Recording Bass Question/Help ...

[irondragon]

Hello there. I have a question that I hope someone out here can aid me with ...

When I record the Bass, I plug right into my ZOOM HD16-CD (I don't use mics with the bass as things in my house shake!), and everything is fine and all.
When I get into the editing/mixing, I am using Audacity 1.33 and everything there is fine.
Ultimately ...
is there a way (plug-in or something) to get the bass clearer "without" all the bass that goes along with it???
(EX: I put the song I did onto a CD and into the car ... it vibrates way to much and I want to eliminate that without loosing the sound of the bass. My bassist plays sortof in the style of Steve Harris from Iron Maiden and I was to keep the cleaness if that makes any sence!!!)

[steve]

Try using the "Equaliser" effect and drop out some low-mid - you will need to play with it to get the sound right - ideally you should be lisyening on studio monitor speakers as other speakers will colour the sound in their own way.

[irondragon]

Alright, I will play with that and see what I can get ...
thanks!!

[alatham]

Mixing a clean bass guitar can be tricky. Bass with a bit of grit is so much easier to mix, but if that's not the tone you want, then you'll have to do some careful mixing.

Having just listened to the first 30 seconds of Symphony of Destruction, it sounds like the bass tone you're aiming for is awfully punchy with just the tiniest bit of high-end grit and no upper-mids.

That means it's got few frequencies below 200 Hz (the "boom"), a healthy (but not overpowering) amount of frequencies between 200 - 400 Hz (the "punch"), few frequencies between 400 - 800 Hz (upper-mids), slightly more frequencies between 800 - 1600 Hz (warmth), and high frequency artifacts that you can actually hear (like the pick hitting the strings) (these usually show up higher than 1600 Hz).

We have no idea what your signal currently sounds like (except that it's boomy), so we can't tell you exactly what to do. This page describes the kind of things you're looking to do pretty well:
http://www.alexandermagazine.com/record ... 4/bass.htm

There are also a few well-described settings here:
http://www.orange-fields.com/widepages/basseq.htm

The most important thing is to make sure the tone sounds good when it's recorded. You can't boost frequencies that aren't there to begin with.