ChicoSatis Posted April 30, 2008 Share Posted April 30, 2008 Hi all I'm mixing tracks for this metal band and I'm referencing some songs by Dark Tranquility and Opeth and for the life of me i can't get my low end even close to being in their ball park. I'm satisfied with my end results but I'm just curious if any one knows any specific ways to get the Low end so big and punchy. Is it more mixing or mastering or just a combo of both? I'm NOT a fan of the overly compressed sound so I'm sure that has something to do with it. Also we didn't exactly use the best sounding bass in the world(Not very meaty.) The kick is good though. I usually filter most things out so that the kick and bass occupy the low end by themselves. Any insight would be greatly appreciated. TIA Have a good one. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fader8 Posted April 30, 2008 Share Posted April 30, 2008 Hey Chico, Without hearing it, tough to say. But you should at least try parallel comp. Have you done this before or do you need some tips? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ChicoSatis Posted April 30, 2008 Author Share Posted April 30, 2008 Hi Fader Thanks for answering. Any tips you throw my way would be GREATLY appreciated. I'm just looking for a real tight low end sound that has a bit of ooomph to it, if that makes sense. Thanks again. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fader8 Posted April 30, 2008 Share Posted April 30, 2008 Hey Chico, try this for starters. Of course I'm just guessing but you can tweak from here. Add just your bass line to this project to try it out. Do your volume leveling rides on the source bass track and do your mix rides with the bass sub track. Ping back if you don't get it. ChicoBass.logic.zip Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ChicoSatis Posted April 30, 2008 Author Share Posted April 30, 2008 Wow this is awesome. I'll give it a try right now. Thanks SO much for helping me out. Your the best. Have a good one. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vm1971 Posted May 1, 2008 Share Posted May 1, 2008 Wow this is awesome. I'll give it a try right now. Thanks SO much for helping me out. Your the best. Have a good one. he is the best!!!! keep me posted on this one, fella... this is a post right up my alley! VINCE Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ChicoSatis Posted May 1, 2008 Author Share Posted May 1, 2008 Hey guys Tried it out and it definitely improved my bass. I have much more control now. Ya know I never thought of parallel compressing the bass before. That was a great tip, thanks again Fader. I was trying to get that New Modern Metal sound with a ton of low end and this definitely gets me closer. The rest of the differences I would have to assume is just the instruments themselves, (The bass we used was a bit on the trebly side), the gear, the mastering job etc. What i did do was take some older metal like Metallica's black album and some early 90's Slayer and Megadeth and compared all of them. Wow!!! I never realized the difference in the overall tonal balancing of songs from 15-20 years ago as compared to now. But then everything is so Overly compressed now which part of me likes and part of me doesn't. So I decided to split the difference and I'm happy with the balancing choices of my song now. It's the first one I'm mixing for the album so I spent like 5 days mixing it just to get everything just as I want it. Now I have an idea where the album is going to go sonically speaking. Once I gave up trying to copy those exact bass responses I found my sound. Thanks again Have a good one. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vm1971 Posted May 2, 2008 Share Posted May 2, 2008 Hey guys Tried it out and it definitely improved my bass. I have much more control now. Ya know I never thought of parallel compressing the bass before. That was a great tip, thanks again Fader. I was trying to get that New Modern Metal sound with a ton of low end and this definitely gets me closer. The rest of the differences I would have to assume is just the instruments themselves, (The bass we used was a bit on the trebly side), the gear, the mastering job etc. What i did do was take some older metal like Metallica's black album and some early 90's Slayer and Megadeth and compared all of them. Wow!!! I never realized the difference in the overall tonal balancing of songs from 15-20 years ago as compared to now. But then everything is so Overly compressed now which part of me likes and part of me doesn't. So I decided to split the difference and I'm happy with the balancing choices of my song now. It's the first one I'm mixing for the album so I spent like 5 days mixing it just to get everything just as I want it. Now I have an idea where the album is going to go sonically speaking. Once I gave up trying to copy those exact bass responses I found my sound. Thanks again WOW! i would love to hear some of this stuff! feel free to share if and when you can! awesome! vince Have a good one. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ChicoSatis Posted May 2, 2008 Author Share Posted May 2, 2008 Hi Definitely. Once I'm done I intend on having people take a listen. My mixing chops aren't where I'd like them to be but they're getting better. I find metal to be very tricky to mix. Especially these guys because they have a lot of keyboards in their songs. It's a balancing act let me tell ya. I'm feeling better about it now though so we'll see how it goes. Have a good one. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vm1971 Posted May 2, 2008 Share Posted May 2, 2008 Hi Definitely. Once I'm done I intend on having people take a listen. My mixing chops aren't where I'd like them to be but they're getting better. I find metal to be very tricky to mix. Especially these guys because they have a lot of keyboards in their songs. It's a balancing act let me tell ya. I'm feeling better about it now though so we'll see how it goes. Have a good one. TELL ME ABOUT IT that free download on my site [LEAVEINPIECES] was originally very geetar-y. i almost canned it cause the mix was a bitch... and i havent mixed in almost 8 years. what i did previous started dancier and then before it dissolved it was mostly metal-ish with programming. it IS a challenge. after this "EP1" release... i smell that EP2 is going to head into that guitar realm. but im not sure. it dictates itself... BUT i really wanna hear what youve done and would love to share tips or pointers or just plain 'ol PRAISE!!!! do you have a site? VINCE Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ChicoSatis Posted May 5, 2008 Author Share Posted May 5, 2008 Hi Definitely. Once I'm done I intend on having people take a listen. My mixing chops aren't where I'd like them to be but they're getting better. I find metal to be very tricky to mix. Especially these guys because they have a lot of keyboards in their songs. It's a balancing act let me tell ya. I'm feeling better about it now though so we'll see how it goes. Have a good one. TELL ME ABOUT IT that free download on my site [LEAVEINPIECES] was originally very geetar-y. i almost canned it cause the mix was a bitch... and i havent mixed in almost 8 years. what i did previous started dancier and then before it dissolved it was mostly metal-ish with programming. it IS a challenge. after this "EP1" release... i smell that EP2 is going to head into that guitar realm. but im not sure. it dictates itself... BUT i really wanna hear what youve done and would love to share tips or pointers or just plain 'ol PRAISE!!!! do you have a site? VINCE Hi Vince I don't have a site yet but I am eventually going to work on getting one. My friend is going to help me out with that. I actually have to say that I picked up that ARC plug in from IK and it really does do wonders. My mixes never traveled so well and I never mixed so fast. The problem I was having was because this band I'm working on wants me to put a mastering job on as well and I was having a hard time with it. My mixes sounded a bit harsh on the High end but the low end sounded good (thanks to Fader). I finally figured out that i was pushing the Limiter WAY too hard. I backed off about 6 or 7 db and MAN what a difference. The mix totally opened up and the High end sat much nicer. It was just me trying to compete with todays volumes. I now realize that having a well balanced song that sounds pleasing is more important than having a loud song that sounds like crap. BTW my song IS loud but not quite as loud but there is a volume knob. Anyway I'll let ya know how it's going. BTW on your song what did you use for your Guitar sounds. Was it direct or did you mic an amp? I'm always curious as to that kind of stuff, being a guitarist primarily. Have a good one. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vm1971 Posted May 5, 2008 Share Posted May 5, 2008 Hi Definitely. Once I'm done I intend on having people take a listen. My mixing chops aren't where I'd like them to be but they're getting better. I find metal to be very tricky to mix. Especially these guys because they have a lot of keyboards in their songs. It's a balancing act let me tell ya. I'm feeling better about it now though so we'll see how it goes. Have a good one. TELL ME ABOUT IT that free download on my site [LEAVEINPIECES] was originally very geetar-y. i almost canned it cause the mix was a bitch... and i havent mixed in almost 8 years. what i did previous started dancier and then before it dissolved it was mostly metal-ish with programming. it IS a challenge. after this "EP1" release... i smell that EP2 is going to head into that guitar realm. but im not sure. it dictates itself... BUT i really wanna hear what youve done and would love to share tips or pointers or just plain 'ol PRAISE!!!! do you have a site? VINCE Hi Vince I don't have a site yet but I am eventually going to work on getting one. My friend is going to help me out with that. I actually have to say that I picked up that ARC plug in from IK and it really does do wonders. My mixes never traveled so well and I never mixed so fast. The problem I was having was because this band I'm working on wants me to put a mastering job on as well and I was having a hard time with it. My mixes sounded a bit harsh on the High end but the low end sounded good (thanks to Fader). I finally figured out that i was pushing the Limiter WAY too hard. I backed off about 6 or 7 db and MAN what a difference. The mix totally opened up and the High end sat much nicer. It was just me trying to compete with todays volumes. I now realize that having a well balanced song that sounds pleasing is more important than having a loud song that sounds like crap. BTW my song IS loud but not quite as loud but there is a volume knob. Anyway I'll let ya know how it's going. BTW on your song what did you use for your Guitar sounds. Was it direct or did you mic an amp? I'm always curious as to that kind of stuff, being a guitarist primarily. Have a good one. HEY!!!!!!!!!! the geetar was actually done so long ago.. [well, seems long ago kinda..- december...]... i believe that was done direct thru the ART preAmp and some fx in Logic.. the guitar parts this time around were very scattered and not as prominent as my past stuff.... so its hard to recall what i did. i know i went thru my pedalboard on one tune.. into the pre and then... so forth. im CERTAIN that no amp mikng was done yet... but i forsee that happening again now that im comfy with Logic. i do like mixing textures for geetar...direct, shredding overloaded pinned in the red and mic'ed up amp... all at once, but evenly mixed. in that middle part half-time breakdown, there is doubled guitar in there. it was supposed to be a normal "solo" type of deal, but it sucked. so i doubled it, detuned it with FX, and then added some secret weapons to make it a texture... dropped it down and then brought it back up until it was audible but not a "solo" anymore... and wow.... it came out nice. sounds good turned up on a beefy system. ok... holla back Vin Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
leahbasskitten Posted May 6, 2008 Share Posted May 6, 2008 sweet! always nice to learn new techniques. fader8, are their other purposes you can use this parallel comp method? learning minds would like to know vm1971, enjoyed that song. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LarsGranat Posted May 6, 2008 Share Posted May 6, 2008 Parallel compression rocks!! (can't say I've been using it for bass though, thanks for the tip!) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vm1971 Posted May 6, 2008 Share Posted May 6, 2008 sweet! always nice to learn new techniques. fader8, are their other purposes you can use this parallel comp method? learning minds would like to know vm1971, enjoyed that song. YES! learning good... i'd like to hear more examples of using this method, too!!! and thanks so much leah! im excited about the new stuff and im about 99.5% all done the mixing... then its off to be mastered [the remaining traxx] thanks so much! enjoy it! share it! VINCE Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fader8 Posted May 6, 2008 Share Posted May 6, 2008 fader8, are their other purposes you can use this parallel comp method? learning minds would like to know Well, anything you want to make FAT! Other than yourself of course, since you can't eat it. The linear eq on the FAT channel allows you to be selective about where you want FATness applied. So you can have thunder thighs without the double chin, for example. I always leave that so it's just a bandpass filter. If you want to eq further, insert it on the final sub. I'd recommend the FAT eq for that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
leahbasskitten Posted May 7, 2008 Share Posted May 7, 2008 are you trying to say i'm fat? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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