Bass Track Sends (Noob question)

[Bombs'n'Away]

Hi, I'm new to Reaper & home recording in general. Would be great if you could help me clarify this one:

I have recorded a bass DI track through a bass preamp pedal into my interface. Next, I want to add a layer of distortion to the midrange and a tad more overdrive to the high end. Low end is good the way it is.

My idea of doing this: (got input from various turorial videos)
First I create a folder. Original DI track subordinated to it. I low pass it to somewhere about 300 Hz. Add compression to tighten it.
Then send the DI track to a second, empty track in the same folder. Must be pre-fader, right? Second track gets HP/LP'd so that only the range of let's say 350Hz to 2kHz exists here. Add Distortion (TSE Rat in my case).
I send the original DI track to a third track the same way, pre-fader, here I do a HP at about 2kHz. Add lighter grit here. Probably TSE BOD.

On the folder trck, I would want to apply an EQ with low cut at ~60Hz, high cut at ~5-6kHz, maybe narrow low & high boost at 100Hz & 4.5k and a broad cut between 300 and 500 Hz. Maybe add ReaXcomp here if it feels necessary. Saturation plugin comes last to glue the three sound layers. (Maybe I will bounce the folder to cassette tape or VHS just for fun)

Questions: I have to disable the master send somewhere. Can't find the video that explained it right now. Do I have to disable it on all three DI sub-tracks, so that only the folder is send to the master?
And secondly, when i render the three DI tracks with all their EQ, comp, saturation, everything gets printed the way it sounded right before?

Thanks!

[jrk]

You can do this all in one channel if you want. Use the JS 3 band splitter and one of the JS mixers. You can put whatever you like in-between, using the plugin pin connectors to route particular bands through whatever.

[Bombs'n'Away]

Originally Posted by jrk

You can do this all in one channel if you want. Use the JS 3 band splitter and one of the JS mixers.

This seems to be an awesome idea, thanks for the advice! So I could set this all up in one channel and then render that to a new one to save memory usage.
Cool.

[RobU]

Hello,

From your description, you track structure looks like this:

DI Bass -> FX -> Parent Folder
DI Bass -> Send Bass 1 -> FX -> Parent Folder
DI Bass -> Send Bass 2 -> FX -> Parent Folder
Parent Folder -> FX -> Master

If you want to hear all three simultaneously, then you don't need to turn off Master/Parent send anywhere. I use this type of routing (or something very similar regularly). If you don't want to hear the original DI track, turn off it's master/parent send.

Or have I missed something ?

You might also want to use Pre-FX sends if you don't want to hear any of the FX from the DI Bass track on the Send Bass tracks.

Rendering each track to a stem track should result in exactly what you hear on that track.

If you render the master mix, then it's the Parent Folder track output that is heard.

------

There are a million ways to skin a cat, and I don't want to complicate things unnecessarily so what follows can be safely ignored unless your curious...

-- I route things slightly differently to your example. My original bass track has the master/parent turned off, the track is then sent pre-fade to 2 or 3 other tracks, then I hide the original in the mixer and track panel.

The send tracks then have FX and EQ applied

The send tracks can then be grouped in a folder for further processing. Alternatively, they can be sent post-fade to another buss track, in which case their master/parent sends are disabled.


-- Dan Worrell has a very interesting tutorial here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-Gs-o39C5o - this trick would allow you to make changes to certain frequency bands on one track...

-- Or you could use a JSFX band splitter and some more complex routing to achieve the same results (edit : jrk beat me to this above...)

Cheers
Rob

[Csabb]

I would use the JS plugin called 3-band splitter.

You can conveniently select the desired crossover frequencies, and the plug will expand your track to 6 channels: 1-2 is low, 3-4 is mid, 5-6 is high.

You can then make three tracks for the three bands, and set their recieves from the appropiate channels of the DI track with the splitter plug.

Finally, make a bus and send the previous 3 tracks to it to sum them.

You can disable the master sends on all but the bus track.

EDIT: should refresh more often

[Csabb]

I bet it is possible with a single track, but I don't know how you would solo or mute each band. This seems to be the only advantage of the multi-track setup, while keeping things nice and tidy is also very important...

Many ways to skin a cat, as mentioned above

[jrk]

Originally Posted by Csabb

I bet it is possible with a single track, but I don't know how you would solo or mute each band.

There's more than one way to do it, for sure. Multiple tracks in a folder is a good way of having everything clearly partitioned and highly visible. Doing it in one is a good way of keeping the track count down (if that's important to you). If we use a mixer fx to re-combine the bands then we can use that to "solo" or "mute" (or automate levels of) bands.

Update:
Er, yes, there's matching JS joiners. That would probably do it. D'oh.

[Bombs'n'Away]

Hey guys, thanks a lot. I have just fiddled around with 3 band splitting and rejoining, putting various distortion plugs to the mid band. Now I cannot decide which version I like best. Time to listen to the whole song again...

Hope this won't be getting off-topic now, but since we're all here already: When you treat bass this way for a distorted metal sound, which crossover frequencies and ways of procession & FX chains do you make use of?

[Lokasenna]

It varies depending on the style of metal, the sound of the bass, and even the tuning.

The most common setup I've seen is to use three separate signal paths:

Low - LPF at like 150Hz, or lower, compressed to hell, so you get a consistent, punchy thump.

Grit - HPF at ~500Hz, LPF at ~2kHz, crank up a pedal or amp sim until it sounds pretty awful. Seriously. Sometimes a narrow cut around 1kHz here can be really fun for an older Edge of Sanity "bass that sounds like a blowtorch" tone. This track will a) help the bass cut through so you can hear what the bassist is playing, and b) help glue it together with the guitars.

High - HPF at ~2kHz, use this track for the clanking/picking to give the sound some articulation.

Never underestimate the importance of a good tone coming out of the bass, too. Guitars have to rely on pedals, amps, cabs, and mics to sound good; a bass can sound 80% of the way there all by itself.

[Bombs'n'Away]

Okay, sounds close to what I've just tried in Reaper based on my experience from the rehearsal room. I usually attenuate somewhere between 300 and 500 Hz with 'real' gear but just found out even broad and deep cuts still can lead to muddy sound there within the digital realm. I guess that's why in your (Lokasenna's) suggestion those EQ bands are being omitted completely? I also normally boost somewhere between 1 and 2 kHz but found it too spikey on the distortion DI track with most plugins.

[Bombs'n'Away]

Hey, please excuse the double posting. I just don't get a good sounding bass tone the way it was described using the 3 band splitter and joiner. Lows compressed to death gives good puch, highs above 2kHz only add click which is a bit too toneless as a crossover freq to my taste, however, the mids between ~200 Hz and ~2kHz sound like shit no matter which OD/Dist pedal sim I throw on. Some sounded okay, but only when driven extremeley on the input side, so that in the 3 band joiner I had to lower the midband by 7-8 dB. Sounded not even okay as a solo bass and gets totally lost in the mix. I feel like cutting one DI track into three bands makes it sound like three clear cut signals played in parallel (which is actually somewhat the case...)

Which exact distortion plugs do you use when band splitting a bass DI track for distortion?

[bezusheist]

I would avoid multi band processing. it usually causes more damage than good. Esp. If you are not using linear phase filters. Even then you will still have IMD and aliasing from saturating the individual bands "leaking" into the adjacent bands.
I would try to boosting the area you want to saturate with an EQ pre-saturation and then a complimentary cut post-saturation. (ReaEQ has about as "symmetrical" a filter you can get).
Or if you must use multi band saturation, try something specific for the task, like fab filter Saturn.
IMO multii band processing is just a fad to sell more products (just like "mid-side" processing). There can be times when it is appropriate or maybe even necessary, but in general I think it's a bad idea to "default" to this type of processing.

[RobU]

Some other approaches...

http://www.tseaudio.com/software/tseBOD

or

Bass Professor MkII - http://sonic.supermaailma.net/plugins (probably not 'heavy' enough, but it has grit...)

or

Using Voxengo Boogex - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3iwNLIgtK0

Rob

[DaveKeehl]

or you buy the fabfilter saturn and use the Nolly technique

[Lokasenna]

If you want, post a DI clip of your bass and I'm sure some of us would be happy to give it a try.