How you use effects within your band (bring on the clips!)

Silver Hammer · #1 03-07-2009, 02:12 PM

Ok I did a search so if this has been done before then I have my flame shield up.

Given how many of you guys have giant pedal boards, how do you use your pedals within your bands songs? I know there was a thread asking how many of your pedals you actually used in a band setting but I'm talking explain what combos you use for what kinds of sounds, lets see sound clips of songs, videos of your bands performing. I wanna see some effected bass in the mix, with a real band kicking ass. We all know there are famous bassists who use effects to great... effect (including the dreaded three- Flea, Justin Chancellor and Tim Commerford) but let's see how you effects junkies make some noise.

fightthepower · #2 03-07-2009, 06:39 PM

The 'band' is a drum machine, myself and a keys/guitar player as of last week when we broke it off with the drummer for various reasons- better now than inevitable dealing with it sometime down the line. A friend hooked me up with a beat a couple days ago, and the keys player and I jammed to a loop from it for almost an hour straight last night- Here's a clip of about the last 10 minutes. I used an octaver, filter and flanger.

http://soundclick.com/share?songid=7403635

We thought it came out pretty good so I burned him a copy (recorded through mbox2 into mac and ableton) and we're going to make it into a song. The bass tones could use some work, but it was just a jam so i think it's decent.

We have a gig lined up in April but no drummer now, so we're toying with the idea of having my friend who hooked up the beat be our drummer and play/manipulate beats through ableton. We're going to get together next week and try it out; if it goes well and we think we can put together a short set by late april we're going to do it.

theunknowndude · #3 03-07-2009, 11:18 PM

the main things I use in my band are PD7 for overdrive to tighten up the bottom end for certain parts,...

one song I keep the flying tomato fuzz on the whole time, and then for a noise section in it turn on the weeping demon and go nuts...

going to do an unstrumental 'interlude' I guess with pretty much all my pedals havent fully decided this one yet, have noise box, ps-3, looping with hardwire DL8, to select from for this as well,... then going to end with fuzz and wah so can go into the above mentioned song whilst guitarists tune down

see how that goes anyways!

Sir Edward V · #4 03-08-2009, 01:07 AM

I really like to use my 105Q as a boost/treble boost. Makes for a really cool tone. I just keep the toe all the way down usually. I combine it with the rest of my pedals as well, one of my favorites is this and my chorus on. Sounds really cool when playing chords higher on the neck like Les Claypool. I have some videos on Facebook from a recent gig... but I'm not sure if I can link you to them... hold on

Ok here we go:

Song #1 - Autumn Has Come
http://www.facebook.com/v/598632463795

In the first part I have my POG on only. I really love this tone, you can't hear it as well in the video, but its a really huge sound, and its just... badass. lol. I have the clean signal and the octave down signals all the way up, with the other octaves all the way down. The thing that makes it sound cool is that I have the input gain set to about half, so my bass overdrives the POG, so we have octave down and crunch, all from the POG.

The second part still has the POG on like this, but I use the 105Q as mentioned earlier.

Obviously, there is a lot more to the song... but this video was taken with a digital camera, so we don't have any full songs recorded.

Song #2 - New Zealand
http://www.facebook.com/v/598829593745

Nothing special here, I just use a TS5 for some distortion.

oh yeah, please ignore the substandard singing, I am a bass player first... I'm trying to teach myself to sing, but things are going slowly...

Derek_L · #5 03-08-2009, 01:22 AM

^That was VERY cool. =D

Sir Edward V · #6 03-08-2009, 10:44 AM

thank ye, sir

Unrepresented · #7 03-08-2009, 12:31 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by fightthepower

The 'band' is a drum machine, myself and a keys/guitar player as of last week when we broke it off with the drummer for various reasons- better now than inevitable dealing with it sometime down the line. A friend hooked me up with a beat a couple days ago, and the keys player and I jammed to a loop from it for almost an hour straight last night- Here's a clip of about the last 10 minutes. I used an octaver, filter and flanger.

http://soundclick.com/share?songid=7403635

We thought it came out pretty good so I burned him a copy (recorded through mbox2 into mac and ableton) and we're going to make it into a song. The bass tones could use some work, but it was just a jam so i think it's decent.

We have a gig lined up in April but no drummer now, so we're toying with the idea of having my friend who hooked up the beat be our drummer and play/manipulate beats through ableton. We're going to get together next week and try it out; if it goes well and we think we can put together a short set by late april we're going to do it.

Definitely cool stuff. You would do really well with a frontman I used to play with. I haven't talked to him in a while but his stuff was really similar to the trip-hop/DnB sorta sound you have there. Lemme know when/where your show is, I'll try and come out and see you guys.

Most of the samples we have on our Myspace don't really go as far with effects as I'm currently going, but I definitely owe a good deal to Tim C., Flea, and a handful of others for inspiration.

Jared Lash · #8 03-08-2009, 12:50 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by fightthepower

A friend hooked me up with a beat a couple days ago, and the keys player and I jammed to a loop from it for almost an hour straight last night- Here's a clip of about the last 10 minutes. I used an octaver, filter and flanger.

http://soundclick.com/share?songid=7403635

fightthepower - Just listened to the clip. Really nice. Just curious what individual pedals you were using. I assume that's the Pollyanna rather than the OC-2? And I didn't know you had a flanger. Again, especially for a jam, it sounds really good.

dannybuoy · #9 03-08-2009, 02:28 PM

Fightthepower - awesome clip, more details please!

warwick.hoy · #10 03-08-2009, 02:56 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dannybuoy

Fightthepower - awesome clip, more details please!

+1

FTP...lovin the jam. Bass tone sounds great to me.

Inspirational...makes want to get an octaver.

The band where I'll be using FX is still in it's infancy so no clips. I'm still acquiring pedals for the projrct, but I use a Boss SD-2 (Dual Overdrive) to dramatic effect on one of our songs.

fightthepower · #11 03-08-2009, 05:30 PM

Thanks guys! At this point we've just been recording our jams, and I cut it all up and made a disk for the keyboardist to listen to and write to, and doing the same myself. Every time we meet up we've been jamming out something better than before, but we're now at the point where we have a few jams that are song worthy to start working on. I also made a few disks of reference material, as the keyboardist has never listened to any electronic music and was previously playing guitar in a reggae band for the last 8 years (Diego Roots)- I have a feeling he's going to have a bunch of good idea's for monday's jam

Unrepresented- We're not actively looking for a vocalist yet, but have been thinking that a female vocalist (especially with ample usage of effects) would compliment the sound nicely- The gig we might play is in easy county by the Golden Acorn casino, the venue is an old restaurant and the party is indoor/outdoor with camping- Headlining artists include Danny the Wildchild. A few friends are throwing the party and if it's successful, will be doing it every month this summer. If we decide April is too soon given our recent drummer situation, then we'll be playing the June date (or both if it works out with my buddy on ableton). There are also a few other tentative gigs this summer at clubs- Kava Lounge for instance where the same friend does 'Dragon Lounge' every month. The keys player and I have been jamming for a few months now and this is my first band (started playing two years ago), but at this rate I think we should be playing pretty regularly by summertime- Im nervous and excited

BigO- I used the pollyanna into the mf101, and then into the polychorus for flanging(i may switch the order). I really like the polychorus's flange but it's just too damn big, so I'm looking replace it with something smaller. I also just got the mp201 yesterday... and it changes everything! The waveforms are killer, the sample&hold sounds great.. Ive spent about 2 hours with it and I'm in love! The ringmod is off my board, and I think the gyro and prometheus are soon to follow.

warwick.hoy- I think octavers are great and definitely recommend to to anyone, especially for any kind of synth stuff. Octavers are a vital part of my sound and I use them 100% wet as my base sound most of the time. Im looking to get at least one more on my board for more tonal variation.

kgoism · #12 03-08-2009, 05:33 PM

in my old band, Side Effects May Include, I played a "Lead Bass" line with a digitech whammy and Boss ODB-3 with some compression in the song, "Thinking out loud"

http://myspace.com/sideeffectsmayinclude

As a result, it doesn't even really sound like a bass, but oh well...

runmikeyrun · #13 03-08-2009, 07:36 PM

I use my effects to create noise as a segue in between songs. The only effect that's on full time is the distortion. All the others (Uglyface, Atari Punk Sim, Tremolo, Delay, Total Sonic Annihilation) are just for noise.

Sir Edward V · #14 03-08-2009, 07:40 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by kgoism

in my old band, Side Effects May Include, I played a "Lead Bass" line with a digitech whammy and Boss ODB-3 with some compression in the song, "Thinking out loud"

http://myspace.com/sideeffectsmayinclude

As a result, it doesn't even really sound like a bass, but oh well...

lol, you actually named a song "I wish my grass was emo"

Silver Hammer · #15 03-08-2009, 07:43 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by kgoism

in my old band, Side Effects May Include, I played a "Lead Bass" line with a digitech whammy and Boss ODB-3 with some compression in the song, "Thinking out loud"

http://myspace.com/sideeffectsmayinclude

As a result, it doesn't even really sound like a bass, but oh well...

That was awesome. I would have guessed that was a synth player if you hadn't mentioned it. Everyone else has posted great stuff as well.

kgoism · #16 03-09-2009, 07:45 PM

thanks

it was a pain in the butt to play live though...

drcool · #17 03-10-2009, 05:25 PM

I got a Fulltone Bass Drive a couple months ago and we recently recorded one of our newer songs (actually the first song I have written) and it is the first of our songs I have used any effects.

http://www.moderndissent.com/beatendown.mp3

I also recently bought a Clone Theory chorus pedal I have plans for in a couple of our songs but we haven't been able to record those yet.

For the most part I don't use any effects on our songs but for Beaten Down I felt it needed some more balls and I think the overdrive on the bass accomplished that.

ryker888 · #18 03-10-2009, 05:47 PM

http://www.soundclick.com/bands/defa...?bandID=932262

this is the bass and drum track, with me on bass

skulletwhip · #19 03-10-2009, 10:01 PM

www.myspace.com/boheraldmusic

On the song "EyesoHok" I use fuzz, synth, whammy, a delay, tremolo/pan, and another delay. Its a fun song and a tap dancer! I use effects on the other songs but they are all poorly recorded demos.

icarussmicarus · #20 03-11-2009, 12:58 AM

myspace.com/offbeatanticsrockyourface

"Here I Am" - I use a Sansamp RBI rack unit for overdrive the whole song and then in the bridge I kick on a tonebender coloursound fuzz.

"Isolation" - I use my DD-20 Delay in the verse's and the bridge

"Feel Good Hit Of The Summer" - This is a live cover of the QOTSA song and atm my overdrive was the English Muff'n