Rivek

Actually as it turns out I did that yesterday without any such HiZ-in. And it sounds fine.

It does. Chill. See, I'd like to go straight to the soundcard without any kind of preamp, but every time I do something like that it carries a lot of noise from the impedance mismatch.

And guess what? None of them have an EQ curve that looks like a dopey smile. Anyways, snappleman is right. Huge tone changes before your signal hits the soundcard is a bad idea as it is, since it locks you too much in one tonal space.

Metallica does not use scooped mids, at least not anymore. Kirk and James have stated in recent retrospective interviews that early on in their careers, they were given the tip to boost the mids above the bass and treble. Also, hardcore =/= metal.

This is the most frustrating thing I have ever encountered. I'm not sure if it's the bass I'm using, the preamp, I don't know. I'm running a Yamaha bass, not sure of the model, through a Crate bass combo as a replacement for a DI box, into Reaper. Recording the bass just gives me the signal from the combo itself, so I have to play insanely softly even with the gain on the amp turned down to barely registering to keep the signal from clipping. I did this same thing with guitar on a small guitar combo, and it worked beautifully. Not only could I play as hard or as soft as I wanted, but my monitor output during recording had my FX chain active. However, with the bass, the monitor output is just the clean signal, and the FX chain isn't becoming active until after I record. I try to use FX to make it hearable in the mix (Eq, already carved space for it from the guitars and drums, compressor, etc.) but nothing is working. Somebody help me. What can I do to get a decent recording of a bass guitar? I come to you as a broken man. F'ing bass.

No it's not, it doesn't work. ESPECIALLY not for metal. Kerry King actually boosts his mids and dips his bass and treble a bit; are you going to tell Slayer they don't know how to do metal right? As a gigging and recording guitarist I was searching for my magic tone for a good while before I settled on my current preferred tone for clean and distorted parts, which is a boosted-mid curve. It sounds better and cuts through the mix better.

I dig it. It flows pretty well.

Sound nice? understatement. This is damn good music. Can't wait to hear a finished version.

You've got it all wrong man! XD I pity you if you don't see any "point" to a non-serious project... for me the joy of making music is just that. Making it. Whether I'm trying to actually send a message or just mess around with it, the whole "point" for me to working on any kind of musical project is that I enjoy it. If you don't see it the same way... I'm sorry. It's really cool my way and I'd rather not have it any other. As to the feedback, I like hearing what people think of the music no matter what. I mean, pointing out things like "the mixing is bad" or "this doesn't sound right" or technical stuff like that, yeah, I won't really regard. But I like feedback regardless. And as to the songs not being good... well I guess I just got your opinion. XD. I'm not going for any awards here. For me Seizures Inc. is a space with no clear or definable goals... means to no specific end but the means themselves.

Being that it's a non-serious project, it should not be taken seriously... therefore genre labels are tongue in cheek, thank you. My main project is as follows: http://myspace.com/viisouls

Non-serious experimental breakcore project of mine. http://last.fm/music/seizures+incorporated

Yeah, I realized when I listened to the song shortly after posting the thread that the actual playing of the bass is staccato. I guess the part about it that made it "glide-y" in my own mind was how it picks up the low end when the kick is silent. Apparently then, what I'm looking for is that beefy timbre it has. I need more punchiness... would adding an EQ boost to the low and mids help that? Maybe some distortion?

I'm messing around with a trance track for a few hours now, and I'm trying to get a certain bass synth sound that I can't seem to get... I want it to be something that slightly glides in from nowhere, an eight note after the beat, an example being the bassline on the Alice Deejay song "Better off Alone". I'm using a single square wave with low attack and release, high sustain, and a LP24 with a low cutoff. Portamento and Legato are enabled on the synth I'm using. What more can I do to get a cool, glide-y, off-beat sound?

Okay. Few changes: Took out the strings and replaced them with the pads you suggested, so as not to have too many sustained instruments at once. Changed bass synths to a punchier generator, and added sfx in what I hope is a decent balance throughout the mix. Thanks for the suggestions, and if you have any more, let me know.

If you're really, really looking for a way to make it stereo, even though it's not totally necessary... in audacity, duplicate the mono track, position the duplicate one track below the original, click the drop-down menu on the original and select "make stereo track".