Remove the bass from any song

Why bassists want a bassless track

A bassless track is the closest thing to sitting in with the band that recorded the song. The drummer, the chords and the singer are all there, and the one gap in the arrangement is yours. A generic backing track in the same key is a different arrangement; the fills, pushes and stops that make the song feel like itself are missing.

It also tells you the truth about your playing. With the original bass still in, you can drift behind the beat and the recording covers for you. Take it out and every late note, every missed accent, every place you rushed the chorus is audible. That is the point of practising with a bass remover rather than playing along on top of the full mix.

Bands use the same trick for rehearsal when the bass player is away, teachers use it for lessons, and producers use it to audition a new bass line against a finished song.

What you are removing, from an engineer’s chair

The bass is not only low end. A bass guitar has a fundamental down around the kick drum and harmonics up into the midrange, which is where the pick attack, the string noise and the growl live. The separator takes all of that together, so the bass stem sounds like a bass, and the bassless mix loses the note definition as well as the weight.

Phone speakers will fool you. A phone or laptop speaker barely reproduces the bass fundamental, so a song can sound almost the same with or without the bass. Check the result on headphones or monitors. On a phone you are mostly hearing the upper harmonics, which is useful for learning the notes but not for judging the removal.

Kick and bass share space. In most modern mixes the kick and the bass sit in the same octave and are often sidechained so they duck around each other. The separator uses the character of each sound to decide what goes where: the short thump of a kick stays with drums, the sustained pitched note goes to bass. On very dense productions a touch of kick click can show up in the bass stem, or a little bass body in the drums. It rarely matters once you are playing.

Synth bass and 808s behave differently. A sustained synth bass or a tuned 808 is still a pitched low-frequency part, so it usually goes to the bass stem and mutes cleanly. Bright, layered synth basses with a lot of top end can split between bass and other, and an 808 that doubles as the kick can end up partly in drums. Solo each stem for a moment to see where the parts went, then set the faders to taste.

Left hand piano and low guitars stay put. Piano bass notes and drop-tuned guitars belong to other instruments, so they stay in the mix. That is usually what you want: the bassless track sounds like the band with the bass player missing, not like a thinned-out recording.

Checking the result before you practise

Solo the bass stem and listen to the first chorus. If you hear the full part with no drums or vocal around it, the bassless mix is clean. Then mute the bass and play the busiest section of the song. A faint low shadow on a heavily compressed master is normal and disappears as soon as your own bass is in the room.

If you want a guide while you learn, do not mute the bass completely. Pull the fader most of the way down so the original is a quiet reference, play a few passes, then take it out altogether. Higher bitrate files separate more cleanly, so use a 320 kbps MP3 or a lossless file if you have one.

Learning the part once the bass is out

Free accounts get the live mixer with solo, mute and level, plus basic A/B looping, so you can loop a tricky bar with the bass soloed, then loop it again with the bass muted and play it yourself. Sessions save, so the mix is ready next time.

Pro adds the tools that make a practice session efficient. Slow the song to 70% with the pitch unchanged and the bass line is still in the right key. Set a count-in from a tapped tempo so you enter on the one. Name loops for the verse riff, the pre-chorus walk-up and the outro so they are waiting for you. Change the key without changing the speed if your band plays the song a tone down. If you want to write the line down, the bass transcription guide covers that workflow.

Remove, isolate or practise?

These three jobs use the same split but end in different places. This page is about the mix minus the bass: a bassless track to play over or rehearse with. If you want to hear the bass alone to learn, sample or study the tone, see isolate bass. If you want the note-by-note process of writing a line down, see transcribe a bass line. For removing a different instrument, there are guides to removing guitar and removing drums.

What is free and what is Pro

Pro is US$6.99 a month or US$49 a year, with a 7-day free trial for eligible accounts (card required). A US$1.99 credit buys one Full Separation on one song: it never expires and does not include WAV or the practice tools. See plans.

Frequently asked questions

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