Troublesome Bass

I have been producing my own music long enough now to dread creating my own bass tracks. Ironically, I love the sound of bass instruments. The low end is really the "glue" that ties a song together. I just never seem to be satisfied with my own performance when I record myself, the sound I create, or the way that sound finds it's way into the mix. I am realizing now, after years of making the same mistakes, that the bass frequencies are the toughest part of the audible spectrum to get right.

Perhaps my problem is two-fold: first, bass frequencies require more power to be reproduced accurately through speakers, and second, I have always used small monitors to mix with (the largest I have ever used have only a 5" driver). I am providing them enough power, at 100w per stereo channel, but I typically listen at very low levels in an effort to hear more high end detail. Bi-amped monitors would help this tremendously. They have a separate power stage for both the tweeter and the driver, thereby eliminating any overdriving of the high frequencies as you crank the volume looking for more bass (or cowbell!). I don't have the money for these at the moment. Although there are cheaper models out there, average cost for a high quality pair is around $2000, and I don't own skis yet.

At more reasonable prices that I can justify, there are monitors with 6 and 8" drivers which would reproduce the sound of bass instruments quite a bit better. When it came time to focus on the bass tracks, I could bring the levels up a little. I would imagine that plan might not sit well with the neighbors, for the same reason that elephants use low frequency voicings to communicate over long distances: bass travels. I am certain that the complaints would be centered less around the sound, but the repetition of that sound many, many times!

Another interesting and sometimes difficult aspect of mixing bass tones is their surprising complexity. While the majority of the power (amplitude) of most bass tracks is contained in a similar low frequency set, the overall timbre of the sound is often dependent on high frequency "flavoring" that adds character to the sound. Very often I read the advice of professional engineers who stress the importance of carving out a sonic space (usually with EQ) for each track within a mix to ensure that it will sit well with all of the others in the song. Naturally my first inclination, as is the first inclination of everyone who reads this advice, was to place the bass exactly where we all think it should go. Down low. Equalize out everything above 500Hz, and hope for the best. This technique led to a lot of frustration for me, as the result was dull, lifeless thumping beneath the rest of the mix that felt somehow disconnected from the music.

It was not until I saw a visual representation of the frequency spectrum created by a bass guitar that I realized how much audio information exists above 500Hz. This opened up an entirely different way of thinking about bass in general. I found myself applying significant boost to the mid-range of almost all bass instruments just to hear what they had to offer. I compressed only the high frequencies to give punch and clarity in my mixes. It sounded good. The bass, it seemed, had something to say at last.

This kind experimentation is key for the budding engineer. Advice can only carry you so far. In this case it could be argued that it was dead wrong. I am not suggesting that we collectively "throw out the manual" created by those that have come before us, only that maybe we should place more emphasis on creativity. I am realizing that professional studio producers guard their signature techniques fiercely, and for good reason. It's their livelyhood at stake. Unfortunately, this leaves the rest of us with little to run on.

My Amazement and Appreciation For Technology

Please take this post as an article completely independent of all others that you will find here. I would not want to be labeled a hypocrite for my contradictory love of all things electronic, and incessant pleading for mass lifestyle change to the small and simple. I still and will always believe that simple living saves lives, with the exclusion of really complicated music studios and fancy microphones.

I was thinking about signal flow the other night. If you are producing a record for mass distribution, you are always aware of the specter of background noise and ways to reduce it. With the advent of "in the box" recording, where a computer and analog-to-digital converter is all you really need to track, edit, mix and master songs, this is really easy to take for granted. I have never had to deal with serious routing of a signal chain from mixer to outboard effects, back to the mixer, to a recording device (maybe a tape machine) and back again. Worried, that at each patch to an input or output jack I am creating a decrease in the signal-to-noise ratio that will have to be dealt with sooner or later. This change in the way that recordings happen is truly a revolution in music on par with the advent of the CD, the single largest jump in audio technology to be available to the masses.

Let me explain in further detail. Because it is possible to record directly to a software recording program (usually called a DAW, or desktop audio workstation) the only objectionable noise that might be captured could be sounds outside of the studio space: like car horns, dogs barking, sirens from the nearby hospital, low flying aircraft, etc. You get the point. In my little makeshift studio, the worst offender is my computer's fan, which runs almost constantly. The sound of the fan running is usually not intelligible in the final product, meaning, listeners don't usually say to me "hey, is that a computer fan running in the background there?" It sounds more like white noise. And it drives me absolutely nuts. I have tried to cover the tower with heavy blankets. I have looked into the investment of longer cords and cables, so that I could "remotely" operate the computer, which I could place in the closet. I have tried to "EQ out" the low hiss. I think I have resigned myself to the fact that I am not producing U2's new album, so maybe I should just shut up and deal.

If you are really clever, can figure out the programming and have a lot of money to spend on digital libraries of sampled instruments, it is possible to avoid microphones all together and compose entirely in the digital domain. No noise concerns there! I've done a little of this and I have to say, it's pretty amazing. You can integrate the sound of a snare drum recorded in absolute silence in some fancy studio somewhere into your tracks and enjoy pristine stillness at any frequency outside of the drum itself. As Borat would say, "Niice."

So back to analog recording. I am going to hereby give mad props to anyone who produced music before the advent of digital technology. These folks waged the constant battle to keep a high signal to noise ratio intact, while routing their music through all manner of outboard gear. In fact, if you weren't using a really expensive mixing console, you probably did all of your EQing, compressing, limiting, gating, what-have-you on numerous external devices. Each, with it's own signal-to-noise characteristics.

This brings me to the most interesting aspect in all of this technological gibberish, musical claptrap, recording hocus-pocus. Now that we have eliminated the ghost in the machine: noise, we're well on our collective way to letting it back into our music. To some degree. There has been a huge resurgence in the use of "antique" recording equipment. Everything from microphone pre-amps to dynamics processors, these vintage monsters from the stone-age of sound run on vacuum tube power, giving them unique tonal character that you just can't get nowadays. Even with the finest software impersonations of these studio bits (that's a whole other post waiting to happen) you just can't achieve the dynamic range of tubes. Turns out our ears really dig the oh-so squishy, flexible sound of all kinds of things, not just guitars, pushed through vacuum tubes. Voices warm up, synthesizers seem to have more depth, horns seem less brash...

I find this so bizarre. In the late sixties and early seventies, electrical engineers were doing all they could to eliminate tubes from anything that utilized them. Apart from being wickedly hot and fragile, they're generally onerous to replace, and quite simply: they fail. So musical amplifiers of all types switched to transistors, for all kinds of reasons. Cheaper. Smaller. Used less power. Safer. Very rugged. Studios all of the sudden, could be smaller, and quite a bit cooler. I guess this is a case in which convenience has not won out, because here we are, January 2010, and you can leaf through any Musician's Friend or Sweetwater catalog and see page after page of tube devices, waiting to fill your rack-spaces. Many of these are faithful reissues of classic studio gear from decades ago.

To be fair, we have come a long way. Chances are you would not link these boxes together in series, like batteries in a flashlight, pumping up the noise floor at every step. The computer is going to sit right in the middle and be your virtual hub for these elements, so that any excess noise is limited by the device itself and the few number of connections: 2 (1 in and 1 out). The fact that you are recording to a hard drive in your computer is a huge space savings over an analog tape machine and all of the hardware associated with it. Everything is getting tinier. My mixer, which I consider a luxury because I made perfectly decent recordings before I owned it, is about the size of a small notebook. 12"L x 10"W x 3"H. Amazing when you consider it houses four microphone pre-amps, an audio interface, on-board effects, and eight traditional channel strips.

Where is this industry headed? I can't really envision the future of pro audio and recording technology. For the moment the advances seem to be focused on improving the bit-count on all software programs and plug-ins, which to me seems rather esoteric. If I can't eliminate the sound of my computer fan from my live tracks, then why would I spend good money to eek out a bit more headroom and dynamics by recording in 24 bits/192kHz? Effectively, you would be able to hear the fan muck a lot better.

From my chair, I will continue to marvel at the advances as they roll by, only buying the few bits and pieces I feel are necessary to produce at my level. I am constantly aware that what I possess in my simple studio now holds more power and tools than Eddie Kramer had at his disposal when he recorded Jimi Hendrix, or the late Willie Mitchell when tracking Al Green.