Plug-ins/techniques/cheats for tightening up a bass guitar track after the fact?

[juicylime]

I've got a few songs where the bass line is great sounding but just not quite tight enough in a few places. Retracking isn't an option on this. Any tips on how I can massage it around to get what I want? I read about vocalign, would that do the same job for bass as for vocals? I'm cubase so it needs to be vst or stand alone. Any thoughts?

[jyc]

depends on your material but a gate with sidechain could save lives

jyc

[PoorGlory]

Multiband compression. Or, if its "floppy" sounding, high pass it at 40-50hz and boost 400-1K depending on what you're after. Then introduce heavy compression. Once you've got the compressor doing what you want, boost 60-160 hz on the EQ before the compression so the low end hits the compressor in conjunction with that 400-1K boost to get what your after.

[chymer]

I think he meant the playing is sloppy????
If so, then i would try editing the crap out of it.
Look for sections that repeat and use the best version, if it was done to a click this is easier.......

If you do in fact mean the sound is floppy then try blending is a distorted version.
The Ampeg SVX plugin works nice and also the UAD Nigel.
Chymer

[kryckan]

Cut and Paste with some slight time compression and expansion with best possible algorithms could make it sound a bit tighter. That would be my solution if retracking isn't an option.

[lwr]

melodyne?

[not_so_new]

Originally Posted by chymer

I think he meant the playing is sloppy????
If so, then i would try editing the crap out of it.
Look for sections that repeat and use the best version, if it was done to a click this is easier.......

thumbsup

Get out the razor blade.... LOL

As long as the drums are pretty solid it is really not hard at all. Do fades on ins and outs, watch out for edit clicks and don't worry about how the track sounds when soloed. It will sound very mangled and out of joint but put it in with the drums it will probably sound pretty good. Add guitars and other stuff and it's a good bet there is no way you will notice the edits. The groove will be much better.

[Thebassist]

Great God almighty why do we spend so much time polishing turds? At this point, many of us have officially earned "shiny poo" awards...

For my time and money, it's always better to just retrack it than to spend 2 hours editing. Unless I'm getting payed by the hour. Then I'll mess with it through lunch.

[Bob Olhsson]

The best you'll ever do is turn something that's just plain wrong into something that's mediocre.

I don't think there's a whole lot of point in mediocrity.

[not_so_new]

Originally Posted by Thebassist

Great God almighty why do we spend so much time polishing turds? At this point, many of us have officially earned "shiny poo" awards...

For my time and money, it's always better to just retrack it than to spend 2 hours editing. Unless I'm getting payed by the hour. Then I'll mess with it through lunch.

I say this over and over like a broken record but here goes again...

Most of us are not in any position to control the level of musicianship in regards to the people we record. We don't control what goes on on that side of the glass.

Many of the bands we are tracking don't have the budget to bring in great session players. We don't control the songs, the players or the equipment they use. We can't just say "fire the bass player or I am not working with you." I play most instruments better than many of the full bands that come in but often, even if I offer to do the session work for free the bands 1) don't want to pay for the studio time and 2) don't want to get into the political hassle of having to deal with a pissed off band mate.

We can ONLY control the parts of the production that we control, the recording equipment and how it is used.

So yeah it is really easy to say "Great God almighty why do we spend so much time polishing turds?" but for some of us that is what we have to work with and our JOB is to make ithe project sound as good as we can.

Also the guy that started the thread said very clearly...

Retracking isn't an option on this.

[Kiwiburger]

The Melodyne VST is looking like a tempting purchase for this type of turd polishing. Being able to shift the start and end points of each note, as well as tuning, looks like a useful thing.

Mediocre - certainly. I would rather retrack it - but if that isn't an option ...

[not_so_new]

Originally Posted by Bob Olhsson

The best you'll ever do is turn something that's just plain wrong into something that's mediocre.

I don't think there's a whole lot of point in mediocrity.

While I agree, the client pays the bills and if they are mediocre what chose do we really have?

We can turn them away and only work with the best bands. With that business plan we will eventually close up shop because there are not enough top level bands to keep any studio open.

Or we take the gigs we get because we want to put food on the table and do the best we can to turn crap into something less crappy.

The point is there are reasons why these questions come up. In the trenches there are times when a song comes in that you didn't track or that you have to work with as is for some reason or another. Sometimes you just need to deal with the fact that some products are just going to end up mediocre in the end and damage control is the best thing you can do.

[aryschien]

If you can't re-track:

(1) Edit the drums so that the groove is there;
(2) Cut/drag/time-scretch/crossfade so that the bass matches the groove;
(3) Compress the bass right so that it "breathes" with the groove;
(4) EQ the bass, ie sitting it in the right place of the sound field, taking away the mud, enhancing/cutting the finger/pick, etc.;
(5) Find the single notes that "boom out" and use destructive editing to take away the boom of these notes.

My 0.02.

[chris carter]

Edit the bass.

Best trick for editing bass is to convert it to a part. Then convert the drums to a part. Select all the drums along with the bass and edit the bass (cut, slide, time compress are your tools) in the editor while looking at the drums. if you just edit the bass to the grid, you will lose the groove. So edit the bass while you can see how it lines up with the drums - will save a lot of headaches if the drums aren't perfect.

[Thebassist]

not so new brings up an excellent point. You can't tell someone they suck in the studio. But you can make them cut the track over and over and over until you get a workable comp. Or do like they did on Kiss albums and wait til Gene got bored and bring in Chuck Rainey. I pray that yarn is true. I just love the idea of Rainey on a Kiss track.

Seriously though.

Mixing is the wrong phase to be fixing a part. There's a whole art to gentle coaching with young artists. Getting a good performance out of a mediocre player takes alot of work. That, and getting his girlfriend away from the talkback mic!

[jeronimo]

Originally Posted by not_so_new

While I agree, the client pays the bills and if they are mediocre what chose do we really have?

We can turn them away and only work with the best bands. With that business plan we will eventually close up shop because there are not enough top level bands to keep any studio open.

Or we take the gigs we get because we want to put food on the table and do the best we can to turn crap into something less crappy.

The point is there are reasons why these questions come up. In the trenches there are times when a song comes in that you didn't track or that you have to work with as is for some reason or another. Sometimes you just need to deal with the fact that some products are just going to end up mediocre in the end and damage control is the best thing you can do.

I´m 100% with Michael.
When I´m producing a record with a band that I´m familiar with and most of the time I have friends on the band, I can say the playing is sloppy, like "do something right or I´ll find someone who can".
But 95% of the time, I´m just the recording engineer, and there is not much I can do about sloppy playing with terrible instruments...

[Slaytex]

Here's what I do. I generally have a compressor across my drum buss, I then take my bass tracks and use an aux send and send the majority of the bass to the drum buss (just use your ears for this one). This helps it pump with the drums, especially the kick. Then if need be start chopping up the track as a last resort. Crossfades will be your best friend here.

[alcohol]

In Pro Tools this is what I do.

I 'identify beat' for each measure or half measure, depends. then I use 'Beat Detctive' and have Beat Detective conform to the tempo. Works great.

[s.d.finley]

If the timing is bad, try to sidechain the bass to the kick drum. This can sometimes give the illusion of the bass being tight w/ the kick.

[Gear Tramp]

Melodyne can polish diarrhea into something you'd want to give your wife.

But if it needs that much polish, just make sure you're paid by the hour.