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Compressing the bass

Compressing the bass - Pro Tools Tutorial

From the course: Audio Mixing Bootcamp

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Compressing the bass

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For a mix to sound really powerful, the bass has to stay at a steady level. Most basses inherently have notes that are louder or softer than others, depending upon where they are played on the neck of the instrument. This is especially noticeable on a bass played with a pick instead of fingers. In this video I am going to show you how to keep the level virtually the same throughout the song by using a compressor or limiter. First of all, let's listen to the bass by itself. (music playing) Now in this case we can hear some distortion coming from the amplifier because that's all we have; we don't have a direct channel, but that's okay. We won't hear that too much in the mix, so it won't matter at all. Not only do we hear distortion, but there are a few notes that are lower or louder in the mix. So what we want to do is even that out so they're all about the same. Let's insert the limiter. (music playing) Now just like we did with the drums, we would with this limiter to make the bass…

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