+ 1 for ARC. I thought my fairly extensive treatment was up to snuff until I got ARC on a group buy.

Rocky

mike_mccue

I have begrudgingly begun to admit to myself that there is a great advantage to running all the bass through Melodyne after I have the selected a best take or comp. 

It makes the bass much easier to hear and discern and I find that I can often lower the amplitude level immediately after running the tuning process because the bass just seems more prominent when it's well tuned.

Call me crazy. Lots of folks do.

Actually I do the exact same thing Mike.


Stumbled on to this about 6 months ago. Only because during tracking I did not notice that I was slightly out of tune but upon closer examination I discovered I was but the performance was exactly what I wanted.


Also, to the OP. Chorus and or Distortion in parallel to the clean signal can help tremendously. Use judiciously. The key is, in parallel, not o the track/bus directly.


I send my bass to a bus. On the bus I sent that to another bus. On that received bus I apply the chorus/distortion. I blend the two buses to taste. MAJIK!!!

:-)

Did you mention that you have an Alembic*?

:-)





*shameless plug

In regards to this pitch correction method using Melodyne... will V-Vocal do a similar job? Can't afford Melodyne and don't really see using it enough to justify the cost. Also I'm assuming this method wouldn't work as well with fast picked/plucked basslines. Is that correct? This is an awesome thread BTW. :-)

I would imagine so... I can't look at V Vocal for more than a few moments before I have to run away. It just looks too ugly... and it reminds me that Cakewalk needs to hire panup so that I can get a version of SONAR X that I can look at.

The idea is that even the best bass players and bass guitars have slight shifts in intonation... which is great if you are into expressive and original bass playing, but if you are using the bass as a "base" or foundation for all the other harmony in the mix then the closer it is to being right on tune, the easier it seems, to me, to mix it so it stands out without making stuff sound muddy.

All the other mix techniques mentioned are pertinent... to the extent that I take them for granted. Do all the low cuts and mud avoidance with all the other instruments... for sure, but the idea of making the bass notes them selves serve as a good reference for all the other tuning in the mix seems, to me, to make every thing so much easier.

FWIW, I have a couple nice bass guitars and a couple favorite preamps and compressors.... and that really helps make it easier too.

A lot of times, a fussy bass player will come to my place and end up playing my gear because it just gets them what they want to hear right off the bat and they remark that they are surprised because they have spent so long testing and acquiring their gear for their personal sound... and then they play one of my plain old bass guitars through a great preamp and great compressor and they kinda get a smile on their face because they quickly figure out that the sound has been in their fingers all the time.

I like watching that happen.

Then I sneak a quick tuning run and see if I can get away with that before we do the vocals. :-)


best regards,
mike

No reason why V V wouldn't work. Give it a whirl........

Rocky

Cool. I've been looking for an excuse to fire up V-Vocal but I haven't had anything I thought would be pertinent to what it does. This really is a great thread. Cheers, guys.

mike_mccue


I have begrudgingly begun to admit to myself that there is a great advantage to running all the bass through Melodyne after I have the selected a best take or comp.

It makes the bass much easier to hear and discern and I find that I can often lower the amplitude level immediately after running the tuning process because the bass just seems more prominent when it's well tuned.

Call me crazy. Lots of folks do.

Good luck.


best regards,
mike

LOL. Glad I'm not alone....

Yea adding some drive will help cut through the mix. But if your looking for the old Squire/Lee tone you won't get it unless you overdrive an old Ampeg SVT tube amp. Also the new Fender Bassman 100T head can get you very close too. Has a built in speaker load too so you can record direct without a speaker hooked up. Sounds really good.  I used to have the Avalon U5 and though it's a great pre, it sounded too clean for me. Sounded like I was laying down bass tracks for Allan Holdsworth. I wanted something that colors the tone slightly. Joe Meek did the trick. This is all just my opinion.

For me it starts with the instrument. The majority of Fender P basses I  have owned were always a little dull sounding for recording even with hot rod PU's . We save those basses for live gigs.   
Find a bass that sounds good direct. There's lots of them out there, 
And it doesn't have to be a custom made $1000 + instrument. The Pick ups have to be good, the rest is tone coming from the construction.  And yes use only nice fresh strings.
 
  I plug direct into the mixer - add compression and Hi Pass @ 80Hz and onward ho! That's it. Done. Cut's through and drives the song. I tune after every take and I'm very careful how I sit and play... you need good clean bass technique to record.

The Mighty Hondo Pro II ( $130 with Amp ) Yes those are Seymour Duncans on there, stock. These were Japaneses origin assembled in USA