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Amps: AXE FX

Lesson 8 from: Advanced Bass Production

Andrew Glover

Amps: AXE FX

Lesson 8 from: Advanced Bass Production

Andrew Glover

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Lesson Info

8. Amps: AXE FX

Next Lesson: Mic'ing the Cab

Lesson Info

Amps: AXE FX

And so now I'm just going to a uh very basic on sbt classic model that I have made off in the axe effects which I think most people are familiar with at home but it's very good modeling amplifier and friend that might be a route to if yes it's not budget friendly but as far as being quiet on axe effects or a camper profiling amper unbeatable solutions because it's like dealing with a real amp so tax and set up their routing for this bear with me see over here like I'm just looking to make sure that the axe effects the meters on the right side are receiving that my ria boxes sending them some sort of a signal you said they set a record in some recording what the axe effects is playing which is closer a little bit grittier than the rial sbt classic one but I think I'm sending my signal to heart which is part of my reason so a lot of what I like to do with this is I used the axe effects which can we have the computer screen right there right to do you can kind of build your own amperage i...

nside of the software good or to you know I don't use it's got a ton of presets so obviously this is not going to sound right on base but I want to hear it anyway sounds good um build my own setting real fast cool, so now it'll be passing a clean signal, and I'll start putting together an andthe so my one of my original reasons forever passing stuff through an axe effects for base when I'm obviously very happy with the rig that I use or the two rigs I used for based most often is being able to do like a guitar amps, and we later, without having to worry about blowing out guitar speakers with the extra lowland because I don't know anybody that's ever blown out of speaker on an ax effect, so I've never worried about it, someone to go with the guitar patch that I used on the guitars and their song, and I'm going to record a pass a base with that and you start to hear a lot more grit and it's good for blending things together. Thank you. So here we have this is running through a fifty one fifty, and I don't know why it's making weird noises? Yeah, I'm sending the d I clean out to my guitar effects, I apologise everybody's ears, but here I'm getting just a lot grittier, even readier than the the sands on record that and then start to hear so it's really, once we get dies and that a lot of this will come more in with the miking stuff, but once we layer in a lot of just dirtier and greater your stuff and that's why I was talking where I can always use that same antonia's a jumping off spot because I'll bring in different layers that are less gained or more gained and start building with those. So how many total based channels do you end up with on twenty records? I only I would say for ok, I would say, like one d I one but clean d I that you won completely fbi, and I'll do like, how is showing earlier where, you know, just be the lowland, and then I'll have maybe one acts of earth sands amp one without a cab, depending on what I was doing, but generally right now, what I'm doing is one d I one sbt classic line that all usually just use the ax effects for because it's quick and painless, one with the sands and through the fender amps with, like the norman you eighty seven in front of it or something similar depending on what we're working with at the time and then one just disgusting fifty one fifty track or I've used cranks that my good friend geoff done he's an engineer, he ring ups through a crank sound and gives me bass, and I used to hate crank heads, and when he does it through base, it's like it's like what we just played but it's so much more sparkly in the worst way and it's really brings something about base where I just whatever is disgusting is generally what I like go for four heavy music you know it's it's interesting you say that I always thought that I liked clean bass tones like if I'm playing one by myself like it a guitar store something I like that you know really like clean tight like tool kind of based on or something but you know that in heavy music like I've always thought I hated distorted base and I kind of do but in distorted music it works and it doesn't sound like distorted baby it's really and that's exactly the point is not if I was recording a base cd I wouldn't be like you know what we need is part of their players distorted base but it's just when for me ethan I love making pop records I love making just like soft records but I generally get hired to make a record that's going to pummel somebody and when I want to follow somebody I'm going to distort the hell out of its so important destroyed the hell out everything I can if I wish I could show you guys like all these drums stems I'm playing were used through a compressor is called dis stressors in there distorting toe helen back and it's it doesn't sound distorted but it's somewhere in there there's a neff load of distortion and that's somehow it's just those harmonics that just some third orders and yet another thing I was going to ask you about for like the sub base layer do you ever like big chocolate what he showed me that I've been doing is programming just a sign wave for the sub base you know I don't because I end up rift building so much of this is the spots where I I've done it but the spots where I find the sine wave most effective are generally breakdown parts and if I the sine wave things basically the same is my rift building technique for that so I'll just do that with the actual base and it's less stuff to try and compensate with in addition to the yeah I have but I don't generally because it's something else that I need to deal with it entirely when I usually get what I want out of it from just the dea what kind of frequencies are you programming in the sound or the sign right uh like super super low low passed around like yeah well past around sixty seventy eighty something like that so this is a really clean controlled sub base that sits well I know we'll plant he was doing that for a while too and that's obviously I've learned it on from him and that's something that I tried and I'm sure there's times where it would work for me in times that wanted but it's not that's not one of my habits by any means, but it is a great technique and we can maybe show that when we do tuning I'm going to show melody in tuning even though I talked about how you need to tune I had a time tomorrow and I can see if we have time maybe we'll show how you can output a middie file to trigger a sign wave the one question that might be worth clarifying a little bit would just be to explain a little bit more interest what one stone can someone explain to me? Ah little more about the effects loop if what the effects lip is a good man starts looping a guitar amp is generally it's an outplacement input between the pre empting the power amp and what you can do. A lot of people run like a noise gate if you have a really high gain head. I know a lot of people that run fifty one fifties and they'll put a noise gate in their effects loops so that it's kind of separating the two blocks, so to speak and what I did, I guess I wasn't too clear with what I was doing because generally I don't use a full fender and mine is my friend ramp is to several blocks it's a pre empting a power amp and the preamble lives in my desk to get used is a die and the power and gets used this damp with the sands amp and those ahs far as I'm concerned those two or one piece to me because that's the only way use it um so basically by routing through the effects loop return, which is what I did in the back there and I didn't get video footage but I just bypassed the queue, the input I bypassed everything on the fender and except for the output knob because I knew it was one of those commitment things I didn't want any more options and when I used the thunderhead I don't want options I know what I want and I want volume and then I want the disgusting this of the sands emp is there a rule of thumb for when you showed her shouldn't use that there's just something experiment let's see what works for you? You do what feels best for you. Like I said, I know people that use that same fender amps and run their sand zampa into the front of it and they get results that they like and I just the quickest way and what I it's what you've developed a habit too and for me, if I can eliminate one, two, three, four, twelve extra knobs two between me and what I want, I'm going toe I think it's just knowing what you want and I know when I'm recording based what I'm looking for with that specific sound whereas if it was say a gai lian kruger head or something that I wasn't as familiar with I would probably give the preempt a shot and I know offender makes a great preempt it's not a bad head by any means but I know what I want out of it in them take what I want to leave what I don't need because there's no use there's I think a habit of especially younger engineers and younger musicians is you wanted to mess around with stuff and I call it just not turning and some guys that have worked at the studio really into knob turning and I'm really into recording records in differently making every night every time we talk tuning returning knobs or not making music that's it's true and it's just more steps that you need to if you find what you want with thirteen knobs it's going to be twenty nubs total it's going to be a lot harder for you to find that again than what it is for me to find what I was looking for with five so that's why I don't mess with the primp on that head and then the sbt classic I don't even believe has an effects loop do you know do you play an suv I guess I can okay let's see yet there's a pre impound of power andthen on this which effectively does the same thing is an effects loop I've had that head for nearly a decade and I never knew that so kind of just shows I didn't have the game right here a lot of stuff with recording your creature of habit and you you learn your habit, your technique and you get what you want done with that? Um a j p is asking if you can see the effects chain on your expects preset you were using yeah, I have a aah filter looks like it's coming down its cuts that about two hundred hertz it's a lot less violent slope than I would normally use once I get in the mix, which I believe I talked about may when I'm mixing and I'll show more tomorrow I always cut guitars at two hundred hertz that's my rule of thumb so when I'm tracking them I cut the same stuff out and since this is just a guitar patch that's why we have that going on there d would you cut acoustic guitars to like if you're doing? I treated if you think it are more like I treat a base where I let it live, where I think the instrument was designed to live ok? And I usually when you have acoustic stuff going on with the base or with anything else it's at the either at the forefront of the background so it's something you can really just do with a fader and pan and I'll get to creative on the hugh on acoustic I just go for it. Um here's my drive settings hopefully I'm not going to read everything off form, so I'm gonna let him look and take whatever notes he needs. I mean he's, an axe effects guy here's fifty one fifty and this realistically, this is about what I would do with a real life. Fifty one. Fifty um, my do drive a little hotter. If I was in my actual room, I would do base usually I would put it in a seven. I would have made it about four and a half troubles, usually at five. The axe effects. And I just don't really correlate to the rial fifty one fifty as faras the presence goes, but I would put my presence at about a six, which is what this appears to be. Because I believe this has an active presence cut on it can check. Yeah, does. Um, my cab is their generic vintage thirty with a royal er are one twenty one and that is I, a fan of ribbon mike, some guitar cabs in the real world as well, so that's why that set up like that high pass again to clear out more junk, less intense this time and then any cue just scooping a little bit around two hundred at and it's that's the guitar tone on this actual track was just really quickly done, so usually we would have used multiple lamps and relapse but this whole track which will be available I believe to anybody that purchases the course will have this guitar tone on it and people can really look through me talking about the ax effect setting ned, you want to take another question? Sure. Okay let's all take a ton of questions. I like the questions there, all right? And if you guys have any questions before we go to break pee frampton has another question what's the difference between a unit like the acts fx and a program like an attitude what's the difference in sound quality? Ah, the difference is it the axe effects obviously has its own processing units it has you don't need a computer to operate it what I'm doing with the computer for anybody that's not familiar with the axe effects is I'm controlling it over midi but it's the actual unit doing all the processing all this is is a graphical interface so that I don't have to go over there and twist the knobs so it's not this software is nothing it's basically a how would I describe it? It's like just to control was just troll penalty control panel um the sound quality between an axe effects and amplitude is to me night and day. I think amplitude serves a purpose and it has good sound. Andrew used amplitude on his thing, right? Yes. She's in guitar? No, he used amplitude. Look, colin and pod farm. You know, his impulse that, yes, the impulse that's, the key part to me because I've done records with pot farm. I've done records with all of poland and it's that's, obviously more guitar related stuff, because I still swear by base you need something really analog or digital. In the case of an ax effects, we hardware sounds better to me. Amplitude khun sound good. The cabs in it suck the cabs and pot farm stuck the cabin and guitar rig suck. Sorry, it's, all those companies that I know even andrew wade, who for anybody watching did like day to remember the ghost inside, motionless in white. He said he was not happy with his axe effects until he loaded in his own eye are I know a lot of people like that. This is there's a lot of ah ax effects I ours for I ours or the cab impulses that I don't love but they're generic vintage thirty one when I first bought the axe effects I all I did I set up my fifty one fifty and the cab I was using at the time which was a carbon legacy another company that I like a lot I don't really use any of their base stuff but and I he set up my fifty one fifty got it how wanted it sounding went into my room made my axe effects and the exact same way sold the fifty one fifty sold the cab because I had I had it and I could pull it up every time so I guess the big takeaway you know regardless what simulator using is it's it's not just the antis simulator that matters there cab matters just as much if not more would say the cab matters more so and there's for anybody watching there's a million different like impulse response files that you can download try malls are these catharsis? Yeah, I like to call our response is that I think the best responses I've ever used um and I use a lot of times you can use an ax effects or amplitude and bypass the cab and used those amps simulators and have great look um a little bit too much to describe here and I know andrew went into it on his course but using I our responses can really take you that extra part of the way if you can't afford an axe effects or a camper and all you have your options or pod farmer amplitude. If you can download the free cab simulators that ryan made or a lot of people have made cabs, but the catharsis ones really kicked butt, that will take you a lot of the way people need to make base impulses and maybe that's something I should dio maybe else trying, but I don't want to make any promises, but maybe we can try and make on another question from factory audio. Is there a noticeable sonic difference between passive and active ram boxes in which to use in which do you prefer I use an active example? I've never messed with a passive one. I'm sure there is a difference, but exam's always worked really well for me. I do get some noise with it, but generally I would fault that as I use very noisy amps so that for a factory audio, I'm I know there's a difference, but I only use active ones, and then I gave my amp.

Class Materials

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Session Stems.zip

Ratings and Reviews

Vasily Sizov
 

Overall the course is nice. Andrew is good at explaining things, and covers various aspects of bass tracking and mixing. I would not say that I found too many things I didn't know before, but I definitely reconfirmed some of the knowledge I got from Eyal Levi's courses and others', and grasped a few more new techniques, especially on using hardware (SVT, Sansamp, etc.). On the negative side, I would state that the demo tracks used for mixing had too dry and thin sounding drums: they were claimed as mixed, but they obviously were not, or mixed poorly; mixing bass when you drums are not ready is not good, as drums-bass interactions is essential for bass mixing. Another problem during the mixing sessions is that the bass was way too loud! Probably, Andrew was focused on tweaking the bass sound or maybe monitoring situation in CreativeLive studio was not that good, but in the mix context it was just dominating over everything else, which is not helping to get the full picture. Other than that the course is nice and is worth watching. Things I found lacking, and which I would prefer to get covered in the course are as follows: - Using loadboxes and IRs for bass reamping and creating tones (it was promised to be covered during the mixing session, but it was not) - Slightly deeper coverage on differences between basses (e.g. Fender P & J, Musicman Stinger, Warwics, etc.), passive and active, how to pick the proper bass for different styles of music - Quick overview of other popular equipment, like DarkGlass B7K and etc., which is super popular this days: it was not even mentioned during the course

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