Ambient/Post-Rock/Textural bass playing thread

[BASS YODA]

I'm looking for a good 80's BOSS CE-2 BBD style chorus pedal WITH a MIX/BLEND or HPF control... ???

May the Groove be with you.

 

[monsterthompson]

A good multi-effects unit like the Line 6 HX Effects is insane value. You get TONS of really great effects for the cost of a few pedals. One of the reasons it would be great at this stage is it lets you experiment with all different effect types, orders, parallel/series signal chains, etc.

Great points. I have seen a few TB users with lots of gear experience consolidate down to the HX products for convenience. Fewer cables, one power cable, no pedal boards, and ease of effects order arrangement. I’ve considered making that move myself but I’m still infatuated with pedals with cool art

 

[steubig]

re the ebow:

the string spacing isn't the only problem with it for bass.

ime, the power of the one battery is great for activating guitar string and high bass strings (6-string basses, manring's hyperbass) but there is not enough juice to get lower strings going. (this based on my experience with my old gray ebow, which i've had for at least 20 years.)

i thought people would like to see the new thingie. maybe it's better all around than the ebow. who knows?

 

[steubig]

pertinent to my thoughts on reverb and interesting in light of our verb conversation right now (imo):

went to hear some friends play last night (venue was in the atrium of an art museum here in l.a.; had a decent sound system). instrumentation was two tenors, acoustic bass, drums and guitar. the guitarist used chorus and reverb *all* the time (sorta post metheny?). it sounded great on his solos, but pretty much ate up a lot of space when the horn players or bass player soloed. even washed out the cymbals. it also took the grit out of his string sound.

 

[ugly_bassplayer]

pertinent to my thoughts on reverb and interesting in light of our verb conversation right now (imo):

went to hear some friends play last night (venue was in the atrium of an art museum here in l.a.; had a decent sound system). instrumentation was two tenors, acoustic bass, drums and guitar. the guitarist used chorus and reverb *all* the time (sorta post metheny?). it sounded great on his solos, but pretty much ate up a lot of space when the horn players or bass player soloed. even washed out the cymbals. it also took the grit out of his string sound.

We can gang!

Reflects my own experiences live with Reverb and other modulation FX.
Reverb eats up A LOT of frequencies and can turn things into a huge tub of mush real fast.

(pays virtual drink of choice)

 

[Spectrum]

I'm not sure lo-fi is what I need. I'm curious about the Black Hole though. Any reason why you are not using that one in your electronic act or rock band?

I just haven't gotten comfortable with the complicated controls yet. So many devices to learn, so little time. It'll get there eventually, as it can definitely do what I want.

 

[monsterthompson]

This reverb has been on my watch list for a while. The latest graphics update is super tempting.

Reverie Reverb

The Reverie is a dreamy and characterful reverb pedal. With a wide tone control you can dial in dark, cave-like repeats or clear, sharp, chiming/shimmering echoes. The pedal self-oscillates due to an internal feedback loop, creating some haunting, retro sounds. Controls are Tone, Blend...

gojira.co.uk

 

[Starthief]

re the ebow:

the string spacing isn't the only problem with it for bass.

ime, the power of the one battery is great for activating guitar string and high bass strings (6-string basses, manring's hyperbass) but there is not enough juice to get lower strings going. (this based on my experience with my old gray ebow, which i've had for at least 20 years.)

i thought people would like to see the new thingie. maybe it's better all around than the ebow. who knows?

I vaguely recall seeing some not so great reviews of the Sound Stone on bass, like it doesn't have enough force either.

I'm cautiously optimistic about the Ferrous, since instead of electromagnets it's neodymium magnets spinning around, and there were a couple of bass demos. And it occurs to me, we have a lot of mostly idle stringed instruments, including a mandolin and a lap steel, that it would probably work well with too...

 

[theunknowndude]

Regarding the multi quote about the afterneath…
I find it is quite easy to dial in. You can go as muddy or as clear as you want (has a low pass filter “tone” knob) and you can use the other knobs to make it a clear reverb, a ping pong delay, a super muddy “wash” or even just a hint of slap back / normal delay. Despite the numerous controls once you use it, it becomes clear what they do and how they interact… (I prefer what you see is what you get to digital deep diving menus etc )

 

[JES]

Hi, this might be the right place to ask, instead of opening another thread: I am looking for an ambient reverb pedal, I think.

I play in a doom/ambient metal band, where I play a lot of low sustaining notes. I feel like there is something missing in the sound. I got a chorus with (CE-2W, low rate, medium depth), that helps a bit, but I think I want a sort of blooming reverb, maybe with some shimmer thrown in, to help fill the sonic space while the guitar is riffing away. I have no experience with reverb on bass, and at the moment I play my Dingwall 5er through whatever poopy amp the rehearsal space has available (though I do have a SVT stack, which I will use once we finally got our own space again), and ofcoure some distortion and/or fuzz, usually a Rattler Bass and a Acapulco Gold.

So, any suggestions? I'm eyeing the Meris Mercury 7, but I'd love to hear any of your experiences with reverb on bass.

Hey there. During the pandemic I made this thread which may be of use: https://www.talkbass.com/threads/th...rse-ventris-rv-500-elle-helix-and-h9.1471221/

The question is what you want to do with it. I never use it for fast playing. Reverb always makes busy basslines worse. But for texture big reverbs can sound great. You need EQ to make space for bandmates (cut lows, cut highs, etc). For more melodic or articulate basslines — think mostly quarter notes or longer, with maybe some eights for articulation, a nice Hall sound with a low mix % can sound good. You need to use some predelay to keep bass articulation. I use Eventide’s Hall algo for this for convenience (Blackhole would also work, which is more like the Afterneath), but my favourite is the Neunaber Wet, which has a nice low cut on the verb and can go from just a little to a spacetime vortex.

Musical examples (technically not a bass but a bass part):

Bass drums vox:

.

Note that when the distortion comes in I kill the verb. Ditto for use of delay.

Bass with guitar and drums:



Again, when I have distortion going, no reverb.

Also, don’t sell delay short. In a mix delay, with eq to cut out space for others, works well and is more smeary sounding thanks to other instruments. You can also use diffusion to smear them more but not go full mass-of-sound reverb. As far as I know, Afterneath and Blackhole are both technically diffusion delays with multiple delay lines.

Edit, sorry for chonky Bandcamp links. Still learning the new system here.

Also, for “bigness” in a mix (again, works against fast lines) a distortion or fuzz with low end can also work well. My VFE Woodchipper is my secret weapon. But too much will anger the sound engineer.

 

[ugly_bassplayer]

Hey there. During the pandemic I made this thread which may be of use: https://www.talkbass.com/threads/th...rse-ventris-rv-500-elle-helix-and-h9.1471221/

The question is what you want to do with it. I never use it for fast playing. Reverb always makes busy basslines worse. But for texture big reverbs can sound great. You need EQ to make space for bandmates (cut lows, cut highs, etc). For more melodic or articulate basslines — think mostly quarter notes or longer, with maybe some eights for articulation, a nice Hall sound with a low mix % can sound good. You need to use some predelay to keep bass articulation. I use Eventide’s Hall algo for this for convenience (Blackhole would also work, which is more like the Afterneath), but my favourite is the Neunaber Wet, which has a nice low cut on the verb and can go from just a little to a spacetime vortex.

Musical examples (technically not a bass but a bass part):

Bass drums vox:

.

Note that when the distortion comes in I kill the verb. Ditto for use of delay.

Bass with guitar and drums:



Again, when I have distortion going, no reverb.

Also, don’t sell delay short. In a mix delay, with eq to cut out space for others, works well and is more smeary sounding thanks to other instruments. You can also use diffusion to smear them more but not go full mass-of-sound reverb. As far as I know, Afterneath and Blackhole are both technically diffusion delays with multiple delay lines.

Edit, sorry for chonky Bandcamp links. Still learning the new system here.

Also, for “bigness” in a mix (again, works against fast lines) a distortion or fuzz with low end can also work well. My VFE Woodchipper is my secret weapon. But too much will anger the sound engineer.

For me, it’s always delay live, never reverb on bass.
Much easier to deal with.
When you factor in sound check time, room sizes, resonant frequencies and many other variables reverb is too much of a hassle live for electric bass.
live simple is the best

IMO, ime, ymmv etc…..

 

[steubig]

i love gated and reverse reverbs, but they read more as unnatural effects or noise.

 

[ugly_bassplayer]

they read more as unnatural effects or noise.

Yes please!!

 

[monsterthompson]

New release today, the last from my collab with ambient guitarist Matt Borghi. This one has 7 shorter excerpts from all of the songs from our three-album longform series Fragments of Distance. I didn't really use the synths on this, for the most part. Most of the textures are the 6-string through the big board.

We had a blast doing this, and Matt's kinda well-known (he's been doing this for quite some time). He's given me a lot of pointers about promoting this kind of stuff, and he's got a pretty big BC follower list, so hopefully this is going to move me forward a bit. It was interesting doing things this way, with the excerpts album. I went through and did some deep listening to the longforms, looking for the perfect 10 minutes in each, and as a listening experience, it's quite different from just listening to the longforms. Hope ya dig it.

It's been a really productive year with this, the Flood album (which got some good critical reception) and I already have my first longform solo album ready to go, which I'll drop in the winter. Between that and the recent changes going on in the US over the past 2 weeks, it's nice to just feel good again for a bit.

Just getting around to listening. I like what I'm hearing.

 

[theunknowndude]

So my originals groove metal band is also becoming somewhat of a covers band…
Have about 7 cover down already… but today was fun, brought the mininova to practice and did a cover of static x “cold”. Sounds pretty epic through a bass amp

 

[Starthief]

Personally, I don't really play "bass part" stuff on my bass. It's either droney, or slow and meandering. So I often use huge reverbs for sustain (and sometimes to blunt/slow the attack as well). I also have no qualms about using distortion with reverb -- distortion first is generally less of a mess, but if you're very careful about what you play, distortion after can work.

Latest thing I recorded last night with the Miezo:

I had a previous recording of a really noisy gnarly improv on Elmyra 2, which had some weird dissonant intervals in it. All the faster events in the recording are due to beat frequencies hitting its fuzz stage. I wanted to dub in a part that fit with it, and finding notes was a bit of a search... I found that A# on the lowest string, A# and B on the 3rd string, and then F# or G above that worked out. Lots of potential for things to clash there though. I used bx_Aura, a big ambient reverb plugin that has its own drive stage, but assigned the decay time to an expression pedal so I could cancel the reverb when playing a new note, and then hold it as long as 95 seconds afterward. (I also put an LFO on the room size because the built-in modulation wasn't drunk and woozy enough.) It all worked out pretty well. It's in a weird space between sometimes sounding like a bass, sometimes like a synth, and sometimes blending in so much with what the Elmyra was doing that it's almost not noticeable.

 

[steubig]

@Starthief

if i’m understanding you correctly, what you’re talking about is being recorded in studio/computer, not live. is that correct?

if so, imo, that’s different from live with other live instruments.

 

[lordradish]

Personally, I don't really play "bass part" stuff on my bass. It's either droney, or slow and meandering. So I often use huge reverbs for sustain (and sometimes to blunt/slow the attack as well). I also have no qualms about using distortion with reverb -- distortion first is generally less of a mess, but if you're very careful about what you play, distortion after can work.

Latest thing I recorded last night with the Miezo:

I had a previous recording of a really noisy gnarly improv on Elmyra 2, which had some weird dissonant intervals in it. All the faster events in the recording are due to beat frequencies hitting its fuzz stage. I wanted to dub in a part that fit with it, and finding notes was a bit of a search... I found that A# on the lowest string, A# and B on the 3rd string, and then F# or G above that worked out. Lots of potential for things to clash there though. I used bx_Aura, a big ambient reverb plugin that has its own drive stage, but assigned the decay time to an expression pedal so I could cancel the reverb when playing a new note, and then hold it as long as 95 seconds afterward. (I also put an LFO on the room size because the built-in modulation wasn't drunk and woozy enough.) It all worked out pretty well. It's in a weird space between sometimes sounding like a bass, sometimes like a synth, and sometimes blending in so much with what the Elmyra was doing that it's almost not noticeable.

I'm trying to actually get more musical with my pedalboard bass stuff, as I feel I've exhausted the drony stuff and it's not holding my interest like it once was. Plus, in terms of releases, it's hard to stand out because so much of it is similar (and even AI generated), and often isn't done with any musical knowledge at all. That's okay if one doesn't have it (I suspect the majority of drone-only artists have very little musical knowledge), but I do, and I need to use it more. I don't know if that means me playing more 'bass stuff', but it definitely means having more melodic and harmonic elements than I do in my drony stuff.

 

[monsterthompson]

static x “cold”

Fantastic

 

[monsterthompson]