keyboards

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Hey there. I have recorded a band. 3 piece, Guitar/ drums and keys. The keyboards are played live with the left hand taking care of the bass. She is using mainly String type sounds. The sounds are great in stereo but I feel there is bottom end lacking up the middle of the recording. There are not may guit overdubs so its pretty open.

What are your ideas to get some bottom up the middle? (sounds a bit rude doesnt it) with what I have. The left and right outs of the keys were recorded on 2 seperate mono tracks.

I was thinking of rolling off all the tops, re amping the bass through a bass amp and crunching up the sound a bit, throwing a mic on it and using that.

Any other ideas???

[brandondrury]

I recently dealt with a similar situation where the keyboard player wasn't given me what he really wanted. There is such a tricky balance between the left hand on a piano/keyboard verse the bass guitar. They don't seem to teach them this in piano lesson land.

In your case, it sound like you don't have an electric bass.

There are a few routes you can take. You can go the natural route. The natural route means you record them like they are without any wild processing. This is almost always the best sounding route, but only if what they are giving you sounds good.

If it were me, I'd want individual tracks. I'd want the bass on one track and the strings and such on the other.

Another option is to add a bass guitar/synth track on top of what is already there (depending on how it was played in the first place).

I was thinking of rolling off all the tops, re amping the bass through a bass amp and crunching up the sound a bit, throwing a mic on it and using that.

This will thicken things up, but if I'm understanding you right, it's not much different than copying the keyboard track, rolling off the high end, and distorting it a bit. This isn't going to do much more than simply boost the low end in the track and that isn't much different than simply adding low end with EQ.

It's hard to say without hearing it. Can you attach an mp3 of the rough mix as is?

Brandon

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Thanks for that,

I will post a mix up soon. The band are having some inter band political issues and recording has come to a halt.

Its crazy, they are blaming the drummer because they are off schedule and want him to pay for everything beyond the initial booked sessions. Very frustrating. To top it off they are serial cancelers.

All i want to do is give them a great recording but they are letting bullshit get in the way of a very simple process.

Any way, this is a thread within itself.

Cheers.

[brandondrury]

Good luck with your politics. This is one aspect of the band thing I don't miss a bit!

Brandon

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yeah totally,

luckily I am just recording it and have been paid for my work up till now. The rest is up tp them to sort.

cheers