how do you record your bass guitar?

[studio32]

Hi,

How do you record your bass guitar? I plugged it in my dmp 3 preamp and record it direct in Ardour. But it is hard to manage the gain. Even when I put down the volume knob in the dmp3 and have the volume knob of the guitar just a bit open... it's going red in Ardour...

[thorgal]

I use a hardware compressor after the preamp. It kills the peaks when I play on the lighter strings (lots of dynamic in there). I suggest you use a software comp before recording (jack-rack) so you can apply a decent setting before the audio reaches ardour.

I hope you have hardware monitoring or low latency if you use software monitoring

[studio32]

I use a hardware compressor after the preamp. It kills the peaks when I play on the lighter strings (lots of dynamic in there). I suggest you use a software comp before recording (jack-rack) so you can apply a decent setting before the audio reaches ardour.

I hope you have hardware monitoring or low latency if you use software monitoring

thanks, great tip, the one I was searching for. I'll check it out!

[studio32]

I suggest you use a software comp before recording (jack-rack) so you can apply a decent setting before the audio reaches ardour.

What plugin is good for that? The C* compress mono compressor (LADSPA)?
And which settings?

[thorgal]

SC4 mono (I suppose your bass preamp output is mono).
as to the setting, it's really up to you. Compressing a bass is tough, depending on the style you play. Have you used a comp before ? in ardour, the SC4 comes with a meter display showing in realtime how much is compressed as you feed the plugin with audio data. So you can quickly get an idea whether your setting is reasonable or not. Trust your ears, as usual I don't know if you have this display in jack-rack.
Anyway, you will have to apply attack / release times and compression factor. Experiment inside ardour first : record a bass line that peaks over 0 dB (but that looks fine when you play bass notes or moderately). Then apply the SC4 comp to this piece of audio and check the output. What you want is to compress the very high dynamic of the medium to high notes of the bass - the notes played on the G-string basically). Also remember that you will probably apply some EQ to your bass (remove or decrease the muddy area - 300 to 800 Hz - and the very low freq - below ~ 70 Hz - that would overlap with the kick drum). So I would suggest you apply some EQ and comp.

[studio32]

Thanks Thorgal, I appreciated your knowledge sharing, especially about producing and Ardour, very much!

[niko123456]

you'll need to make sure your input levels aren't too high that you're fuzzing out.

chances are your preamp has two modes - one is a pad to attenuate -20db, the other is +4. use the -20db, and make sure you use the correct cable between your pre and the input. check your sound card settings and roll off the input gain.

i often go direct with bass either through a mixer or through a preamp. ideally, i would love to mic it up, but direct offers more integrity in the sound and tone.

a good tip i found early on (and to be used sparingly), is to try and record the string noises with a condensor mic pointing at the bridge. mixed in with the actual amplified signal, you can get some great clarity.

[MattKingUSA]

I run mine direct to my mixer and then to my sound card.

[Derek]

I record my bass tracks direct from my amp onto a Fostex DMT 8vl 8-track. Then dump them onto my computer in Audacity. The recorder captures the EQ from the amp and allows me to adjust levels to get a good signal strength without peaks and/or clipping. I adjust my line-in signal to keep from peaking in Audacity.

I am able to get strong, clean signals with a nice punchy bass tone.

[schivmeister]

It's always a question of whether to DI or amp (mic) it.

1) Most styles of music have the bass field at the back, above, and totally devoid of reverberation.

2) There is only so much to shape on low frequencies, given the fact that Tom, Dick, and Harry all tag along the 62.5 and 125 pair of octaves.

Tonally, shaping does provide a bigger and better, more present (and pleasant), result. For less amount of work done, using IR-based software modelling (simulation) can do that too. So my personal favourite is DI + Guitar Rig 3 (VST)

As for the clipping, you should first ensure that levels are sane everywhere (in the software, on your bass, on the audio interface). Just play an open string and adjust accordingly; leave just enough headroom for those exciting times. Arm a practice run and if you find that your playing is a little too dynamic, add in a compressor in the chain. I would do it via an Aux insert; I want the waveform visual to be post-compression (removes a lot of confusion during editing).

[jitup]

I close mic my bass cab with a shure sm-57, stick it up against the grill cloth as close to the center of the cone as you could get it, turn it up to a pretty high level, then adjust level using your hardware mixer or interface. this is what gets me the best results. I know free vst's.com (google free vsts, I think it is the first link) has some pretty decent vst bass amps for when you just need a quicky, not shure if they work in linux.

[MattKingUSA]

I would imagine that you could get the best results from micing your bass amp with a very low db dynamic microphone. Maybe a kick drum mic and a dynamic instrument mic both. That would give you some serious low range db.

[jitup]

thats a great idea! I agree, some one should give it a try (I would but don't have a kick mic)

[mudfly]

I use a combination of techniques depending on what I am working on. My main technique when recording a live session, I use a SansAmp Bass Driver DI with one channel to my preamp and then into Ardour. Then I take the dry channel from the SansAmp to my bass amp, and mic it with a SM57 off center of one of my cones and dump that into a second track in Ardour. I then blend the two tones to my liking.