What are the basic techniques to marry the guitar and bass tracks?
- Thread starter X14Halo
- Start date
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axxessdenied
Arium Addict
play tighter than a virgins pussy!
Konfyouzd
Return of the Dread-I
EQing and timing...
Timing: Bass has to hit at relevant points.
EQing: They must respect each other's range.
Timing: Bass has to hit at relevant points.
EQing: They must respect each other's range.
Andromalia
Pardon my french
1) Get a minister of the chosen religion of the instruments. (Djent isn't a religion.)
2) Perform the rites
3) Enlarge the input jack.
2) Perform the rites
3) Enlarge the input jack.
JohnIce
Singlecoil Enthusiast
This would be my workflow, take what you want from it 
1) Make sure the string tension on both instruments are tight enough that you don't get pitch wobble when you attack the strings. On bass that can be hard to avoid entirely, which is why many top-shelf mixers use Melodyne or similar pitch correction plugins to level the pitch of the bass.
2) Distort the bass. Best option is often to make a duplicate of the bass track, EQ bass and treble on the separate tracks and apply heavier distortion to the treble track. Blend in the distortion while listening to the whole track, not in solo mode.
3) Compress the bass severely. Medium attack and a 4:1 ratio is a good starting point, then squash that sucker. It's the string attack that tends to ruin things.
4) High-pass filter guitars to taste, again within the context of the full mix. People often say "You can cut guitars way higher than you'd think!" but you can also end up with a "gap" in the low mids where there's no bass OR guitars, which definitely doesn't help them blend.
1) Make sure the string tension on both instruments are tight enough that you don't get pitch wobble when you attack the strings. On bass that can be hard to avoid entirely, which is why many top-shelf mixers use Melodyne or similar pitch correction plugins to level the pitch of the bass.
2) Distort the bass. Best option is often to make a duplicate of the bass track, EQ bass and treble on the separate tracks and apply heavier distortion to the treble track. Blend in the distortion while listening to the whole track, not in solo mode.
3) Compress the bass severely. Medium attack and a 4:1 ratio is a good starting point, then squash that sucker. It's the string attack that tends to ruin things.
4) High-pass filter guitars to taste, again within the context of the full mix. People often say "You can cut guitars way higher than you'd think!" but you can also end up with a "gap" in the low mids where there's no bass OR guitars, which definitely doesn't help them blend.
Winspear
Winspear/Noisemother
Multiband compression is my favourite here.
I will solo each band of the compressor and work on it, usually ending up with something like this:
Fairly heavy sub compression
Subtle bass compression
Average mid compression
Extreme attack range treble compression
Subtle high end compression
To make a very controlled, consistent bass track.
Apart from that I like to scoop the bass to let the mids of the guitar sit there, and create an attack peak in the bass to fit into wherever the nasty fizz is cut from the guitars.
DespoticOrder
Slave Driver
Multiband compression is my favourite here.
I will solo each band of the compressor and work on it, usually ending up with something like this:
Fairly heavy sub compression
Subtle bass compression
Average mid compression
Extreme attack range treble compression
Subtle high end compression
To make a very controlled, consistent bass track.
Apart from that I like to scoop the bass to let the mids of the guitar sit there, and create an attack peak in the bass to fit into wherever the nasty fizz is cut from the guitars.
Multiband compression on guitars is about the best thing you can do for them. The coolest part is that you can just drag around movable sliders/bands until it sounds good. Its nice, because you can have fun while moving/changing stuff around while at the same time seeing what it does. Just A/B the multiband comp and the bypassed track, and you'll still usually find that the multibanded track sounds better. Even if you're not the best at it, imo
