Ableton Forum

hi,

i'm comparing my tracks to professional stuff like
alter ego, mr oizo and other dancemusic with very dry synth basslines.

i'm using analog synths for nice fat stuff.

but when i compare my stuff to some stuff on cd, then the difference is huge.

its like my bassline sits very narrow in the mix, but a fat bass like of alter ego or others in the same style, smashes around your ears, but still preserves the feeling, sence that it is very central.
it sounds much wider, without loosing punch.
how do they do that?
(even with an analiser, it is clear that other music is wider -- nicer for your ears, it tickles more
i noticed that adding chorus on the bassline, makes it wider, thats what chorus does, but it also changes dramatically the color and sound of the bassline.
so i was wondering how do you make a bassline wider without loosing punch (like when you add reverb), loosing the original sound (like dropping chorus on it)

or is this something that is obtained while mastering professionally?

i know the basics of mastering and mixing, as i followed several courses for that, so my basic mix is ok... but am i missing some important detail?


thanx for any tips!

jan

Professional mastering is the last stage in the process. If your bass sounds weak, there's not a great deal a mastering engineer can do. Forget about mastering while you're making tracks.

To get big bass, try building a bass sound by layering different sounds on top of each other.

For example: Use a simple sine wave (from Operator if you like) with no effects (except maybe a limiter) for the sub. Then layer another sound - perhaps a hoover-style detuned saw patch - on top of the sub (use the same MIDI clip to play both sounds). Use a high-pass filter to filter out low frequencies in the hoover-style sound so that it doesn't clash with the sine wave. Then try some chorus or a short reverb on the hoover layer.

If you do this, you'll be able to create wide bass sounds that have plenty of sub bass energy. Using delay-based effects (like chorus, reverb and delay) on sub-heavy sounds is not really a good idea. Leave the sub clean and add layers.

yeah, i know mastering is the last stage

my bass doesn't sound weak, it really is fat enough.
its a bit difficult to explain...its not that i want a bass who covers the whole spectrum as a wide layer in the music.

its the placement of the bass in the spectrum...
check
http://www.myspace.com/therealalterego
the first 15 seconds in the track 'why not'... there is a fat bassline playing along with the kick (the bassline i mean is the groundmelody which covers the whole track)
at first this sounds centered, but if i make the same sound and create a melodie and put it centered in the track, then it sounds completely different...
there is something that is added that i can't find out...

the other basslines who drop in later in the track are very wide, and also have a wicked placement, if i make the same sound, i also can't find out how it is placed in the mix, in order to reach the effect like they do...


damn

fat & wide??? you mean, like maybe they inverted the phase on one channel??

Try using the utility plugin and click invert phase on either the left or right and see if you get a nice fat & wide bass sound.
Either that, or use simple delay to add a few msec delay to just one channel (left or right).

thx, i'll try it out...

I was always under the impression that bass lines should be recorded in mono...do you guys record all your bass lines in stereo? Or only in certain situations?

yeah mono is in some ways better, but its definately not only mono that does the trick here.

i compare by making track, listening on pro monitors, and then playing a track from a known musician, and mono doesn't come near to the sollution, but it can help for more punch...

still a long way to go

inverting the phase of (one of two) identical tracks will make that bassline silent if summed to mono.
But who listens in mono these days?

Also, our ears don't detect low-freq sound panning nearly as effectively as midrange or high-freq stuff (why? because we use phase-difference algorithms more than volume differences....) which is another reason to record bass tracks in mono and pan them dead center.

also: phase differences can produce bad problems on vinyl... but if you are making a mp3... who cares?!?

anyway, all rules can be broken.

Try the phase invert trick and hear how different it sounds on headphones versus speakers.

good topic.

layering is the key. for example have a mono sine produce the sub frequencies, layered with a stereo sound for texture and width. stereo can be achieved with chorus, phase or flange or various "fake stereo" plugins, but i think the best way is to have two identical synths panned hard left/right, and then alter them to be sligthly different from each other (pitch, lfo, filter, phase etc.). depending on your sub signal it's usually wise to cut low frequencies from your stereo signal to avoid phasing, around 150-200 Hz and keep the q fairly soft.

but then sometimes it's cool to just put chorus on the sub and not give a fuck about phasing

You can get a rich sounding bass using all the techniques mentioned above and make it deeper and wider by doing some mid/side processing. As a staring point you can EQ the mid and the side differently. You can also apply some saturation on the side only or compress more heavily the mid. Basically any sort of careful processing in the mid/side dimensions will make your sounds wider.

chorus, staurator, upstereo

compression and increasing the side or STEREO volume of the track will work.

make a rack.

put a utility in two different chains. change the stereo setting on one to full 200%. reduce the other chain to 0% stereo. you now have control over the stereo and mono volumes. decrease your mono volume by 1-3db. (or whatever sounds good) and then compress the signal with a 4-6:1 ratio with a threshold of 40db. adjust attack and release to taste.

i get big bass with this method personally. and my bass sounds sweeeeeeeeeeet as sugar these days.

I know what you mean and yes, that's common with analouge synths, especially fat mono stuff.

Duplicate your track two times, pan one to each side and use track delay to delay them slightly, that alone will give you a nice stereo width but why stop there? Hi-pass the panned tracks at 80-150hz, add different modulation effects to each and distort them slightly.

This is cool because you can instantly get a "softer" variation of your theme by just exchanging the mid one for a saturated sub bass, which is a quick and easy way to add some versatility to your track.

nice tips overhere! lets try it out!

I know that when I want a a "wide" stereo sound, one instrument that seems to play in both channels at left and right instead of in the center, i just create a second channel, copy the clip/audio into it, pan each channel pretty hard to left and right respectively, then use live's track delay window to add a few ms delay to one of them...bingo.

i do this all the time with guitar tracks, to get that double guitar effect when in fact it's the same clip playing. usually i have to tweak the sound of one channel a bit, to further differentiate them. especially easy with guitar parts since I have guitar rig3 running in both channels, I just screw with the settings in there a bit...

haven't tried this on bass yet, though why not! should be fun.