8 Tips For Getting A Great Bass Guitar Sound — Pro Tools Expert

It's one of the things we get asked a more than anything else when it comes to recording instruments, how do you get a great bass guitar sound?

If you are a veteran to recording then this list should come as no surprise, but if you are new then try these and see how much difference they can make to getting the right bass sound on your tracks.

Quality Counts

They say that a bad workman blames his tools, that's partly true, give a great bass player even a cheap instrument and they will do amazing things. However it's not just about the playing but it's also the sound of the instrument. Get a great bass guitar - bass is one of those instruments that shows when the money has been spent. That's got a lot to do with the wood and the quality of the instrument - with bass you can hear it!

String Theory

Try Different strings; they all have different sounds. A decent bass player will already know this, but if you are new to bass then take a trip to a decent music store and get some advice on the different types of strings and their different weights, you'll be surprised by how much they can affect both sound and performance.

Tone Bank

Experiment with the tone before you record, most basses have a huge variety of sound just built into the pickup pots and switches. Some tracks lend themselves to nice low non-descript brooding bass sounds, other tracks work better with a more punch mid tone. If you have a good amp then use it and use the tone built in; again there's a vast amount of variety with a good bass amp. Spending some time before you hit record can make a heck of a difference.

Style Council

Experiment with the playing style - some songs need hard finger style playing and other songs need a pick style - it can make all the difference. Try a few takes with a few different styles then listen back. A pro bass player will also use several different styles in one song to help differentiate between sections.

Mic Check

Try different mics on the bass cab; ask 10 engineers which mic to use and you'll get 10 different answers, but some favourites are Sennheiser 421, EV RE20, Shure SM57, AKG D12 or 414. Experiment with mic positioning on the cab and distance too, both have a bearing on the final result.

Tracks DI And Amp

Try and get a track of both the amp and the DI sound by using a splitter before the bass hits the amp and then try them both in the mix afterwards. Often the final bass sound in a mix will be a combination of both DI and amp.

In The Mix

Once you have your bass tracked then try adding a boost at around 80-100Hz, be bold and then add a compression to keep it all under control. If you have a DI and a cab take then use one to accentuate the bottom end and the other to give some detail, for me that's normally the mic take. Transient shapers are a great tool when mixing bass, they allow you to add punch, reduce it, extend sustain or even pull the bass forward or push it back.

Experiment With Augmentation

Try adding in a synth bass line with the original, this trick has been used a lot on some top tracks over the years. Another nice trick is to copy the bass part with an identical guitar part and mix them together. Or try adding in a kick drum sample to add and edgy punch to the bass line - you'd be surprised at the results.
These are some of our favourite tricks and tips, what are yours?

Technology And The Audio Engineer

Audio engineering is an art form that is typically appreciated only by audiophiles and those who engineer or produce music for a living. Behind every engineer is the technology that helped create the sounds we hear. Ask the average person to name a recording engineer and they will most likely have no reply. Ask them to name any of the equipment used to make a recording and they will be equally dumbfounded. Although the names may not be known by those outside the music industry, the impact they have had on music production throughout the decades is immeasurable.

The expertise and ingenuity of the audio engineer has brought many artists to the forefront of the industry. In many cases, those accomplishments were backed by advancements in recording technology. The Beatles, for example, were known for many amazing creative and technical feats in the recording studio. The vision of George Martin and the genius of the Fab Four had to be realized in physical form by engineers who found ways to make that vision a reality. They stretched the boundaries of what was possible, by embracing new technology, and made history in the process.

1900-1940's: Vinyl Discs and cutting lathes rule into the late 40's

During this era technology was fairly limited. Even though there were major technological developments, their use in the recording studio was limited by the marketplace. Vinyl disc sales had not quite grown big enough to support large recording budgets and thus support radical change in the design of recording studios. As you will see in the coming decades, this outlook would change dramatically.

All records, during this period, were largely made the same way with the same recording techniques and recording technology. The audio engineer, sporting a white lab coat, was not generally considered part of creative process. The audio engineer was primarily there to just capture performances. Artists, composers and arrangers were largely responsible for the success or failure of their production. At this point in history, the limitations of cutting lathe technology did not allow the audio engineer enough latitude to enhance the artist's performance by any great measure.

1950's: Analog tape machines replace cutting lathes in the recording studio.

Analog recording technology was developed in the late 40's but its true impact was not felt until the 50's. The physical limitations of vinyl were coming to a head. Performances captured on cutting lathes for vinyl production were limited by the time available on a disc side, the amount of low frequency content, and the dynamics of the performance. Any of these basic issues, out of balance, could easily render a beautiful performance destroyed.

Analog tape changed these parameters dramatically. At worst, performances that were too long, bass heavy or with excessive dynamics might require editing or suffer from some distortion or tape compression. Multiple performances or takes could be easily edited together to make one better performance. Performances that would not fit on one side of a record could be easily split between Side A and Side B or edited in length to fit on one side of a vinyl disc. The transfer engineer, now known as mastering, was born.

1960's: Multitrack recording technology and the release of stereo recordings.

The 1960's saw the full realization of stereo technology that was created in the 50's. The recording technology that emerged from the 60's would change the way recordings were made forever. While consumers were enjoying stereo on vinyl discs, recording engineers were working with multitrack recording. Multitrack recording allowed individual instruments to be recorded on separate tracks. Once separated they could be processed individually when mixed into stereo for the commercial release. The Mix engineer's position was born.

Sel-Sync multitrack recording (selective synchronization) allowed the audio engineer to rerecord individual performances synchronously with other tracks on the same tape machine.

This would allow the vocalist to rerecord their part if the band captured a perfect take but the vocal performance was not up to the same standard. With careful forethought, It would also be possible for additional parts to be layered. Harmonies, doubles and additional instruments could be added to a performance to enhance or sweeten the sound of the recording.

The term "overdubbing" was now part of audio engineer's vocabulary.

This was a truly revolutionary change in the production process. The ability to separate and layer performances would grow exponentially in the coming years. It would expand the time artists spent in the recording studio dramatically. The early albums of the 60's might take a few days to complete. By the end of the 60's those same records would take weeks or even months to complete.

Learn How To EQ A Bass Drum

Although the sound engineer is the main force behind a fruitful EQuing stage, you as the drummer, have an important role in it as well - one that will actually influence and dictate how successful and fast the EQuing will be. Fortunately for you, in this free drum lesson you'll be taught important EQuing concepts in a step-by-step approach by sound engineer Victor Guidera, and tips on how you can help the sound engineer get the best sound out of the bass drum by poster boy Jared Falk

It's important that you take the time to learn how to mic a bass drum properly, and learn about common technical terms and theory behind drum set miking for both live and studio settings, before you watch this free video drum lesson on bass drum EQuing. You can educate yourself about these subjects by watching the free video drum lessons How To Mic A Bass Drum ” and Drum Set Mic Technique Overview The knowledge you'll acquire from those free drum lessons will prove to be invaluable as you learn how to EQ a bass drum.

The sound engineer is as important to the sound of a band in a live concert or record, as the members of the band themselves. So while sound checking, be patient, respect the sound engineer and try to work with him, so that you can get the best sound as possible out of your drums. This goes for your band mates as well.

As soon as you're done with this free drum lesson on EQuing a bass drum, pick and choose between the free drum lessons How To EQ A Snare Drum , How To EQ Toms , and How To EQ Overheads And Cymbals ” to learn how to EQ the other instruments on your drum set.

Practical Tips On Vocal Recording

Everything from pre-production and ambience to communication and comping...
By Dave Martin

Though I kinda hate to admit it, the bass track isn't usually the most important thing on the record. I've been a bass player for close to 35 years now, so that is a rather painful realization. But I've resigned myself to it, and reluctantly accept that the singer (well, the lead vocal) is what will determine the success or failure of a recorded song. This article will discuss some of the things I've found to be helpful in the quest to record great vocal tracks. This isn't meant to be an exhaustive list, just things that have helped me (and the singers I work with) to do the best that they can do.

Most of us don't have the luxury of having a producer sitting next to us, making decisions and guiding the singer towards the perfect performance—I'm usually the producer
and the engineer (as well as the assistant, the janitor, the caterer, the billing department, and the guy who gets blamed whenever things go wrong). So I'm writing under the assumption that you're in pretty much the same position. Why do I emphasize this? Because while some of what will be discussed below are engineering functions, others are part of the producer's role. I'm combining the two, because that's the way that it usually works in my world.

Pre-production

Admittedly, I seldom (or never) get to spend enough time on pre-production with the singers I work with. But there are a few things that I've learned that are of paramount importance. The first is that you have to make sure that the key of the song is right for the singer, and the second is that I want to have a copy of the lyrics in front of me before we start recording.

I used to be surprised when someone would come into the studio to record a song that they'd written (and often performed many times in public) when the reality was that they simply could not hit the notes in their own melodies. Not any more, though—I've seen it happen too many times. When time (and budget) allow for pre-production meetings, I'll listen to the song with the singer accompanied only by a single instrument (usually acoustic guitar or piano). I can see what the highest note in the song is as well as the lowest note. In a perfect world, both the highest and lowest notes are comfortably within the singer's range. In a less than perfect world, we might have to look at changing something. I would much rather change the key than the melody, since the melody is half of what defines the song (with the words being the other half, of course), but even that can be problematic. Sometimes it's possible to change how the singer is singing; here's why that can work, using my own voice as a (bad) example.

The lowest note that I can hit is a low D (sometimes a low C, early in the morning). The highest note that I can squeak out is a high B or C. Does that mean that I've got a two-octave range? Shoot, no—I'm a pretty terrible singer, and my usable range is a heck of a lot smaller than that—less than an octave. But (and here's the key), the ‘usable' part of my range changes depending on how loud I'm singing; if I'm singing quietly, the lower part of my vocal range is usable, but my voice cracks if I try to sing high notes. If I sing loud, I can't sing as low, but I can sing a lot higher. And there's also head voice (which I can't do at all, but some singers use all the time).

If a singer can't hit the notes singing in their usual style, pre-production is the time to experiment with other approaches—louder, quieter, breathier, with more growl, or whatever.

The goal is to make the singer sound his best, and thereby present the song in the best possible manner. By the way, for the far more common projects where I don't have any pre-production meetings with the singer, I have to try and do this on the fly at the session. This takes valuable time, but it has to be done to get the best performance of the song.

I also try to get a copy of the lyrics before the singer goes in to sing (I also want a chart of the song, but that's a discussion for a different time). The reasons for wanting the lyric in front of me are twofold—well, really threefold. The first is that it speeds up communication (discussed below); the second is that if I want to try having the singer use a different timbre on some parts of the song, I want to avoid exchanges like, Why don't you try singing, um… I think it's the third line of that verse with a breathy, sexy sound?” You mean the line when I sing ‘I hope you die tonight, you filthy scum!'?” Umm, yeah. Sing it like you're in love…”

The third reason I want lyrics in front of me is that it means that the singer will also have lyrics in front of them when they sing; it's a lot more common than you'd think to have the singer simply forget some of his own words.

Studio ambience

You know, we've all read about those singers who recorded their hit song while surrounded by their necessities—their lava lamps, their incense, their ginseng tea and their aromatherapy candles; they want the darkened room, along with (I suppose) their bunny slippers, their spiritual advisor and the studio to be at 71.5 degrees and 42% humidity. Well, good for them. Really.

I tend to take a different approach, however. To begin with, I want light—enough light so that the singer can see their words, and, if they're singing with a band, enough light so that all concerned can see each other. I've never been able to see that building a womb for the singer results in a performance any better than their performance while standing in the middle of a well-lit recording studio.

For that matter, I know that most of us who read Recording don't usually have the luxury of a purpose-built recording studio, including me; for 10 years, my studio was in my house (well, in a basement for about 8 years, and in a garage for two more years while I built Java Jive). During the course of those 10 years, singers worked in closets, bedrooms, laundry rooms and bathrooms. And you know what? They sang great! I pretty much make sure that the vocalist has someplace to set their water (tea, coffee, or whatever), a music stand, a chair to sit on while they listen to playbacks, and off we go. Don't misunderstand, though—I will try to make the singer comfortable, but I have never seen the need to go overboard.

Communication

I believe that the single most important skill that an engineer/producer can develop is the ability to communicate with the singer. Since engineers are not, as a rule, known for their gregarious nature, people skills aren't necessarily a high priority for them. Yet they should be, since knowing how to make the talent comfortable while drawing the best possible performance from them is a major issue.

Remember that when the singer is out in the room, you are more than just the engineer—you're also the cheerleader, the advisor, the person who has to tell them when they're not good enough—and the person who tells them when they are good enough. You have to do all of these things while taking care of more technical tasks like keeping the recording levels correct, making the headphones right for the singer as well as keeping order in the control room. Oh—and don't forget that you also need to keep things moving; nothing will sap the energy from a vocal session faster than stopping after every take to listen to what you just recorded. So you have to learn to make decisions fast; before you hit ‘stop' at the end of a line, you have to already know whether the recorded pass was good—and if not, you need to know what was wrong with it (and more important, how to fix it).

Every singer is different; some want to hear constant praise—to the point that even when you have to tell them that they didn't do good, it needs to be phrased as a compliment: Hey, you did a great job on that second chorus! Let's do the second verse again to bring that up to the level of the chorus....” Others work better with kidding, jokes and even out-and-out insults; Jeez, I guess since that's the best you can do, we should move on.” The trick, naturally, is to recognize which is which—before you start in with the insults.

In some respects, I look at the practice of recording vocals as a conversation between the singer and the producer; I'll typically have them sing through the song (or a section of the song), and we'll quickly talk about what worked and what didn't. Then (when necessary) we'll do another take—or part of a take, recording only the lines that needed fixing. I mentioned earlier that I really like to keep things moving; by that, I mean that I don't want the singer standing out in the room with only silence in his headphones while those of us in the control room discuss; it can get really lonely out there, and those with insecurities will find their insecurities magnified by the silence. So I try to keep a dialog going, if for no other reason than to allow the singer to feel that they're part of the recording process.

The decline in the use of tape has advantages and disadvantages when recording vocals. One major advantage is that we no longer have to wait for the tape to rewind. And one major disadvantage is that we no longer have to wait for the tape to rewind! With a DAW, you can stop recording, say, Again, please” and be back at the beginning before the singer can take a breath. This is not good. Despite what I just said about keeping things moving, there can be too much of a rush; you have to give the singer time to have a sip of water, stretch, or just take a few deep breaths. Rewinding tape gave the singer time to do those things while the producer chatted with them about the next thing to do. Since that small break time is no longer forced into the process, the producer has to be aware of the need for it, while not taking so much time that it impedes the recording process. This is a fine line, one that only experience will teach.

Comping whole takes versus punching

I've mentioned a couple of times the need to make decisions as you go; this segues nicely into a short discussion of method. DAWs make it easy to record multiple takes of songs, takes which can be combined (or composited—‘comped' for short) into a final performance after the singer is finished. This isn't a new thing, by any means; Michael Wagener told me once about having to record more than 20 takes of a (rather famous) singer's performance in the 1980s, and then having to sort through them all to try and create a finished vocal track.

Bob Olhsson said that in later years, Motown would do the same thing, but with a difference—at Motown, once all of the vocal passes were comped down to one track, the singer was given a copy of the track to learn. Then, another session would be scheduled, so the singer could try to beat the comped track. And Bob tells me that most of the time, they would beat it. Unfortunately, while comping has become ever more popular on contemporary recordings, the practice of allowing the singer to try and beat the comped performance has fallen out of favor.

I'm not a huge fan of comping, and here are some reasons why: First, it takes a lot of time (that most of my clients can't afford), second, you can't know if every line of the song is actually good until you do the comp, and third, it's hard for a singer to maintain the same level of energy when singing tracks multiple times—especially when those tracks are sung on different days. Matching levels and processing isn't an issue (that's why recall sheets were invented), but when the energy level changes line by line, I find it to be really distracting. (Anyone remember that Mariah Carey song that was rumored to be comped together from more than two hundred takes? It was awful...).

So here's my usual approach: I'll usually have the singer sing the whole song a few times as I'm getting levels and tweaking the headphones and they're warming up and getting used to the headphone mix (though I do record each pass). Once we're at the point (ideally, fairly soon) that I think we've gotten mostly usable vocals, I'll go back and have them sing any sections (verse, chorus, whatever) that I thought weren't as good as they should be. And then, if there are single lines, or parts of lines, that I think should be better, we'll go back and punch them in.

And this is why I want a lyric sheet in front of me—I use it to make notes as the singer is singing. My notes can be as simple as making a mark to the left of each line that I like, or that I don't like. Or I can underline the lines that I thought were exceptionally good (or exceptionally bad) as we record the vocal pass, so I can have some sort of visual cues to remind me of where we are.

Once I suspect that the vocal track is acceptable, I'll have the singer relax (while still out in the room and wearing their headphones) and we'll listen to what we've done. While listening, the singer and I will be following along on our respective lyric sheets; once we've listened either to a section or to the whole song, we'll go back and fix anything that caught either of our ears. Only when we both think that we have a good track does the singer take off the phones and listen in the control room. We might go back and work on some more problem spots after this final listen, or we might agree that we're done with that song. In either case, the final approval from the singer (who is usually also the client) only comes after listening over the speakers rather than just on headphones.

When punching in single lines or sections of a song, it's important that you give the singer enough time to hear where they are in the song; this might be a couple of seconds, or it could be as many as 10 or 15 seconds—the song will dictate how far you need to go to get an audio landmark. I'll tell them, Sing when you hear where you are, and I'll punch what I need,” and start the track. This is a most important part of overdubbing vocals in my experience; if a singer waits to sing until you go into record, matching the old and new vocals is almost impossible. By singing along (and having them try to match their old vocal pass), the singer's breaths will be where they should be, the texture and timbre of the old and new tracks will come closest to matching, and the volume of the old and new tracks will be matched.

How much time does it take to record keeper vocals?

Obviously, it takes as long as it takes. Most of us have read about artists who spend weeks or even months working on their vocals, but in the real world of tiny budgets and tight deadlines, we have to make decisions and move on. Even when doing vocal overdubs, I've had singers who nailed the whole song the first time they did it; so the minimum time would be about 3 minutes for a 3 minute song. The maximum that I've spent on a single lead vocal for any song is about three and a half hours. After that, the singer will be starting to get tired—for that matter, my brain will quit working, too. In any case, after singing for three hours, even with short breaks, the singer's voice will have changed, making the matching different takes problematic. For most of us, if you're still working on the first song after two or three hours, you might have to consider either (A) saying It's done, you're great!” or (B) moving on, and coming back to the song at another time.

 

The Beatles And Multitrack Recording

© /RMAX

Although multitrack recorders were developed as early as the 1940s they were not widely adopted across the recording industry for some time after that. In fact, by the time the Beatles started their professional recording career in 1962, two-track recording was still the industry norm. By the early 1960s EMI's Abbey Road studio was equipped with four-track machines, but four-track recording was regarded as unnecessary for pop recordings and the Beatles themselves did not use the method until 1964 (Ryan and Kehew 2006, 351). Despite this slow start however the 1960s became a time of rapid change in recording, with significant shifts in the technology used in recording studios, and the Beatles were at the forefront of these developments.

Technological innovation is often driven by the artistic desires of artists as well as by the vision of engineers, and the quest for new sounds by musicians and producers has often led to sophisticated technological developments. The relationship between the Beatles and their production team was such that advancement in the way in which records were made was constantly being sought. New techniques and sonic effects emerged through their recording sessions, such as Artificial Double Tracking (or ADT) for vocals which was invented by Abbey Road's studio manager Ken Townshend.

Often it was the Beatles' artistic demands that led technological innovation. For instance, the recording of 'Strawberry Fields' took the form of two takes with distinctive arrangements. In the first take the band were accompanied by Paul McCartney's new Mellotron, a keyboard which generates sound by playing back pre-recorded tapes of instrumental samples. The second take included a brass and string arrangement written by producer George Martin. John Lennon suggested that the final record would work best with a splice between the first and second takes for each half of the song. Unfortunately, the two takes were in different keys, so the studio team had to improvise a way of joining the two by slowing the second take to the correct pitch and gradually decreasing the speed of the first before the edit point at one minute into the song (Cunningham, 1996: 148).

The work that Martin and his team carried out with the Beatles became highly influential on the ways in which records were made, and the band's immense popularity meant their innovative use of studio technology became heard all over the world and set new benchmarks in record production. In fact the example of the Beatles illustrates how the recording studio became an important compositional tool within popular music. No longer was it the case that bands merely provided studio performances of already written and arranged compositions. Rather, the studio itself was being used to create the essential fabric of the music. As the world famous record producer Brian Eno said in 1979:
"you're working directly with sound, and there's no transmission loss between you and the sound - you handle it. The composer is in the identical position to the painter - he's working directly with a material, working directly onto a substance, and he always retains the options to chop and change." (Eno in Cox and Warner, 2004: 129)

The Beatles Recording Technology

In the early part of the 1960s, EMI 's Abbey Road Studios was equipped with EMI-made British Tape Recorders (BTR) which were developed in 1948, essentially as copies of German wartime recorders. The BTR was a twin-track, valve (Vacuum tube) based machine. When recording on the twin-track machine there was very little opportunity for overdubbing; the recording was essentially that of a live music performance.

The first two Beatles albums, Please Please Me and With The Beatles , were recorded on the BTR two track machines;  with the introduction of four-track machines in 1963 (the first 4-track Beatles recording was " I Want to Hold Your Hand ") there came a change in the way recordings were made—tracks could be built up layer by layer, encouraging experimentation in the multitrack recording process.

In 1968 eight-track recorders became available, but Abbey Road was somewhat slow in adopting the new technology and a number of Beatles tracks (including " Hey Jude ") were recorded in other studios in London to get access to the new eight-track recorders.

The Beatles' final album Abbey Road , was the only one to be recorded using a transistorised mixing console , the EMI TG12345 , rather than the earlier REDD valve consoles. Let It Be was recorded largely at the Beatles' own Apple Studios, using borrowed REDD valve consoles from EMI after the designer Magic Alex (Alex Mardas) failed to come up with a suitable desk for the studio. Engineer Geoff Emerick has said that the transistorised console played a large part in shaping overall sound of Abbey Road , lacking the aggressive edge of the valve consoles.

The Beatles' attitude edit

The success of the Beatles meant that EMI gave them carte blanche access to the Abbey Road studios—they were not charged for studio time 8 and could spend as long as they wanted working on music. Starting around 1965 with the Rubber Soul sessions, the Beatles increasingly used the studio as an instrument in itself, spending long hours experimenting and writing.  The Beatles demanded a lot from the studio; Lennon allegedly wanted to know why the bass on a certain Wilson Pickett record far exceeded the bass on any Beatles records.

This prompted EMI engineer Geoff Emerick to try new techniques for " Paperback Writer ". He explains that the song "was the first time the bass sound had been heard in all its excitement.. To get the loud bass sound Paul played a different bass, a Rickenbacker. Then we boosted it further by using a loudspeaker as a microphone We positioned it directly in front of the bass speaker and the moving diaphragm of the second speaker made the electric current."

Combined with this was the conscious desire to be different. McCartney said, "Each time we just want to do something different. After Please Please Me we decided we must do something different for the next song... Why should we ever want to go back? That would be soft." The desire to "do something different" pushed EMI's recording technology through overloading the mixing desk as early as 1964 in tracks such as " Eight Days a Week " even at this relatively early date, the track begins with a gradual fade-in, a device which had rarely been employed in rock music. Paul McCartney would create interesting bass lines by overdubbing in counterpoint to Beatles tracks that were previously completed.

Also overdubbed vocals were used for new artistic purposes on " Julia " with John Lennon overlapping the end of one vocal phrase with the beginning of his next.  On " I Want to Hold Your Hand " (1963) the Beatles innovated using organ sounding guitars which was achieved by extreme compression on Lennon's rhythm guitar.

Engineers and other Abbey Road staff have reported that the Beatles would try to take advantage of accidental occurrences in the recording process; " I Feel Fine " and " It's All Too Much "'s feedback and " Long, Long, Long "'s resonating glass bottle (towards the end of the track) are examples of this. In other instances the group deliberately toyed with situations and techniques which would foster chance effects, such as the live (and thereby unpredictable) mixing of a UK radio broadcast into the fade of " I Am the Walrus " or the chaotic assemblage of " Tomorrow Never Knows ".

The Beatles' song " You Like Me Too Much " has one of the earliest examples of this technique: clarification needed the Beatles recorded the electric piano through a Hammond B-3's rotating Leslie speaker , a 122 or 122RV, a trick they would come back to over and over again. (At the end of the intro, the switching off of the Leslie is audible.) citation needed Also on " Tomorrow Never Knows " the vocal was sent through a Leslie speaker. Although it's not the first recorded vocal use of a Leslie speaker, the technique would later be used by the Grateful Dead , Cream , The Moody Blues and others.

All of the Beatles had Brenell tape recorders at home, which allowed them to record out of the studio. Some of their home experiments were used at Abbey Road and ended up on finished masters; in particular on "Tomorrow Never Knows".

Audio feedback was used by composers such as Robert Ashley in the early 60s. Ashley's The Wolfman, which uses feedback extensively, was composed early in 1964, though not heard publicly until the autumn of that year. In the same year as Ashley's feedback experiments, The Beatles song "I Feel Fine", recorded on 18 October, starts with a feedback note produced by plucking the A-note on McCartney's bass guitar , which was picked up on Lennon's semi-acoustic guitar It was distinguished from its predecessors by a more complex guitar sound, particularly in its introduction, a sustained plucked electric note that after a few seconds swelled in volume and buzzed like an electric razor. This was the very first use of feedback on a rock record. Speaking in one his last interviews — with the BBC's Andy Peebles — Lennon said this was the first intentional use of feedback on a music record.

In The Beatles Anthology series, George Harrison said that the feedback started accidentally when a guitar was placed on an amplifier but that Lennon had worked out how to achieve the effect live on stage. In The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions, Mark Lewisohn states that all the takes of the song included the feedback.

The Beatles continued to use feedback on later songs. " It's All Too Much ", for instance, begins with sustained guitar feedback.

Although strings were commonly used on pop recordings, George Martin's suggestion that a string quartet be used for the recording of " Yesterday " marked a major departure for the Beatles. McCartney recalled playing it to the other Beatles and Ringo saying it did not make sense to have drums on the track and John and George saying there was no point having extra guitars. George Martin suggested a solo acoustic guitar and a string quartet.

As the Beatles musical work developed, particularly in the studio, classical instruments were increasingly added to tracks. Lennon recalled the two way education; the Beatles and Martin learning from each other - George Martin asking if they'd heard an oboe and the Beatles saying, "No, which one's that one?"

Geoff Emerick, documented the change in attitude to pop, as opposed to classical music during the Beatles career. In EMI at the start of the 1960s, balance engineers were either "classical" or "pop". Similarly, Paul McCartney recalled a large "Pop/Classical" switch on the mixing console. Emerick also noted a tension between the classical and pop people - even eating separately in the canteen. The tension was also increased as it was the money from pop sales that paid for the classical sessions.

Emerick was the engineer on "A Day in the Life", which used a 40 piece orchestra and recalled "dismay" amongst the classical musicians when they were told to improvise between the lowest and highest notes of their instruments (whilst wearing rubber noses).  However, Emerick also saw a change in attitude at the end of the recording when everyone present (including the orchestra) broke into spontaneous applause. Emerick recalled the evening as the "passing of the torch" between the old attitudes to pop music and the new.

Artificial double tracking edit

Artificial double tracking (ADT) was invented by Ken Townsend in 1966, during the recording of Revolver. With the advent of four-track recordings, it became possible to double track vocals whereby the performer sings along with his or her own previously recorded vocal. Phil McDonald, a member of the studio staff, recalled that Lennon did not really like singing a song twice - it was obviously important to sing exactly the same words with the same phrasing - and after a particularly trying evening of double tracking vocals, Townsend "had an idea" while driving home one evening hearing the sound of the car in front. ADT works by taking the original recording of a vocal part and duplicating it onto a second tape machine which has a variable speed control. The manipulation of the speed of the second machine during playback introduces a delay between the original vocal and the second recording of it, giving the effect of double tracking without having to sing the part twice.

The effect had been created "accidentally" earlier, when recording "Yesterday": loudspeakers were used to cue the string quartet and some of McCartney's voice was recorded onto the string track, which can be heard on the final recording.

It has been claimed that George Martin 's pseudoscientific explanation of ADT ("We take the original image and we split it through a double-bifurcated sploshing flange") given to Lennon originated the phrase flanging in recording, as Lennon would refer to ADT as "Ken's flanger", although other sources claim the term originated from pressing a finger on the tape recorder's tape supply reel (the flange) to make small adjustments to the phase of the copy relative to the original.

ADT greatly influenced recording—virtually all the tracks on Revolver and Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band had the treatment and it is still widely used for instruments and voices. Nowadays, the effect is more often known as automatic double tracking

ADT can be heard on the lead guitar on " Here, There and Everywhere " and the vocals on " Eleanor Rigby " for example. The technique was used later by bands like the Grateful Dead and Iron Butterfly , amongst others.

Close miking of acoustic instruments edit

During the recording of " Eleanor Rigby " on 28 April 1966, McCartney said he wanted to avoid " Mancini " strings. To fulfil this brief, Geoff Emerick close-miked the strings—the microphones were almost touching the strings. George Martin had to instruct the players not to back away from the microphones.

Microphones began to be placed closer to the instruments in order to produce a fuller sound. Ringo's drums had a large sweater stuffed in the bass drum to 'deaden' the sound while the bass drum microphone was positioned very close which resulted in the drum being more prominent in the mix. " Eleanor Rigby " features just Paul and a double string quartet that has the instruments miked so close to the string that 'the musicians were in horror'. In " Got to Get You into My Life ", the brass were miked in the bells of their instruments then put through a Fairchild limiter.

According to Emerick, in 1966, this was considered a radically new way of recording strings; nowadays it is common practice.

The Beatles first used samples of other music on " Yellow Submarine ", the samples being added on 1 June 1966. The brass band solo was constructed from a Sousa march by George Martin and Geoff Emerick , the original solo was in the same key and was transferred to tape, cut into small segments and re-arranged to form a brief solo which was added to the song.

A similar technique was used for " Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite " on 20 February 1967. To try to create the atmosphere of a circus , Martin first proposed the use of a calliope (a steam-driven organ). Such was the power of the Beatles within EMI that phone calls were made to see if a calliope could be hired and brought into the studio. However, only automatic calliopes, controlled by punched cards, were available, so other techniques had to be used. Martin came up with taking taped samples from several steam organ pieces, cutting them into short lengths, "throwing them in the air" and splicing them together. It took two trials; in the first attempt, the pieces coincidentally came back in more or less original order.

More obvious, and therefore more influential samples were used on " I Am the Walrus "—a live BBC Third Programme broadcast of King Lear was mixed into the track on 29 September 1967. McCartney has also described a lost opportunity of live sampling: the EMI studio was set up in such a way that the echo track from the echo chamber could be picked up in any of the control rooms. Paul Jones was recording in a studio whilst "I Am the Walrus" was being mixed and the Beatles were tempted to "nick" (steal) some of Jones's singing to put into the mix.

Direct input was first used by the Beatles on 1 February 1967 to record McCartney's bass on " Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band ". With direct input the guitar pick-up is connected to the recording console via an impedance matching DI box. Ken Townsend claimed this as the first use anywhere in the world,  although Joe Meek , an independent producer from London, is known to have done it earlier (early 1960s) and in America, Motown's engineers had been using Direct Input since the early 1960s for guitars and bass guitars, primarily due to restrictions of space in their small 'Snakepit' recording studio. citation needed

Synchronising tape machines edit

One way of increasing the number of tracks available for recording is to synchronise tape machines together. Nowadays when? SMPTE timecode is used to synchronise tape machines.

Modern SMPTE controlled recorders provide a mechanism so that the second machine will automatically position the tape correctly and start and stop simultaneously with the master machine.

On 10 February 1967 during the recording of " A Day in the Life ", Ken Townsend synchronised two machines so that extra tracks were available for recording the orchestra. The technique that Townsend used was to record a 50 Hz tone on the one remaining track on one machine and used that tone to control the speed of a second machine. Townsend thereby effectively used pilottone , a technique that was common in 16mm news gathering whereby a 50/60 Hz tone was sent from the movie camera to a tape recorder during filming in order to achieve lip-synch sound recording. With the simple tone used for "A Day in the Life", the start position was marked with a wax pencil on the two machines and the tape operator had to align the tapes by eye and attempt to press play and record simultaneously for each take.

Although the technique was reasonably successful, Townsend recalled that when they tried to use the tape on a different machine, the synchronisation was sometimes lost. George Martin claimed this as the first time tape machines had been synchronised, although SMPTE sychronisation for video/audio synchronisation was developed around 1967.

As the Beatles pioneered according to whom? the use of musique concrète in pop music (i.e. the sped-up tape loops in "Tomorrow Never Knows"), backward recordings came as a natural exponent of this experimentation. "Rain", the first rock song featuring a backwards vocal (Lennon singing the first verse of the song), came about when Lennon (claiming the influence of marijuana) accidentally loaded a reel-to-reel tape of the song on his machine backwards and essentially liked what he heard so much he quickly had the reversed overdub.

A quick follow-up was the reversed guitar on "I'm Only Sleeping", which features a dual guitar solo by George Harrison played backwards. Harrison worked out a forward guitar part, learned to play the part in reverse, and recorded it backwards. Likewise, a backing track of reversed drums and cymbals made its way into the verses of "Strawberry Fields Forever". The Beatles' well-known use of reversed tapes led to rumours of backwards messages, including many that fueled the Paul is Dead urban myth. However, only "Rain" and " Free as a Bird " include intentional reversed lead vocal in Beatles songs.

The stereo version of George Harrison's " Blue Jay Way " (1967, Magical Mystery Tour ) also includes backwards vocals, which is actually a backwards copy of the entire mix, including all instruments, which is faded up at the end of each phrase.

In an homage to the Beatles' experimentation with reversed tracks (and those rumoured), the "reunion" track "Free as a Bird" featured a backward message that sounds like "Made by John Lennon." This is only a coincidence, and the phrase that was reversed to achieve this was "Turned out nice again" (a catchphrase of George Formby ; George Harrison was a great Formby fan ). The Beatles-inspired Cirque du Soleil show LOVE included the song "Gnik Nus," which was the vocal track to "Sun King" played in reverse, which was accidentally created when Giles Martin (George Martin's son) flipped the cymbal from "Sun King" for an effect used on the "Within You Without You / Tomorrow Never Knows" mashup and discovered he'd also flipped the vocal track. Also, the mashup track "Within You Without You / Tomorrow Never Knows" uses reversed cymbals, as well as reversing one of the tamboura riffs from "Within You Without You."
^
^ a b Lewisohn - The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions p. 54
^ Lewisohn - Complete Beatles Recording Sessions. p146.
^ Emerick - Here, There, and Everywhere. p. 277
^ Lewisohn - The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions p. 100
^ Lewisohn - The Complete Beatles Recording Sessionsp. 74
^ Davies - 'The Beatles' p300.
^ All Music Guide Song Review "Eight Days a Week" by Richie Unterberger
^ Page 347 The Foundations of Rock. From "Blue Suede Shoes" to "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes". Walter Everett.
^ Page 346 The Foundations of Rock. From "Blue Suede Shoes" to "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes". Walter Everett
^ page 51 The Foundations of Rock: From "Blue Suede Shoes" to "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes" by Walter Everett
^ Hertsgaard - A Day in the Life p103.
^ a b page 342 The Foundations of Rock: From "Blue Suede Shoes" to "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes" by Walter Everett
^ a b Lewisohn - Complete Beatles Recording Sessions. p72.
^ "I Feel Fine" All Music Guide Song Review by Richie Unterberger
^ Lewisohn - Complete Beatles Recording Sessions. p50.
^ The Beatles - Anthology p175
^ The Beatles - Anthology p197
^ Lewisohn - Complete Beatles Recording Sessions. p11.
^ Emerick - Here, There, and Everywhere. p. 57
^ Emerick - Here, There, and Everywhere. p. 157
^ Emerick - Here, There, and Everywhere. p. 159
^ a b Lewisohn - Complete Beatles Recording Sessions. p70.
^ Lewisohn - The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions p. 70
^ The Evolution of Beatles' Recording Technology by Cari Morin (1998)
^ Emerick - Here, There and Everywhere: My Life Recording the Music of The Beatles p122-123
^ Lewisohn - Complete Beatles Recording Sessions. p8.
^ Lewisohn - Complete Beatles Recording Sessions. p95.
^ Repsch, John - The Legendary Joe Meek
^ Lewisohn - Complete Beatles Recording Sessions. p96.
^ Emerick - Here, There and Everywhere. p 154

Mic Placement And Amps

All tuned up? Great. Let's get into some microphone placement techniques.

There's a lot of info and some great books out there on the subject, so definitely do so some research. For now, though, I'm just going to keep this on a basic level.

Assuming you're using a dynamic microphone such as a Shure SM57, here are some general rules and guidelines to keep in mind:

The closer you move the mic to the center of the speaker, the brighter and more present it will sound. Conversely, as you move the mic toward the outside edge, it will sound darker and bassier.

The closer the mic is to the speaker, the more direct and immediate the sound will be. Obviously, this helps with eliminating the sound of the room you are recording in, and if your room is less than ideal, this might be your best option. If you're recording a particularly loud source, there's a chance you may experience what is known as proximity effect with the mic. Basically this is a build-up of low frequencies that you may have compensate for either with EQ or by changing your mic placement.

If you have a cool room with maybe some wood floors, and if there doesn't seem to be a problem with any weird reflections, then distant micing can be a can be a potential option. I would suggest recording a close-mic track as well just in case you need it. It really depends on the song and what you're going after because distant micing definitely sounds different.

On-axis or off-axis? On-axis basically means pointing the mic directly at the speaker with no angle, so in effect, the mic would be considered to be perpendicular to the front of the cab. This tends to sound brighter. but at the same time there is a greater chance of proximity effect. Off-axis means angling the mic a little to the side. This can make the high end roll off a little and make things sound a little smoother.

All of these techniques are considered standard issue, and when you're experimenting, just remember that there is no right or wrong way - it's really just all about what suits the song the best.

When I record guitars, I usually start with a SM57 pointed on-axis about one or two fingers width off the grill of the cab with the mic aimed just outside of the voice coil dust cover.

Sometimes it's handy to have a flashlight to see the actual speaker through the grill cloth.

This usually gets me in the ballpark right away, and if I need a little more high end I'll move the mic toward the center a bit. If I need less, I'll move it out toward the edge. You'll find out that small moves make big changes in the tone, so I usually move the mic in half-inch increments.

I know what my usual amp settings should be, so if I find that I'm pushing the tone controls more than I'm comfortable with, I'll go move the mic instead. Most of the time, I use my vocal booth or a bedroom in another part of the house to record guitars in and neither has a room sound that I'm interested in, so I almost always close-mic the cab.

Have fun and spend some time getting to know how mic placement can affect your tone and you'll be one step closer to achieving killer guitar tracks!

Joel Kosche is the lead guitarist for the chart-topping band Collective Soul. Prior to joining the group in 2001, Joel was a fixture in the Atlanta music scene playing in local bands and working part time as a guitar-tech for various artists, including Steve Winwood. When he's not on tour or in the studio, Joel, a self-professed "gearhead" and tinkerer,” enjoys building and modifying guitars and tube-based amps. Outside of his duties with Collective Soul, Joel has appeared on numerous recordings, including the epic "Shadowman" from Kansas lead singer Steve Walsh. Most recently, Joel released his first solo record, Fight Years, a self-produced effort recorded mainly in his home studio (Flame Under Heel Studios) and released in June 2010.

History Of Sound Fusion Recording

By Arthur Noxon

In the early days of recording, it was all about making live mono recordings of acoustic bands, a bunch of mics wired direct to tape. Next came the multitrack and recording evolved into click tracks, isobooths, post processing and mixdown sessions. Then the digital age showed up. Acoustic recording was out, sampling and DI was in and everybody's cousin had a home studio.

But times keep changing. The home studios have evolved into more sophisticated studios and the bands themselves have evolved. Now days there are more mic companies than ever.

That's because studios are doing more micing and less direct. Studios and bands want to do live, ensemble recording. Even rapping is going in this direction. Today's studio is actually recording more real music, air breathing acoustic sound, than ever before.

But some things never change. Open up a mic we get two kinds of sound. The first is exactly the sound we wanted to get, the direct signal from the talent. The second is exactly the sound we didn't want to get, the sound from the room. We usually end up needing a cleaner signal at the mic and so our goal, as recording engineers, is to figure out ways to boost the direct signal and cut the room signal.

By following in the footsteps of the last few decades of recording, we try to get an acoustically dry signal, as close to an acoustic DI as possible and then perform the familiar post processing on it to get it into the mix. To do this, we have to build acoustically dead spaces. To do that, we have to kill reflections, all reflections.

But, in so doing, we are also throwing the baby out with the bath water. Who'd have guessed that some of those hated, hunted and hammered room reflections actually help make real sound, sound real? Well, in the olden days, recording was full of this type of real sound” and today, by implementing a few acoustic tricks, recording can once again, sound real.

The Mic is a 2 Channel Acoustic Premix

In any room, the mic acts like a two track acoustic premix: The direct signal is acoustically mixed right in with the room signature; reflections, echos, reverb and general room noise.

And most of the time, the room signature track is too loud. Our job is to boost the Signal to Noise Ratio, the (SNR). To do that we need to either boost the direct signal or fade the room noise, but usually it is some combination of both. What we want is an acoustic fader but air faders, like air guitars, don't do much for sound.

We boost the direct by getting the talent to eat the mic and reduce the mic gain back down to zero VU. But now our talent sounds like a radio DJ and that just might not be the sound effect the producer wants. In addition, we lose control on dynamics, plosive and proximity effects. To regain control we add the wind ball, dial in EQ, compression and limiters and hope for the best.

Another way to increase the direct to room signal strength ratio is to change the mic pattern. Start closing it down, narrow the focus pattern of the mic, stopping somewhere between cardiod and shotgun. But the tighter the pattern, the more colored the voice, like singing into a mail tube, and we go back to EQ, compression and limiters to try to doctor the track into a semi-real sound. Also moving the mic around the room can come up with some spots that don't sound as bad as the others. But they usually are no where near the studio window.

And all this time, the talent is locked in a head halo, with the producer saying sweetly: That was great, but this time, a little more emotion and a little less movement”. Despite the best of everyone's efforts and tricks of the trade applied to boost the SNR at the mic, all too often the desired effect for the song is either lost or destroyed.

The other way to get a better SNR at the mic is to just dump the room. Kill the room and get pure sound flowing into the mic. Forget EQ, compression and limiters. Just set the mic up in a soundproof anechoic chamber and one would think we have the ultimate recording space, essentially it's acoustic DI, all direct signal with a -80 dB noise floor. Later, this very dry signal can be revived by post processing, add some warmth and depth with a little delay reverb and some sparkle with a spank from an exciter.

Dry Recording Rooms

When working in dry rooms, any reflection is audible and sounds bad. All it takes is one reflection and the sound we are trying to get picks up a hollow effect. It's the Comb Filter effect. This is when the desired signal is combined with a lower level and time delayed signal, in other words, an early reflection. The combination imposes a harmonic set of cancels and adds onto the original signal spectrum which sounds like the direct signal was recorded at the bottom of a drinking glass. Dry acoustic recording is very sensitive to the presence of early reflections (comb filter effect), late reflections (echo), fast repeating reflections (flutter echo), boundary loading, mode coupling and finally reverberation. Still, dry recording seems to be the primary tool for today's recording engineer.

The rule of thumb in a dry recording studio is the best room is a dead room.” Engineers are trained in AE schools and the school of hard knocks to hate reflections. Engineers hunt them down and kill them (reflections) with fervor, whenever and where ever possible. One might say that recording engineers suffer from a mental condition called reflecto-phobia. It started somewhere in the 60's when multitracking and post processing became available. Highly infectious, this impaired judgment condition reached epidemic levels in mid 70's spread to nearly every recording engineer, producer and audio instructor in the industry.

Today, reflecto-phobia is rampant. Music is proudly recorded in acoustically sterile environments. Fueled by fears of comb filter coloration, every single reflection, near or far, that might ever hit a mic has been systematically exterminated over the last 30 years in recording studios. Most of today's so called live rooms” are now completely reflection free zones”.

With the purge of reflections nearly complete, today's studio music is now completely composed out of separate, sterile, acoustically dead tracks. Preparing these tracks is not much different than being the make up artist in a sonic funeral director, where dead tracks are fluffed and stuffed and somewhat brought back to life by the paint and sparkle tools found in the FX rack.

Human Listening

When people listen to sound, in contrast to microphones, they generally just listen to what they want to hear and pretty much dial out the rest. People can be located pretty far from the talent, compared to a mic, and not even notice the sound of sound in the room. They just hear the talent. People are able to naturally tune the room out and focus in on the talent.

The engineer with a mic has to work hard to tune the room out and focus in on the talent.

A person (as well as other critters) is a biological signal processor, not an electronic one. We use a different mechanism to hear than what is built into microphones. A by-product of our hearing system is that we automatically mix all early reflections right into the direct signal and end up hearing one composite direct” sound. Early reflections are those that arrive within about 1/30 second following the direct signal. It doesn't matter where those early reflections come from, they just add together (correlation signal detection) in a way that makes the perceived sound be significantly louder than the direct signal. This sound fusion process creates a composite direct signal which has easily more than twice the sound power than the direct signal alone.

Although it doesn't matter to the sound fusion process where the early reflections come from, we aren't confused by where the direct sound comes from because of something called the Precedence effect. We cue in on the direction of where a sound comes from by tracking and locking on where the original sound signal comes from. The process of knowing where a sound comes from is called echolocation.

There is one adjustment to echolocation that has to be mentioned here; the Haas effect. Very early reflections, those arriving within 5 ms of the direct signal, will distract us from knowing exactly where the direct signal is coming from. The perceived direction of the direct signal is somewhere between the location of the direct signal and the location of the very early reflection.

People like early reflections. Just step outside, into the middle of a large grassy field, and we can barely hear ourselves, let alone carry a tune or talk to anyone else. That's what the DI (direct inject) version of life sounds like. Go back inside the house and everything sounds fine and you can carry a tune or a conversation. We're made to hear direct + early reflections, and to mix them together into one direct” sound. And this process helps us hear more easily what is going on.

The traditional, studio-dead sound tracks lack life, the quality of sound that makes sound seem to sound real, natural. Yes, there's always the fix it in the mix” perspective to dry recording. That means lots of time and money gets spent trying to bring back to life, dead sounding tracks. But studio recording was not always done like this.

In the early days of recording, the luxury of dead studios didn't exist. Engineers had to record live, entire acoustic bands. They made good records in those days too. Part of their recording process inadvertently included the sound fusion process. Their mono mixes were chuck full of delayed early reflection type signals and there lies the reason they sound so whole, so much like a real recording of a real sonic event.

The Early Years

In the early days of live band recordings, 1950's, they had one, maybe two takes and then the session was over. The idea was to use a number of mics distributed throughout the group, adjust their position and gain and get a live, hard wired mix down direct to tape on a mono track. Their goal was to capture enough signal to recreate the sound that was heard when sitting in the room. Those days are far from the idea of recording separate tracks in isobooths at various times and in various parts of the country and then mixing them together a few months later.

A good example of the tail end of the early days recording technique was in the RCA Victor StudioB in Nashville back in the 50' and early 60's. This topic came up during an AES Sectional presentation on the Quick Sound Field (QSF) recording technique, held there in 2003. The QSF is a modern way to acoustically capture sound fusion at a mic. StudioB had finally been renovated but it wasn't open to public yet. The room was full of engineers, a lot of new ones who hadn't even been in the studio since it closed and some ole timers who worked there when they were young. After the QSF presentation was over, the question and discussion time quickly lead back to the recording techniques that used to go on in that room.

StudioB is a shrine. It's enough to just stand there, inside that room and wonder upon all those hallowed vibrations. The ones that hit the floor tiles and bounced off and those that lie buried still in the wall and ceiling tiles. So many early greats worked and played there. Elvis and the Jordanairs, Roy Orbison, Everly Brothers, Chet Atkins and many more recorded in this old RCA Studio B.

The QSF lecture reminded the ole timers about recording in this room. They talked about the mic setups and how the band played all together, at one time, one song from start to finish, direct to tape. And that was how they made records.

This was all well before multi tracking and mixing capability became available in recording. When multi tracking came, in the 70's, StudioB accomodated the growing interest in this new sound” of music. The room was deadened and hosted a small village of iso sound shacks lining the walls. Eventually Nashville was overrun with recording studios and StudioB closed. Now it has been renovated back to the glory of its former years. All the sound shacks are gone now and the room has been returned to it's original, one big recording room, configuration.

Back in the early days, the room had a 3-mic gain and mix to tape Ampex. Later, more mics were added. There was no isobooths. At best, there were gobos. In this environment, each mic got signal from every instrument. For example, if there were 12 mics and 6 talent sources, there would be at least one direct signal from each talent source arriving at each mic.

That means that there were at least 12 different signal path versions of each talent source after mixdown. And then the early reflections have to be added in; floor bounce, glass bounce, other instruments and what not.

The net result after mono mixdown would be that each talent source would have at least 12 direct signals, with time delays ranging from 4 ms out to 25 ms, and levels ranging from zero VU down to -16 dB on the track. And then there would be the reflections, off instruments, floor, glass and what not, filling in the mix with even more random time offset signals.

In a 12 mic setup there would actually be captured up to 30 or 40 distinct time delayed signal paths for each talent source. That qualifies as a Sound Fusion effect recording.
The QSF Takes Shape

It all started in 1983, shortly after the TubeTrap was invented. A cylinder shaped bass trap was designed to stand in the corners of rooms. It came with a built-in treble range diffusion panel covering the front half to keep the room brightness up. Rotating the Trap acts like a treble control and changes the brightness of the corner. Bass traps are usually located in corners because that's where the bass builds up the most. The TubeTrap was the first factory built, UPS shippable bass trap.

It didn't take long before the bigger studios across the country, always looking to try something new, started buying pallet loads. The seasoned engineers in those days didn't ask questions. Their ears would tell the truth, if these tubes worked or not. These big studios already had lots of built-in bass traps and didn't really need much in the way of tuning up, except in a few iso or drum booths.

Curiously, it was the treble range panel that caught their ear. The engineers fooled around with these acoustic cylinders and eventually set up in a semi-circle pattern, a Stonehenge, with the dead side of the Tube facing in. They got what they expected, the room dialed out and inside, that all so familiar, Studio-Dead. Then they rotated the traps and set the bright side in, and all of a sudden, they got a sound they didn't expect: Studio-Live. The room disappeared and the spotlight hit the talent.

The engineers called the factory to report their discovery and each engineer discovered the same thing. They discovered an acoustic space they hadn't heard before and that sounded good, very good. They dropped a mic inside and it still sounded good, very good. Eventually the factory replicated these set ups, measured and analyzed what was going on and reported it in a series of AES papers. The Quick Sound Field was born.

The first QSF I saw was in a local studio located near the original TubeTrap factory in Eugene, Oregon, run by relocated LA engineer, Steve Diamond. We had about 30 Tube Traps and were busy tuning his live room when I noticed Stonehenge in front of the window and Steve saying Check, check, testing one , two…”. He bolted those Tubes down right then and they stayed there till the city tore the building down, some 1000 BiMart commercials later.

A short time later at Pierce Arrow Recorders, in Chicago, engineer/owner Sam Lynn Halonen was experimenting with his first load of TubeTraps. He called in about how he could get great horn sounds. Later, he got more instruments mic'd, including drums, inside the Stonehenge pattern. More recently Sam used the QSF to remic a dry studio recording of an opera singer to add life and dimension.

Reports keep coming in, describing new ways to use the QSF effect to get good sound. The QSF setup created a Haas saturated track. It created a boost in the direct and produced a great signal to work with. It cut room so effectively that it wiped out the need for room acoustics. The QSF produces the acoustic gain adjustment needed at the mic without destroying the desired effect for the song. In fact, the effect for the song is enhanced and can be dialed in. The QSF seems to be a natural for any engineer who has the chance to work with it.

Finally a cure to lifeless sound has been found. Inoculation process requires that tracks be recorded in a Haas Saturated signal, the exact opposite from a Haas Sterile Signal. With some 30 to 60 random time offset Specular Reflections accompanying each direct signal, there is no comb filter effect and the track is completely full of acoustical life, ie, music. Formerly dead mixes can be remixed through an acoustic process of sweetening by playing the dry mix through an acoustic package that creates a plethora of early reflections.

Caution, the RT-60 of the early reflection package needs to be in the range of 1/10 second and a very early time gap is recommended to be set at about 3 ms. This cure was discovered when big studio recording engineers started fooling around with TubeTraps in the mid 80's, endorsed early on by Pete Townshend (Eel Pie Sampling Room) and for the last 10 years with Studio Traps by Bruce You've got to hear this” Swedien.

Variations on Sound Fusion Effect Recording

During this early period, the ASC TubeTrap factory got a few calls from engineers who heard about the QSF sound. One had been doing a radio for many years. He said he developed a magic black box that was his trade secret. It gave him a voice edge over everybody. He put a whole bunch of amplitude adjusted time delays into the box. Fed his mic into one end and got a synthetic QSF sound (direct + a whole lot of random time offset signals) out the other end. The time delays matched exactly the QSF window of about 25 ms. He welcomed us to the club and figured it was time to let the secret out of his magic voice-box.”

Another engineer contacted the factory and told his story how he had hooked 30 some mics up over the top of a classic opera singer. Each mic was located at a different distance and angle from the talent. He just added them all together and ran it out to the house sound system. He said the sound was fantastic and used the technique many times. He effectively collected some 30 random-time off set signals, all within the 25 ms time window. Each signal was basically the same signal except for the acoustic EQ due to the off axis coloration of the voice. And, as the talent moved around, the sound package didn't change. The total sound remained the same even though the signal fed into the different mics did change. The listener's brain can't tell which reflection is where inside the Sound Fusion effect time window.

Digital reverb was starting be affordable. The reverb plate was being replaced with a 4 adjustable delay/reverb returns. When ambience was set tight (300 to 500 ms) and the delays set shorter (30 to 100 ms) it produces a synthetic ambience, much like a room. By setting it even tighter and shorter, the Sound Fusion effect could be generated. But the big advantage with the acoustic version, the QSF, is that it controls the presence of natural ambience in the room at the mic while adding close and natural flush of early reflections into the acoustic mix at the mic position.

Pete Townshend, NED and Sampling Booths

A little while later digital sampling got started. Synclavier was looking for a Sampling Room and they knew it had to be something different than a vocal booth. ASC built a QSF sampling booth and Synclavier loved it. That booth and the Synclavier followed AES around the world more than once.

Pete Townshend (Who) had heard about TubesTraps was at a session in LA and ran into Bruce Swedien (everybody) and asked him about TubeTraps. Bruce had already checked them out and thought they were all right, he liked them. Pete called the factory a little while later and before long, he had outfitted his Boathouse, a small sampling room with non-parallel walls and round windows at Ell Pie Studios, into a world class sampling room.

Pete was blown away by the sound he got in that room. He wrote the factory and told us his story. It went something like this: The Boathouse was so smooth that no one could hear which fader ran the nearfield or farfield mics. They sounded the same. For the first time ever, I had to tape along side the faders, labeling the two mics, so my engineers could remember which fader was the nearfield mic and which was the ambient mic.”

The factory asked if he'd consider endorsing the QSF Sampling Room and he said normally, no” but in this case, he'd be glad to, because recording engineers needed to know about the QSF. And so, three rolls of Hassleblad negatives later, Pete Townshend became the first star to endorse the QSF recording technique.

Deep Space Vocal Booth

A little later, Rockwell Corp contacted the factory. They were doing voiceprints for training astronauts. They were working with something like a 10 open mic studio talkback system, where everybody could be heard, all at once. Only one problem: There was just one send/receive channel, in order to keep the weight down. They decided to chop and sequence the open mic signals so that one transceiver could carry all signals. Chopping the signal train was not a problem, but reconstruction was. How to recreate someone's voice when you only have 1/10 sampling of the signal? They needed a hot vocal booth to help them develop a voice reconstruction algorithm.

They chose the QSF system. The ASC factory built, shipped and even set up the booth. This room was made out of alternating half round TubeTraps and Plexiglas strips. The see-through walls created a very open feeling. Rockwell engineers used the QSF Sampling Booth to get the most room-free, information-filled version of a person's voice that was possible.

They chopped it up and figured out an algorithm to reconstruct a person's voice chop sequence into a reasonable facsimile of the voice. The plan worked and the rest is space history.

Evolving the QSF space

These high performance QSF Sampling Rooms worked great for sampling but they were a little too fast for live talent work. A standard iso booth might have an RT-60 of 0.4 seconds and have as few early reflections as possible. These sampling rooms were running an RT-60 in the range of 1/10th second and sported diffusion rates of 1000 random, time delayed, early reflections (distinct specular reflections) per second. This means the room was very dead and at the same time, very bright. The acoustic gain produced by a QSF sampling room was about +10 dB above the direct signal. It was a bright anechoic chamber. QSF vocal or iso booths are still bright but the reverb time is set slower, in the range of ¼ second, so it is a comfortable space to work in.

The QSF Stonehenge package was becoming popular and to get the price down and usability up, ASC developed the StudioTrap, a small diameter (voice range) TubeTrap mounted on an adjustable shaft with a tripod base, like a mic stand. There have been improvements over the years. A hand synch grip was added along with a quieter internal slide clutch. The diffusing reflector sheet was moved forwards to increase the top end reflectivity from 6k to something above 7k Hz. But overall, the StudioTrap remains pretty much today, as it was originally conceived and is the cornerstone of the QSF effect.

Ed McMahon has probably the best known voice in the country. And he travelled a lot all over the country. In between scheduled public appearances, he had to do commercials.

Bruce Swedien Discovers the QSF sound

During this time we noticed an interview with Bruce Swedien. It was clear that Bruce was so acoustically in tune that he probably watched sound run around the room in slow motion.

I wrote him, explained a little about the QSF effect and invited him to audition it. Why certainly,” he'd love to. He's always looking for new sounds and ways to get them. He tried it and loved it. After a bit, he volunteered to endorse the QSF. He said and still says: I wish everybody could hear this” because Bruce wants other engineers to get to know the power of the QSF sound and discover for themselves this new recording technique.

A little later, the factory sent a truck load of StudioTraps to join Bruce at René Moore's large home in Studio City to help Bruce make his first mic training video. At the end of that tape Bruce and I kibitz a while about the QSF Effect. It's a great tape and a lot of good QSF techniques are demonstrated.
Bruce continues to ship Red Rocket his original set of 14 StudioTraps, from session to session, back and forth across the US just to be sure he's always ready to add that little kiss of life, the QSF effect, into his tracks. The Studios got so beat up, shabby actually, over the years that the factory offered to replace them, no charge. But Bruce wouldn't have it. Nobody touches his tried and true, vintage gear. Eventually, a fork lift changed his mind and we were able gently repair, update and refinish his set of original StudioTraps and return them, good as new.

Bruce gets to work in the best live rooms in the world. Like a master chef, he adds just a pinch of the QSF effect to the already nearly perfect live room sound. He uses wide spacing of the StudioTraps and randomizes the reflector positions. He dials in a number of specular Haas reflections to bring forward and capture the essence of a live performance.
QSF Comes Home

Most of us don't get a chance to work in the best live rooms in the world. Most of us are lucky to be working in small, home or barn studios, something less than perfect rooms. Here, we set the QSF pattern not open, but tight. The smaller the room, the tighter the pattern, the more intense the Haas reflections, which boost the live effect and at the same time, the room is blocked even more. Typical small room recording does very well with only 8 StudioTraps in a semicircle setup, 4 to 5' in diameter. The tightness of the QSF setup is proportional to the strength of the Haas/direct” to room reverb ratio.

Recording with the QSF is good for everybody in the studio. The engineer gets the desired sound while the talent doesn't get worn out trying to make it. It's easy to find sound you want and the sessions go fast. And there's a bonus. The halo clamp got tossed. No more: That's pretty good, but this time, let's try to emote just a little more and move just a little less.”

While working in QSF, talent is free to groove to the music without causing a shift in the sound at the mic. As the talent moves, all that's changing is the arrival time of the various Haas reflections. However, the ensemble package of direct + early reflections remains at the same level and sounding the same. As with the early sampling booths, you can't tell which signals arrived when, just as long as they are all inside the Hass time package, it's all just one sound.

This produces a track that needs no riding gain, no limiters, no compressors and no equalization. Just dig out your favorite omni or ribbon mic, back away from the proximity effect and go direct to tape, pretty much no matter what room you are in. And there's another bonus. What the talent hears inside the QSF field is exactly what they hear later in the control room. There are no surprises when recording with the QSF effect. A QSF track can be processed and mixed just like a regular dry track. And yes, it will amplitude and delay pan very well.

And so, Jennifer Lopez stopped to say thanks on her last album cover to the whole crew at ASC. It was for staying the course and delivering where's those round things?” the breath of live sound, the QSF effect, into her vocal tracks on the last 3 albums.

 

How To Record Drums Like An Expert

Drum recording is one of those things that you need to get right. There is much less room for experimentation in drum sounds. What I mean to say is, you can have the most alternative guitar sound or effected vocal sound in the world but if the drums don't sound right nobody is going to care.

Sure, you can experiment with different mixing techniques and try different production tricks later down the line, but the first order of business is to nail that drum sound. If your kick drum sounds like a cardboard box beaten with a marshmallow then no amount of mixing is going to fix it. Get it right at the source or don't do it at all.

Correct placement and microphone selection is important to the sound of your recorded drums, but so is the room you are recording in. Let's get busy with some drum recording tricks.

Room

Clap your hands say yeah! Indie music aside (not a big fan), clap your hands. Do it. Right now. If you're in a typical office or living room then chances are it's not going to last that long. The echo will die down within a second since the size of your room don't allow for a lot of buildup of reverb or reflections.

Now, imagine if you were in a gymnasium and clapped your hands. The perceived bigness” of the echo and reverb of the sound is dictated by the size of the room you are in, therefore clapping your hands inside a big gymnasium will result in more reflections, a larger reverb and a longer decay” time for the sound of your handclaps to die down. For more on reverb and reflections see my other Basix tutorial How the Hell do I Use Reverb Anyway?!? ”

So, if we intend to record drums we need to take the room into account, since those reflections from your handclap are just peanuts compared to the amount of echoes and reflections a whole drum kit will make inside a gymnasium. Your ears heard them, and your microphones will most surely do so too.

If you have a mobile recording rig, which today means a laptop, an interface and some microphones and access to some different rooms you can create a whole different feel to your drum sound depending on which you choose. Many engineers opt for a dead, or a very quiet room to track drums in since that will allow them to add the type of reverb they want later on during the mixing process. While this method is sound and valid, just look at all those great rock records that were made before the advent of digital reverb. Recording studios used to have amazing sounding live rooms to track drums in, and that became an inherent part of the drum sound.

If you want to go the safe route, try to find a nice (preferably acoustically treated) room that doesn't have a whole lot of liveness. But if you are up for experimentation then finding an interesting or great sounding room might yield some impressive results.

Pre-production

Gourmet dishes are not cooked from leftovers. You don't wear dirty clothes to a wedding. And you certainly don't record worn heads and out of tune drums if you want great results.

Make sure to replace each drum head and tune it so that each drum sounds both great in its own right and as a part of the kit. If you, or the drummer don't know how to tune a drum properly (I don't really know how, and most drummers are pretty bad at it) get someone that can.

A great sounding drum kit in a great sounding room and you've won half the battle. Next we have to look at what types of microphones we want to be using.

Microphone Selection

A few considerations when choosing the right microphone for recording drums.

How Many? - How many microphones are you going to be using? Are you trying to mike up the kit with only one microphone? Then a full sounding large condenser should be the best bet. It has a broad frequency response and will most accurately capture the kit, especially compared to a dynamic microphone.

Condenser microphones - Condenser microphones (small or large diaphragm) are usually the default microphones of choice used as overheads. Overhead microphones are placed over the drum kit to capture the overall sound of the drum kit from a close distance. Condenser have the capacity to capture all the nuances of the drum kit, from the low end of the kick drum to the swash of the cymbals.

Dynamic microphones - Dynamic microphones can take more volume, but they lack the frequency response and accuracy of a condenser. They can take the pounding and volume of the kick drum and they have no problem with the incredibly loud whack of the snare. If you decide to close mike every drum, then you would usually opt for a good sounding dynamic at each drum; kick, snare and each of the toms.

Ribbon microphones - Ribbons might be a good choice if you can afford it, especially if you are only using a few microphones. Ribbons have a smoother sound, but they are more delicate than the average condenser, and way more fragile than a sturdy dynamic.

Remember, each microphone sounds different and they will all act as a piece of the drum recording puzzle.

Collection of Instruments

One of the things you have to be aware of is that recording drums can be much more complex than recording a regular” instrument that only has one sound source. Take vocals for example, the most standard way of recording vocals is placing a microphone in front of the singer's sound source, i.e. his mouth.

But when you are recording drums, every single drum is a sound source, and you also need to portray the overall sound of the kit as a whole. That's the reason why modern drum recording puts a microphone on every drum and then some overhead mics to capture the complete kit.

People want to control each drum as a specific sound source and then treat the whole drum kit as one sound source as well. Then, by mixing and matching the overall volume of all the tracks in the mixing phase people have more control over what kinds of sounds they can get from their drums.

Kick Drum

I don't care what anybody says. The kick drum is the most important part of the drum sound. You can argue that the snare sound is all you want, and it certainly is important, but if the kick drum lacks power and definition the overall drum sound is going to suffer. The kick drum is also the trickiest sound to get right since the placement of the microphone plays a pivotal role.

Microphone - Your best bet, if you are just using one microphone to record the drums is a large dynamic microphone, such as the AKG D112, Audix D6 or Shure Beta 52A. They will usually have the frequency response needed to get the thick low end coupled with the snap of the beater.

Placement - The default position to try is just inside the outer head (I hope there is a hole in the outer head) pointing at, or just a little off axis towards the beater. In this position the microphone is far enough away as to capture both the boom and the snap. Microphones placed too close to the inner head (the beater side) can't capture the full resonance of the drum since they are facing away from the drum and are picking up too much click” from the beater.

Placing the microphone outside the shell can give you great results, but there is a possibility of the microphone capturing too much bleed from the other drums and that it will lack definition from the beater. Great if you want a natural bass drum sound, but bad if you want a isolated and click” heavy sound.

Best of both worlds? - By using two microphones you can capture both the beater and the boom by placing the microphones at different positions. Positioning one inside the kit close to the beater head and the other just outside the shell will result in two different sounds that can be mixed together to great results. Boundary, or PZM (Pressure Zone Microphones) work really well on the inside since they react well to transients and can usually just sit on the shell.

By combining a PZM that reacts well to transients (initial attack) at the beater and a big dynamic picking up the low end on the outside you can get the best of both worlds.

Snare Drum

The snare drum is the master of the backbeat, and thus must sound great in order to capture the groove. Whether you are producing a heavy rock song or light jazz, careful consideration must be put into the snare drum sound.

Microphone - A trusty Shure SM57, or any other type of dynamic is a great starting point when capturing snare drum. If you looking for a different, more vintage sound then using a large condenser or a ribbon can give the snare a much different feel. Take into account how loud the drummer will be hitting the drum. If he's going to be whacking that drum for all he's got then a condenser might overload too easily, leaving you with a distorted snare instead of a smooth and full sound.

Placement - Consider angling the microphone 45° into the middle of the drum to get the right amount of attack from the snare. For a rounder sound you can angle the microphone into the edge of the drum. Make sure that the microphone isn't in the drummer's way since whacking the microphone will not result in a better sound. In general, for more harmonics angle the mic towards the edges, but if you want more resonance and/or attack then angling the microphone more towards the middle and center will yield greater results for each respective sound.

Above & Below - If you want to achieve a direct sound from the top but want to accent the rattle the snares you can place another microphone underneath the snare pointing up. If you decide to do this make sure you flip the phase of the under-mic either during the recording or at the mixing stage. Most audio programs have a phase invert switch that allow you to flip the phase of your waveform. I touched upon the why's and how's of this practice a long time ago in A Guide to Effective Drum Mixing Part 1

Hi-hat

If you want to have added control over the hi-hat during the mixing stage, then adding a separate microphone for it wouldn't hurt

Microphone - You usually want a small condenser to record the hi-hat. Due to the fast transient nature of the hi-hat you want to capture all the definition and clarity of the hi-hat, even though you're recording a garage rock track.

Placement - Placing the condenser by the edge give you a much different sound than placing it at the center bell of the hi-hat. Also, try placing it in the middle and angle it to or from the edge until you find the sound you are looking for.

Over or under? - Some people swear by under-miking the hi-hat, others don't see why anybody would do such nonsense. Personally, in live situation I place the microphone underneath the hi-hat, facing up but during recording it's the other way around. Why? I don't know. Probably just force of habit.

Toms

Those drum fills need to sound good. The toms need to sound clean, defined and tuned. There's nothing worse than a tom that rings for seconds after it's hit. Assuming you have made all the necessary arrangements and made sure each drum sounds as good as it can then you only have to worry about the right microphone and placement thereof.

Microphone - Dynamic microphones such as an Audix i5, Shure SM57 or a Sennheiser MD421 are a good bet to capture a full and powerful tom sound. Especially if you are playing any sort of hard music then going for dynamics is the way to go. Experienced engineers sometimes use condensers and even ribbons(!) but as always, you have to careful about not overloading those more delicate microphones. In live sound I used to use AKG C519 clip-on condensers for toms. They work really well through a powerful P.A. and can also work well in the studio. Each sound company has a drum miking package that is usually a good bet if you don't have anything to work with.

Placement - The microphone placement is very similar to that of the snare drum. If you want more attack and stick sound from the toms you should angle them towards the middle. If you want a thicker, boomier sound you should angle them straight down towards the edge of the tom so that the microphone picks up the full resonant sound of the toms.

Underneath as well? - If you have a crazy amount of microphones, an amazing kit in a sweet sounding room then more microphones will add to the sound right? Yes, well and no. If you have the resources to mike both sides of the toms then you probably shouldn't be reading this article. But the same rules apply as if you were recording the snare with two microphones. Beware of phase and make sure both microphones are capturing something different.

Overheads

Overheads are usually placed over the drum kit, both to capture the complete kit but also to accent the sounds of the cymbals. There are a few microphone techniques that you can use to accurately and effectively capture both the cymbals and overall drum kit.

X/Y - The X/Y microphone technique can be used effectively as overheads. You don't have to worry about phase problems when using this stereo technique since they are a coincident technique. Meaning that you place them beside each other at a 90° angle facing down onto the drum kit.

A/B - This is the typical one microphone over each side of the drum kit. It's a good rule of thumb to adhere to the 3:1 rule so that if you place one microphone a foot (30 cm) over the cymbal the other microphone must be placed at a distance of 3 feet (or 90 cm).

Accent the cymbals - Just like engineers that place microphones on the hi-hat, some engineers want to accent specific cymbals. For example, if we're recording a minor blues shuffle we might like to record that crucial ride cymbal, giving you added control over its sound during the mixing stage.

Room/Ambience

We've talked about how to mike up every individual sound source of the drum kit. That is, every drum has been covered as a single sound source. Now we need to step back and look at the drum kit as one instrument. When we use room microphones we want to capture the complete kit as well as the room that is complimenting it. If you are in a dead room there should be more thought put into capturing the kit as one instrument, whereas in a great sounding room, there is more preference to finding a good spot where the room and reflections help heighten the drum sound to a different level.

Microphone - I'd like to say that anything goes here. If you are trying to get a nice sounding complete drum kit” sound then a large condenser will do the trick. However, ribbon microphones can do a very similar job, and often a better one since they sound so good. Even normal dynamic microphones can be used to get an extra dimension to the drum kit by placing it in the room.

Placement - Placing a simple SM57 in front of the kit facing up towards the ceiling can give you some ambience from the room. A condenser that you want to use to capture the complete drum kit without adding too much room ambience should be placed at around waist level facing towards the kit. To get the drums an extra stereo dimension, two condensers can be positioned in the upper corners of the room.

Experiment - Lastly, room microphones and ambient miking is very fun to experiment with. There might be a weird place in the room where the drums just really work. Walk around with headphones and try to find where the best place to position your mics is. A long hallway outside the drum room might have a great alternative sound that can work for you.

Throw up a few room microphones all over, record a few measures and see which ones work best.

Conclusion

We've covered some important aspects of recording one of the most complex instruments that us engineers face. The complicated puzzle of multiple types of microphones, placements and techniques is sure to make the beginner engineer nervous. But if we break it down into small pieces, looking at each drum as part of the puzzle and then combining it into one sound source we can more easily understand what makes drum recording such a difficult, but ultimately enjoyable subject.

 

5 Tips To Getting The Kick And Bass To Work Well Together

First and Foremost

The two main things I look for when getting the Kick and Bass to work well together are: Timing (are they playing at the same time?). Frequency (are they competing for the same low frequencies?).

Usually for the Kick and Bass to play nice together they CANNOT both be playing at the same time and competing for the same frequencies (playing the same note). If they are, here are a couple things you can try.

1. Opposite EQ
Use the EQ to carve out spaces for the opposite instrument. Example: Find the fundamental frequency (note) of the Kick, use and EQ to slightly boost that frequency, then use an EQ on the Bass to dip that frequency. How much you boost or cut depends on the instruments and the song. You can also cut other freqs on the kick and boost the same ones on the bass.

2. Mute or lower the volume of either the Kick or Bass when they play at the same time
This one can be a little more tricky and it depends on who needs to be heard more. A common way is to put a compressor on the Bass and use the Kick track to trigger the compressor. Essentially side-chaining the Bass with the Kick so every time the Kick plays, the compressor on the Bass turns it down. Again, how much depends on the instruments and the song.

3. Replace the Kick Drum
Use a program (there are many out there) to either completely replace or mix in with your Kick.

4. Re-tune the Kick - If your Kick is already a sample (not a live recording of your song no bleed from other instruments) you can us a pitch shifting plug-in to shift it out of the way of the Bass.
5. Re-amp the Bass

If you have a direct recording of the Bass (and a bass amp) you can re-amp the bass to better fit with the kick.
Important

These are common remedies for helping the Kick and Bass play nice together. However, the best way is to have an arrangement/parts that naturally work together or address the frequency issue during the recording process by tuning the Kick so it compliments the Bass or using a Bass amp setting that makes room for the Kick.

Over the last 10 years I've had the opportunity to record and mix some great bands and artists, including The Neighbourhood feat. Danny Brown, T-Pain, +44, Fallout Boy and Frankie J just to name a few. With the recent launch of my website iSound Audio Engineering I'm busier than ever but still enjoy helping new engineers and musicians learn the craft of recording and mixing.