Monty's Random Bits of Genius
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By Monty Colvin |
Chapter 1- Recording Tips
I've never been a real "tech-head", and I'm not one of these guys who will rattle off a lot of equipment model numbers. But, I have picked up a few things in the last 15 years of making albums and playing on the road, and hopefully I'll have some thoughts that will be of some use.
Before I started playing bass
professionally, I was a guitar player. So when I moved to the bass, I took my
passion for distortion and power chords with me. I started messing with
distortion pedals, guitar amps, and 8-strings. From there I moved up to a big,
fat, Hamer 12. The result was a huge bass sound that filled all holes in a
live setting. However, it also lead to some challenges in the studio.
One of the problems I had in recording bass was how to get the distortion and high end to cut through the mix without turning up the low end. One solution was to put the low end and high end on two separate tracks. That way you can raise or lower the high end when needed and not lose the bottom. For instance, if there's a bass riff, run, or solo you want to stand out in a song you can nudge the high end channel a bit in the mix during that part. For even more separation you can put the low end cabinet in one room and the high end cab in another. I used the split channel method for years on Galactic Cowboys albums and I still use it on my solo CD's.
Recently I've started using POD's and things like that to get some cool bass tones. Next time I'll throw out some ideas about cabinets and amps.
Go to Chapter 2
