Mic-ing The Bass

BASS GUITAR

TYPES OF BASS

Passive Bass

- Does not use a 9v battery
- Often has just one tone knob (treble/bass) that cuts the treble frequency, it allows to both cut and boost the frequencies.

Active Bass

- Uses a 9v battery - drives electronics inside the bass
- Has more than one tone knob (treble, mid-range, bass) that cuts the treble frequency, it allows to both cut and boost the frequencies.
- Has a centric knob that shares the same axis

TYPES OF BASS PICKUPS

*Pickup - Copper wire coiled around a magnet and when the vibrations disturbs the magnetic field of the magnet, the copper wire then produces a small voltage fluctuations that is being transmitted to the amp, amplified and translate into sound. 

Single-coil

- Have on coil wrapped around a pickup's magnet
- Bright and clear sounding
- Drawback it can pickup external noise thus creates a humming sound
- Computer monitors/radio waves/florescent lighting can cause external noise

Double-coil / Humbuckers

- A pickup to reduce the hums
- Tend to roll off the tonal highs
- Have more output

Split-coil 

- A double coil pickup that is split in half

Piezo

 - Less common on electric basses and often seen on acoustic basses
- Senses the vibrations of stings through the contact of bridge and string contact point
- Don't rely on magnets so using a nylon string is possible
- Without the right amp can sound brittle and thin

 Other pickups

Optical pickups - Newest pickup, sense the vibrations of stings instead of magnets, very uncommon
Soapbar pickups - Looks like bars of soap, often found on 5 / 6 string bass
MM - style pickups - Created and used by musician basses

BASS KNOBS

Volume 

- It either has one master volume or two separate volume knob for each pick-up.
- With a master volume knob it usually has a separate knob that blends / balance two pickups

*A master volume is easier to control and set

Tone

- All basses has at least one tone knob to adjust the bass / treble frequencies output

 EQ band

 - 3 EQ band - Bass, mid, treble
- 2 EQ band - Bass and treble

BASS GUITAR AMP


Zone Speakers

Dust cap in the centre has a more higher frequency content as you move out of the cone you get a lot of mid-range and fuller tone. The surround and edge of speaker has a bright and thinner type tone. 

*Use flashlight to find cone 
*Move the microphone near the grill to find the sweet spot
*Be careful of phase issues if using two mics
*Tone can't be fix in the mix so it is important to find the tone same goes to adding too much overdrive.
*The further you move your mic back (turn pre-amp up) the more the bottom end drops off thus getting more of the room sound and the closer you get the more direct sound and less room
*Small amp has more high end and more mid range.  

RECORDING GUITAR AMPS


GUITAR AMPS MICS

Dynamic Mic

- Handle levels well
- Tight,  Low and Mid-range punch
- Work well with guitar amps
- Ex. Shure Sm57, Sennheiser MD 421

Condenser Mic

- Hi-fi sound
- A good room mic
- Ex. Neumann U47, Akg 414 large diaphragm, Sontronics DM1B

*Turn to figure 8 to get a deeper fuller low end sound
*For aggressive rock turn it to hyper-cardioid

Ribbon Mic

- Warm round sound
- Ex. Royer 101

GUITAR AMPS FUNDAMENTAL MIC PlACEMENTS

One Microphone 

- Placing a dynamic microphone directly 6-inches away from the cone of the amp.
- Use a small diaphragm microphone
- For attack point it on axis.
- For less attack point it towards the speaker slightly off axis.
- For more control and smooth out, off axis position angle it but still it is pointing towards the centre of the speaker.


On Axis


 Off Axis

Two Microphone

-  Two microphones same as the one microphone technique( on and off axis )
-  One microphone can be placed on axis and the other off axis (check phasing issues)

Room Microphone

- Capture the loudness of the amp in the space
- Make the recording powerful and realistic
- Placing it 3 - 15 feet away
- Point it away from the amp, towards the amp or point it towards the wall.

Great microphones to try

- Shure SM57
- Sennheiser MD 421
- Royer 101
- Sontronic dm1b large diaphragm
- Neumann u47 (Place it further because it is sensitive and can be very distorted if put too close to the cap)
- Yamaha subkick
- Akg 414
- Audax d6
- Neumann U87

Great amps to try

- Vox ac30
- Amp b15 portal flex

Great bass to try

- PVT40
- Fender precision
- Fender Jazz Bass

Great DI to try

- Bae 1073 DMP
- Bae 312
- JDI passive DI

*Record with a DI in a separate track may add a high end frequency for presence
*Can add dimension to the sound and fill out the bottom end when recorded simultaneously with DI and an amp

Recording with direct input

The DI captures the direct input of the bass guitar so it's the purest bass recording but it may sound un-human. 


  • Use a standard instrument cable to plug the output of the bass into the input of the DI box.
  • Use another instrument cable to connect the output on the DI box to the input of the bass amp.
  • Connect the XLR to the output of the DI box, and the male end to the link to mixer.
Introduction.17.09.png

EXPERIMENT

WHAT DO YOU WANT TO KNOW ? 

- We would want to know how to get a clear low bass tone without it sounding muddy in the mix and also being able to reduce room reflections. 

GENERAL PLAN

Before micking the bass guitar

  1. Check the strings and tune the guitar
  2. Set the correct tone on the amp and guitar
  3. Get the correct DI box 
  4. Find the sweet spot where the tone is most clear and mark it with a tape

Which technique

We will be using the two microphones and a DI. 

MICROPHONES USAGE AND PLACEMENT

Two Microphones
  1. Placing the sennheiser MD421 and the Shure SM57 off-axis
* Watch out for reflections

Repeat the step with different placement (Centre of amp, Side of amp, One and two feet away)
Using a DI
  1. We will use a standard instrument cable to plug the output of the bass to the input of the DI box.
  2. Use another cable to connect to the output on the DI box to the input of the bass amp.
  3. Connect female end of XLR to the output of DI box, and male end to the link to mixer. 

WHAT WE FOUND OUT

First Attempt 
  • Bass roll off at 0, MD 421 no gain


Second Attempt 
  •  Bass roll off at 0(music), MD421 gain at 46db


Third Attempt 
  • Same settings as 2nd attempt but we added another feet from the mic to amp

Comments

  1. UnknownSeptember 24, 2018 at 6:04 AM

    AC30 is a guitar amp. It might work, but you'd have to be careful not to damage the speaker. You listed quite a few mics we don't have, but we do have the VMS. Care to give it a try?

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Mixing a live band recording (Dalai Lama)

Image
Mixing in general I started off by listening to the drums first and then I flexed the time on the tracks that are needed to be in time. After that I started placing the tracks into summing stacks because I can place plugins to tighten the sound on the stack itself in the later stage. I then add a gain plugin on all of the tracks with mono on. Gain settings on the instruments are -4.8  on the drums and strings, -8.2 on the guitars and -2.7 on the second lead vocals. After that, I added noise gate on some of the tracks (Except the bass, strings and midi) to get rid of some of the bleeds. The threshold are around -42 to -60 and the hold at around 0 - 30ms.  Instrument plugins (Bus 1) Drums - Gain , noise gates, eq , compressor   (Bus 1 ) Bass - Gain , Bass  amp, channel EQ, compressor (Bus 5) Guitar - Gain, noise gate, eq, compressor , enveloper  (Bus 6) Strings - Gain, eq, compressor, pitch correction  (Bus 4) vocals - Gain , eq, compre...
Read more

Studio Composition Part 1

Studio Composition Part 1 Noise (time: 2’00 minutes) Explain the statement that “‘noise’ is a complex and ambiguous social category that is constantly being renegotiated” (up to 200 words): Noise is a complex ambiguous social category that is constantly being renegotiated because of how broad the term ‘noise’ can be from person to person. The reason why it is broad is  because a noise can be something irritating for some, but it also can be a great use or be labelled as music for someone else. For instance, if a person is trying to turn up the music to drown out a car alarm, it can be music to that person but that music could be something irritating for another person, with that it creates a ripple effect and as what Michel Serres a French philosopher says, noise is like a parasite it is inevitable. Noise like static and white noise could also be a distraction for some but It could be great use when a music producer decides to use those ‘noise’ as astatic creativity and inco...
Read more

The Making of Jonas Blue - Perfect Strangers

Image
Jonas Blue ( Perfect Strangers ) For the low-cut logic plug in, press alt and search in legacy   Instruments  Uses a lot of sounds from Massive and Sylenth 1   Lead Vocals  (Main Track) Mono  Auto-tune ( Auto tune Evo by antares )    Waves REQ 4  R Vox Waves CLA - 76 (Bus 1) Stereo  DeEsser SSL Channel (Waves) EQ & Gate   REQ 4  ( waves EQ) PuijTec EQP1A (S) L2 (Waves) To take out the peaks  (Bus on Bus 1)  Bus 2 Abby Road Plate (waves) Reverb  Bus 3 RVerb (waves) Reverb Bus 4 SuperTap 2 - Taps   Low Cut (Logic)                                                                     Distor...
Read more