Breathing life into a bass with Reamping.
A short behind the scenes I am writing while I export mixes…..
On the current album that I just finished mixing 5 minutes ago, there was one song that was kicking my ass. It is a really cool song with lots of great parts, but they were not gelling rhythmicly and when parts do not gel, mixes do not sound good. Even though this is a pretty guitar centric album (think Dave Mathews band sort of artist), I pitched the artist the idea of letting me completely throw away the guitars. With one less element everything else locked together in a really cool way. He was into the idea.
The problem now was that most of the album had been built around a sound with prominent guitars and now this one tune without guitars, driven by a bright piano did not really feel like it fit. So I decided to dirty up the bass a little. When you distort bass it actually creates new harmonics up in the guitar register, so this would help fill in that spectral space that was missing when we muted the guitars as well as kick up the attitude in the mix.
I tried a few various plug in options. FabFilter Saturn got me the closest, but it was still not big enough sounding. So it was time to pull out the Reamp box and get to work. The Re-amp box takes the balanced line level signal from my pro tools rig and converts it to instrument level (and impedance) signal. I ran the bass out to my Rivera TBR2-SL guitar head into a Mesa-Boogie 4×12 cabinet and miked that with a Shure SM7B into an A Designs Ventura mic pre and a hardware LA-2A.
At first I had the mic about 1-1/2 feet (46cm) out from the speaker, but he sound was a little thin. This is a guitar amp, so I did not want to push too much low end into the speakers so I put the mic right up on the grill to take advantage of the proximity of the SM7 and it ended up being just what I needed. With tweaking the amp tone controls and mic placement, all I had to do was a bit of subtractive EQ in the low mids and we were set.
I love having he option of re-amping. On this album a few things went through it including a couple acoustic guitars. The important thing to remember about re-amping is that is that it is just not for guitar recorded direct, but anything you want to give new life to. Basses, keyboards and even voices can often find new life by getting re-amped. The inevitable question is always, “Can I just do it with a digital amp modeler?” The answer is of course that its your record, you can do what ever you want (except record with hot levels, that is just stupid), but one of the advantages of re-amping is not just going through analog components, but having the sound go out into the air and getting picked up by a mic. This is not inherently better than what you could do with a plug in, but it is a different sound that will sit in a mix differently and usually in a way that I personally prefer.
Have Fun!!
Ronan
p.s while I was thinking about the Dave Mathews band while working on this album I went back and listened to DMB’s first major label album. Tom Lord Alges mixes on that album are a master class in creating huge sounding mixes with lots of drama. Well worth studying!!