Recording - May 2012 - 8

Note to faithful writers: When sending your letters by email, please remember to include your name and where you hail from.
Way off bass
I’m a pro-meets-semi-pro musician currently going through a catalogue of my old tunes, trying to complete them. I have on occasion had bassists in to record the ‘bull fiddle’, but several years ago I bought a very cheap half-sized one of my own. Now I have a whole heap of problems to contend with. 1) It’s a cheap instrument that’s kind of thin and toneless. There’s nothing I can really do about this, it was all I could afford, and for now I’ll just have to do the best with what I’ve got. 2) My main instrument is drums. After that comes guitar, and trailing way off in the distance there’s a bunch of other stuff I can’t really play properly, including double bass. But I love doing it, so I’ll just keep going and gradually improve. A consequence of my low level of ability is that I have to do loads of takes and then collage together something. Very labour intensive! I play and record in the finger-picking jazz/folk pizzicato manner. 3) My studio is tiny and very primitive. The ‘control room’ is the desk by my bed, and the ‘live room’ is a tiny box of a room right next to the bedroom, and doesn’t sound great. I have a very limited amount of mics: a Shure SM58, which is usually on my snare, two AKG C1000s as my stereo pair of overheads, a D112 for the bass drum, and an Audio-Technica 4033a for vocals, guitars and other stuff. When I’ve recorded other bassists with their own much nicer instruments I use two channels: one for the AT4033a placed, as Bruce Kaphan describes in his article on recordingmag.com (www.recordingmag.com/resources/ resourceDetail/204.html), roughly at the height of the joint of the body and neck (although I perhaps tend to place it a little lower), and the other as a DI from the bridge pickup. The 4033a is usually 12–24” from the instrument, and gets the acoustic ambience and finger sounds, whilst the DI gives me the low-end fatness. But my own bass currently has no pickup. My question is this: is there a way I might get a much better sound with just one mic? I realise this may be asking too much from such a cheap instrument (the low end isn’t as rich or full as I’d wish it to be), and I may not have the right mic for the job either. But the lack of money constrains my options. Must I buy a pickup for it? Beyond that, I wondered if I’m using the right mic on the bass anyway: is the 4033 a good choice? One reason I use it is because (except for the SM58 on the snare) I like to leave all the drum mics where they are... well, the overheads and bass drum mic at any rate. If there’s a mic that I can afford better suited to the job of recording the bass, I might be able to scrape the money together! One last question: what’s the best signal processing I can use to improve the bass sound—the best compression and eq, etc., for upright bass? Thanks for taking the time to read this. All the best from the ol’ U of K,
Sebastian Palmer via email

Sebastian: Hello and thanks for writing. Here are a few suggestions: You may not be able to get around putting a pickup on your bass so you can have the second DI channel you’re used to. Ask around town among bass players, and note that the words “good” and “cheap” may be in contradiction. Rent one or two from a pro audio rental shop and try before you buy; it will be money well spent. Since you’re in the UK, you should check out www.contrabass.co.uk/pickups.htm I see no reason why the AT4033a shouldn’t work, but what’s wrong with taking all your other mics off their stands to try them? Leave the stands in place around your drums, and take pictures in case you move something if your setup is really that critical. With a bass that’s this iffy, maybe the most unlikely mic will give you the best results. As for processing the bass track, there’s no hard and fast rule I’m aware of. Compression will suck the life out of it unless you keep it very light, but it can add sustain to notes that die too quickly of course. Eq by ear. Also try an Aural Exciter. See if you can rent a VOG or the new i-VOG from Little Labs (reviewed April 2012). And as a final thought: try re-amping! Record your bass to your DAW, get a reamp box, send the (wimpy) recorded track through it and into a bass amp, mike the amp so that the tone controls and the room add body and life. Look at our video www.recordingmag.com/videos/videoDetail/14.html where we did the same with a bass guitar. You’d have to buy or borrow a good bass amp for this trick to work effectively, but it could produce the magic you’re missing. Let us know how your experiments turn out.—LzR

Write to us at: Talkback, Recording Magazine, 5408 Idylwild Trail, Boulder, CO 80301 Or save stamps and send email to talkback@recordingmag.com
8
RECORDING MAY 2012

http://www.recordingmag.com http://www.recordingmag.com/resources/resourceDetail/204.html http://www.recordingmag.com/resources/resourceDetail/204.html http://www.contrabass.co.uk/pickups.htm http://www.recordingmag.com/videos/videoDetail/14.html

Recording - May 2012

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Recording - May 2012