BASS PLAYER: I think it's a GB-41 SCE Natural.

PATRICK OGLE: And you used this on the record?

BASS PLAYER: Yes.

PATRICK OGLE: What do you think of it?

BASS PLAYER: It's got a nice warm tone to it. It's not like an electric bass that has -- you know, it's not sterile but it's different; a totally different animal. More woody natural tone, more resonance.

PATRICK OGLE: So you go direct? You take the bass, even the acoustic one, direct?

MATT MERCADO: Yeah, and I think I use more of that than live when we -- Move that up a little bit. Keep moving. There you go, sir.

[BASS PLAYER PERFORMING SOME BASS LINES]

MATT MERCADO: This is an acoustic bass and that's what we used on the record. If you were doing a traditional bass, you can do the direct line in and the amp. We did direct line and mic too, so mainly we used the mic just for more body and the direct line for a little bit -- guys, if you can scoot over this way a little bit.

PATRICK OGLE: This mic that you're using?

MATT MERCADO: This one, I'm going to use. I'm going to use the AT4050, on loan to me from my friend [PH] Atsi. So, I'm going to use a cardiod pickup pattern. I don't need to do anything else but that, and then you don't need to do any cutting on this, any frequency whatsoever. We want to keep it nice and bassy sounding, so let's try a couple of different techniques just like an acoustic guitar where you can start starting points.

One way is to start with it aiming right there, right where the body meets the neck right there. You can try that. Also you can come at the bridge. You don't want to go on the soundhole; that's just going to sound all boomy and boxy. You can aim right here, right here, and with this, we're merely going to use a direct line. This is just really just a little bit of aesthetic. Let's see how it sounds right here. If you don't like it, we'll move it.

[MATT MERCADO SETTING UP BASS MIX FOR RECORDING]

It's got a real low signal so I -- that's the mic, and that's the current line which is mainly what we're going to use, so let's focus on this for a moment.

[MATT MERCADO SETTING UP BASS MIX FOR RECORDING]

Keep on playing bass. Keep on playing, please. A little bit of a boxiness that I want to get rid of. [SOUNDS LIKE] A little bit around 180. I didn't like that too much. I'm going to put a little more clarity in it. That's pretty good.

And then, I'm using the DBX compressor, the 160X is really good on it. That's smash, which I don't want to do but just touching up a little bit, and let's hear them together. You can almost hear that immediately that's out of phase so let's -- I can push phase and you can hear the low end come back.

Compression ratio with bass, you can go a little higher. Maybe you can go 6:1 if you like to. I like to give it a good -- get some anchor in there and hit it pretty hard, and that's fine. That's a lot better. That was good with the amp -- I'm sorry, that's not the amp, the mic.

BASS PLAYER: How's that sounding.

MATT MERCADO: That sounds a lot better. Keep on going please.

[MATT CONTINUES PREPARING BASS MIX FOR RECORDING]

[INDISCERNIBLE] in and out to check [INDISCERNIBLE].

PATRICK OGLE: Now this is an acoustic bass.

MATT MERCADO: Yeah.

PATRICK OGLE: So this is another question that maybe doesn't relate to it.

MATT MERCADO: It's a little difficult. It's kind of hard to record to. It wasn't that easy. But your question is?

PATRICK OGLE: The question is that I have talked to people and a lot of them essentially don't go direct and then they'll re-amp the bass. How do you feel about that?

MATT MERCADO: I feel that you can run into a lot of phase problems right there, and if you don't have a very trained ear for phase, then you can be doing worse than just using one signal because if you don't understand how to listen for phase, and it's very difficult to listen to. It took me a long time to understand that when to press the phase button and when not to. Just experimente with it and listen to see if the bass is cutting out, and if you push it in see if that adds more bass and then that's what it is. If you re-amp it and it's out of phase -- and I've done this before and we went through a whole series of trying to do this on an album I did, a [PH] Sue Mercado record. We ended up having to re-amp it again because it was out of phase. So when two things are out of phase, the more you turn them up, the less volume you get so you kind of say, "Why can't we hear the bass when we're turning it up?" because we're using both signals. So, re-amping is--

PATRICK OGLE: You'll notice that sometimes you might not notice that until it's really late in the process and then it's a pain in the butt.

MATT MERCADO: Yeah. It's better to get the phase situation out first. You can re-amp. I've done re-amping before. For sure, they make a -- I think it's IBS makes a box that actually is for re-amping and it's got a phase switch that is not just 180 degrees and is actually variable so you can kind of twist it to different degrees and hear it, because sometimes things aren't exactly out of phase, you know what I mean? Sometimes, when you hit the button it helps and sometimes it doesn't but phase is a very difficult thing to kind of comprehend but it is also what you're using, well, for mics. It's also going to be one of the most important, a very important part of your recording process because if you have things in phase, it's just not going to sound as full, particularly a bass, a snare, a kick drum, and stuff like that, they're not going to sound as good. But you can always re-amp to send a signal to your amp and then make sure you have a phase button to listen to because generally there is a good chance that it will be out of phase by the time you send it to -- from your DAW to an amp and then back to the DAW, there's a good chance that it's going to get out of phase by then. So, I would generally say it's best to try to amp it at first if you can. I like to do it like that myself, so.

PATRICK OGLE: Okay.