Week 5...

Audio Arts: Recording a bass guitar

Bass is an instrument, which forms the foundation of a lot of genres of music .The low deep sound contributes to the punch and thickness of overall mix. For recording bass first thing to decide is whether you going record the bass through miking the bass amp, going DI or both. We didn’t have the bass amp to record so we went straight to the DI input on the desk. For general rule apply both the techniques and you can decide later on whether to use the combination sound or either of them. I would personally apply a combination of both the worlds.
Key things to have in mind before you record bass :

^ Strings contribute a lot in the sound, make sure they are fairly new.

^ Always use new batteries for your pick up before recording.

^ All EQ levels on bass should be flat. Try and capture the natural sound coming out from the instrument. Apply any equalization at the end, as this will give you more room to experiment.

^ Output level from the bass should be maximum, adjust level from the DI box and apply correct gain to the source from the desk.

^ Select the pick up depending on the style of music, player and the result desired.

^ In order to capture the low end frequencies select a microphone with large diaphram like AKG’s or a microphone used for miking kick drum. Place it on the center of the best sounding speaker.

^ Adding a compression is quite beneficial as it evens up the levels of different notes and, equally importantly, it increases the average energy level of the sound -- making it seem louder for the same peak level.

Creative Computing: Max/Msp

MIDI information; MIDI I/O; Comparison; Gates and Switches; Expressions ...
Max Tutorials and Topics 12--18

References:

Grice, David. 2006. Practical on recording bass guitar. University of Adelaide, 28 march

Haines, Christian. 2006. Practical on Max/Msp, University of Adelaide, 30 March.