I see this all the time in all sorts of situations - not just recording - where the suggestion is that with the right hardware and/or software anyone can can do anything and get fantastic results.

 

It simply isn't true.

 

Perhaps if you spend many hundreds of hours working at it you may find that you have the right aptitude and ability to produce great recordings, but it's more likely that you will spend a load of time and money and not be any better off at the end.

 

Trust me, I've been there.

 

I started out recoding at home because back in the 70s if you had very little money there was no alternative. Most of what I produced from a technical PoV was rubbish, but because the equipment I was using was low quality, I was able to easily convince myself that with a better multitrack/mixer/more outboard gear I would be able to produce recordings as good as those of the bands that I liked. By the time I got to the 90s, the gap between the "home studio" and the professional one as regards equipment had all but vanished, and finding myself in a position of having lots of disposable income, I threw a lot of it at building up a very serious recording set up. However, no matter how much money I spent, my recording still didn't come anywhere close to the quality of the records and CDs I was buying.

 

It turned out that I simply didn't have the ability to produce recordings of the quality I wanted. This was brought home to me with a bang when I joined a band with a drummer with an acoustic kit, which I didn't have the facility record at home. So we went into a proper studio. There the engineer was able to produce a great sounding recording almost instantly and using equipment that, technically, was actually slightly lower quality than what I had in my "studio". It wasn't a one-off occurrence either. Every studio I went to over the next 5 years the story was the same. Eventually I had to concede that the weak link in my studio was me, and that I had wasted the best part of £30k over the past 15 years, buying hardware and software that I simply did not have the skill to get decent results out of. Since then I've sold almost everything (at a considerable loss) and my studio exists for me to do drum programming for one of my bands (something that I can do well) and very basic demos for songs, where the sound doesn't really matter so long as all the instrumental parts can be clearly heard.

 

If all of that hasn't put you off then I suggest the following:

 

1. Don't spend any more money. What you have already from a technical PoV is probably far superior to the equipment that was used to produce some of the most memorable recordings of all time. Learn to use what you have, and get to know all of it inside out, before even contemplating opening your wallet.

 

2. As others have said, the weak link in your recording set up is most likely the listening environment. Learn its strengths and weakness. Spend hours listening to your favourite recordings on your set up so that you know exactly how they sound. Only when you are completely familiar with how great recordings sound on your system can you start to make objective judgements about your own recordings.

 

By the time you have put in the hours doing the above you should be able to tell whether you have the aptitude to make recordings yourself that are up to the standard that you require.

 

I know if I had my time again I'd take all the money I spent on my "studio" and hired a proper one along with a decent producer. At least that way I'd have come out of it with a finished album that sounded great, instead of a handful of recordings that I have never been completely happy with and a load of half-finished tracks that are lost forever. I'd probably even have enough left over to spend on effective promotion.

Edited December 20, 2021 by BigRedX

[dodge_bass]

8 hours ago, BigRedX said:

Go to a professional studio to record your bass parts.

 

Seriously.

 

I see this all the time in all sorts of situations - not just recording - where the suggestion is that with the right hardware and/or software anyone can can do anything and get fantastic results.

 

It simply isn't true.

 

Perhaps if you spend many hundreds of hours working at it you may find that you have the right aptitude and ability to produce great recordings, but it's more likely that you will spend a load of time and money and not be any better off at the end.

 

Trust me, I've been there.

 

I started out recoding at home because back in the 70s if you had very little money there was no alternative. Most of what I produced from a technical PoV was rubbish, but because the equipment I was using was low quality, I was able to easily convince myself that with a better multitrack/mixer/more outboard gear I would be able to produce recordings as good as those of the bands that I liked. By the time I got to the 90s, the gap between the "home studio" and the professional one as regards equipment had all but vanished, and finding myself in a position of having lots of disposable income, I threw a lot of it at building up a very serious recording set up. However, no matter how much money I spent, my recording still didn't come anywhere close to the quality of the records and CDs I was buying.

 

It turned out that I simply didn't have the ability to produce recordings of the quality I wanted. This was brought home to me with a bang when I joined a band with a drummer with an acoustic kit, which I didn't have the facility record at home. So we went into a proper studio. There the engineer was able to produce a great sounding recording almost instantly and using equipment that, technically, was actually slightly lower quality than what I had in my "studio". It wasn't a one-off occurrence either. Every studio I went to over the next 5 years the story was the same. Eventually I had to concede that the weak link in my studio was me, and that I had wasted the best part of £30k over the past 15 years, buying hardware and software that I simply did not have the skill to get decent results out of. Since then I've sold almost everything (at a considerable loss) and my studio exists for me to do drum programming for one of my bands (something that I can do well) and very basic demos for songs, where the sound doesn't really matter so long as all the instrumental parts can be clearly heard.

 

If all of that hasn't put you off then I suggest the following:

 

1. Don't spend any more money. What you have already from a technical PoV is probably far superior to the equipment that was used to produce some of the most memorable recordings of all time. Learn to use what you have, and get to know all of it inside out, before even contemplating opening your wallet.

 

2. As others have said, the weak link in your recording set up is most likely the listening environment. Learn its strengths and weakness. Spend hours listening to your favourite recordings on your set up so that you know exactly how they sound. Only when you are completely familiar with how great recordings sound on your system can you start to make objective judgements about your own recordings.

 

By the time you have put in the hours doing the above you should be able to tell whether you have the aptitude to make recordings yourself that are up to the standard that you require.

 

I know if I had my time again I'd take all the money I spent on my "studio" and hired a proper one along with a decent producer. At least that way I'd have come out of it with a finished album that sounded great, instead of a handful of recordings that I have never been completely happy with and a load of half-finished tracks that are lost forever. I'd probably even have enough left over to spend on effective promotion.

 

I can get on board with some of this but not all of it (respectfully!). Certainly before you open your wallet any more spend some serious time with what you've got and get to know it. But recording bass DI'd to a high quality at home is really not a big ask these days and with the gear you've got you should be able to do it really well. Certainly listening environment / speakers is going to really help but a well set up bass, decent DI and some ability to play (!) should be more than enough of a starting point to record some quality bass. Listening to isolated bass tracks from recordings you know really well will really help (to get a sense of what the bass sound is actually like by itself rather than how it sounds in the mix) as will just doing some recording and seeing how it goes. If you're working with an engineer or have friends who have better ears than you then do some recording of your bass and send it to them for feedback - they'll hopefully be able to give you some direction. Feel free to PM me, I'd be happy to have a quick chat or a Zoom with you about it at some point. And one last thing - enjoy the process, it's a learning curve for all of us

 

 

 

[WinterMute]

It's perfectly possible to get "professional" results from the kind of kit OP has, but with all tools you have to know how to use them, there are no short cuts to "professional" 10,000 hours of practice to be able to play bass competently? Same thing with audio kit.

 

Understanding how systems work, learning to use them and then practice will yield results, there is no magic bullet and "all the gear, no idea" applies just a s well to us as it does cyclists or golfists.

 

Ask, listen and practice, if you want to learn, you will.

[DrewTNBD]

There is nothing wrong with your equipment.

 

What you don't say is where you are struggling, or what you are finding difficult. "Professional" and "Studio" covers a lot of different things, and isn't a terribly useful way to talk about sound.

 

What problems are you having? Can you post a recording?

[Cat Burrito]

In pro studios I just use the Sansamp VT bass pedal which I thought was the answer to everything studio-wise. I've gotten better results from that pedal than countless different amp / cab setups with various mic placements. However, I recently got asked to play on a friend's album and was set up with a laptop and Reaper. It's the first time I engineered myself and I wound up just plugging a p-bass in direct to a cheap DI box. Having practiced like mad throughout lockdown, I feel my technique has improved massively and I was pleasantly surprised with the results. I really do think that regular practice coupled with knowing the piece you are recorded really is 95% of the battle. 

[NancyJohnson]

From a home studio perspective, I'll always attempt to capture two audio streams, one clean, one with what I desire the bass to sound like.

 

Easy enough to achieve, I've got a couple of Tech21 DI stomps (dUg/Ged) and splitters; just assign the output feeds to different tracks, easy. 

 

I also loop takes...I find that I'm not in the pocket until I've run the loop several times.

 

Also, sometimes it's good to keep some of the happy mistakes we make and use these.  If you want to hear some weirdness, have a listen to 'Light 'em All Up' by Lutz.  It's on Spotify.  The producer was just shouting, 'Play some strange sh*t!'. Which is what I did.

[BigRedX]

18 hours ago, NancyJohnson said:

The producer was just shouting, 'Play some strange sh*t!'. Which is what I did.

 

This is what makes a professional sounding recording. Someone with a good set of ears who is going to objective about the songs/arrangements/sounds and whose job it is to coax the best possible recording out of the musicians playing on it.

 

Since I've stopped trying to have my own studio, the quality of my recordings has improved massively, not only because someone with the right abilities is now at the controls but also because I can simply get on with playing knowing that the technical side of making a recording is in a safe pair of hands (and ears).

[PaulWarning]

I wouldn't dream of recording at home for commercial releases, I'm with @BigRedX on this, however I can do reasonable home demos just using free software, one of the revelations was when I started using reverb to fill out the sound it always sounded to clean and clinical before that 

[WinterMute]

I think this conversation is in two parts now.

 

Firstly, there's no doubt that someone with the requisite talent and experience can get professional/commercial results from some very modest gear these days, which is a testament to how powerful technology has become and how easy it is to get hold of, but the learning curve is hellishly steep and you do require talent as well as knowledge. Which is not to say that home studios can't produce some very good results, because they can.

 

Secondly, paying a professional to record your work will almost always end up with a better result.

 

My "home" studio is not really a "home" studio at all, it's a studio that happens to be in my home, it's isolated, treated and contains some very advance hardware and software, more to the point, I've been a professional audio engineer for 35 years.

 

I also play bass and write and produce songs, lucky me I can do it all and the advances in tech mean I get to do it to my professional satisfaction without having to spend £100,000s.

 

A little knowledge goes a long way here, and improving your home recordings is easy to do with a little effort and direction, it will not make you Bob Rock.

[DrewTNBD]

Well the thing that is critical is being able to use your ears. I asked the OP what problems he's been having, and he hasn't answered. So difficult to offer advice.

 

I've recorded in high end studios, and I've recorded in furniture warehouses. The approach is always the same - use your ears to find sounds you like, and make sure the timing and the performance is spot on.

[WinterMute]

15 hours ago, DrewTNBD said:

Well the thing that is critical is being able to use your ears. I asked the OP what problems he's been having, and he hasn't answered. So difficult to offer advice.

 

I've recorded in high end studios, and I've recorded in furniture warehouses. The approach is always the same - use your ears to find sounds you like, and make sure the timing and the performance is spot on.

Yup, you won't go far wrong with good ears, except for the understanding of how to get from a "bad" sound to a "good" sound, that takes skill, experience and occasionally vast amounts of money... 

[PatrickJ]

Firstly I wanted to say thank you for everyone who has commented on my thread, some of you guys have put a lot of time into your responses which I am most grateful for.   With Christmas preparations I'd not had a chance to really check back on all the advice given.

 

Firstly, I opened this thread saying I wanted a professional / studio quality recording.  That was a naive statement to make; I am not a professional / session quality bassist so my own ability / skill level is never going to allow me to achieve that.   But I do want to be able to produce good quality recordings to be able to use as demo's for perspective bands and perhaps a bit of occasional social media.

 

I hear all the advice on not investing more money on gear, I don't want to do that - I want to use what I have more effectively.   In fact I'm not even going to entertain mic'ing the cabinet and will work with a single DI feed either from the Amp's DI or straight into the SSL audio interface. 

 

I'll take some time to properly read through all the suggestions post Christmas when I get a few minutes!

 

 

[NancyJohnson]

I'll just throw something else in here.  You can easily assign bass to one track and use VSTs after.

 

My tone is best described as gnarly; I do have a problem envisaging the end product if I record clean, but there's some great VSTs out there, many free, that can shape your vision.

[Velarian]

14 minutes ago, NancyJohnson said:

I'll just throw something else in here.  You can easily assign bass to one track and use VSTs after.

 

My tone is best described as gnarly; I do have a problem envisaging the end product if I record clean, but there's some great VSTs out there, many free, that can shape your vision.

Just so that I understand correctly, are you saying it’s best to record the bass dry straight from a DI signal and then apply any treatment afterwards, including EQ?

 

Also, what about compression, record with or without?

 

(Just for reference, my previous recording experience goes back to the early 80s using 8 or 16 track analogue equipment and physical outboard gear etc., so some of the concepts that I understand may no longer apply In this new world of DAWs, VSTS an amp/cab sims etc.)

[BigRedX]

In the days when I was still recording at home, my method when DI'ing instruments was always to record clean/dry and if a particular effect was an essential part of the sound the slap it on the track in playback before doing anything else. Alternatively if I had the appropriate hardware (and tracks available) I'd record the instruments with the effects as well as a separate DI feed direct so I could always change my mind later if I found the the mix was suggesting alternative sounds.

 

For demos to show the band how the song goes, I've stopped worrying about how they sound and simply concentrate on making something to showcases the song.

 

For social media I wouldn't entertain posting anything that wasn't a properly finished and produced piece of music, and for the bands I've been in over the past 15 years that has meant going into a proper studio.

 

Finally as I and others have said, recording is like any other skill. For nearly everyone it takes hours and hours of practice and trial and error. No-one expects to be even a competent bass player after a couple of weeks of playing so why should recording be any different?

[Stub Mandrel]

Back in the 90s when I went into a studio*, they just plugged me straight into the desk.

 

I wasn't even allowed to choose what instrument to play if I brought more than one - I demo'd the basses I brought with me, and they always insisted I use the Hohner B2 over the Fender.

 

 

 

 

*Only for recording demos or practice sessions.

[PaulWarning]

4 hours ago, BigRedX said:

 

 

Finally as I and others have said, recording is like any other skill. For nearly everyone it takes hours and hours of practice and trial and error. No-one expects to be even a competent bass player after a couple of weeks of playing so why should recording be any different?

and like an apprenticeship, you'll need guidance from someone who knows what they're doing, knowing something doesn't sound right and knowing how to fix it are two different things  

Edited December 24, 2021 by PaulWarning