Ambient/Post-Rock/Textural bass playing thread

[ugly_bassplayer]

Not asynchronous, but there's also the classic Master of Microtiming

Microtiming in a Riff from Metallica’s “Master of Puppets”

Ok. Personally, i would have invested my time elsewhere....but hey....that's just me.

Millisecond time measurementd on one of the sloppiest drummers ever......mmmmkay......

I'll show myself out.

 

[WestyBassBob]

I do not. He described it in an interview in Keyboard Magazine. Probably the June 1989 issue?

I'll have to look through his catalog. It doesn't sound like anything that he would have produced on the Ambient series (except for maybe that horrible Ambient 3). If nothing else it will give me a reason to listen to him again.

 

[monsterthompson]

Ok. Personally, i would have invested my time elsewhere....but hey....that's just me.

Millisecond time measurementd on one of the sloppiest drummers ever......mmmmkay......

I'll show myself out.

 

[ugly_bassplayer]

View attachment 4209185

For 1986 I'll take Slayer's Reign in Blood over Master of Muppets a million times over.

(Said with McBain aka Ranier Wolfcastle accent and throughs grenade into the audience)

 

[monsterthompson]

Oh man.

 

[Bob_Ross]

Anyone of you synth heads have any awesome 808 bass synth patches???

It's been so long since I've used it that I can't even remember which of my ROMplers I originally got it from, but somewhere in my MIDI library I have a sample of an orchestral bass drum (Gran Casa) that has served as a very convincing 808 Kick in the past.

 

[monsterthompson]

Polyend Tracker is developing a horizontal sequencing mode in addition to the vertical. Interesting firmware update pending.

 

[ugly_bassplayer]

It's been so long since I've used it that I can't even remember which of my ROMplers I originally got it from, but somewhere in my MIDI library I have a sample of an orchestral bass drum (Gran Casa) that has served as a very convincing 808 Kick in the past.

I really (really) dig 808 bass lines made with the drum kicks.
Sooooo thick and heavy.

 

[Bob_Ross]

I really (really) dig 808 bass lines made with the drum kicks.
Sooooo thick and heavy.

I've done something similar with an octave worth of timpani samples...it sounded pretty cool, but I always thought the real appeal would come from watching someone perform the part on a dozen actual kettledrums.

 

[ugly_bassplayer]

I've done something similar with an octave worth of timpani samples...it sounded pretty cool, but I always thought the real appeal would come from watching someone perform the part on a dozen actual kettledrums.

I'd definitely pay to hear that.

 

[ugly_bassplayer]

@Bob_Ross
This is the kind of thing I freakin love when talking about 808 bass lines with the kick.
(I’m also a huge Kendrick Fan, but DAMN is far from being his best record....my 2 cents. )

 

[monsterthompson]

Anyone of you synth heads have any awesome 808 bass synth patches???
Any info would be greatly appreciated.

(I’m talking about using the pitched bass drum sound of the classic 808 as synth bass tone.)

not off the top of my head. I’m using Native Inst TRK-01 which must have something in it...

@Bob_Ross
This is the kind of thing I freakin love when talking about 808 bass lines with the kick.
(I’m also a huge Kendrick Fan, but DAMN is far from being his best record....my 2 cents. )

Thoughts on the first bass/kick sounds in this video intro...

 

[ugly_bassplayer]

not off the top of my head. I’m using Native Inst TRK-01 which must have something in it...


Thoughts on the first bass/kick sounds in this video intro...

They are pretty dry, they sound straight out of the drum machine.
Next step is pitch, drive & saturation to make it « bass » like.
(Saturation and drive to add harmonic content. ESSENTIAL part of the process)
Adjust filters and EQ also, very important. (Fundamentals of the note, cutoff points etc...)
Also adjusting the « kick » attack. It can go from straight up pitched kick drums to no attack filter sweeps.
Sounds easy but its not. Like, pretty much everything in music. Hehe.

Édit: just listened to the entire video. He theoretically makes it work, but it sounds....how do I put it « off ».
You can definitely hear that this guy does not make hip hop beats.
I’ve heard dudes make BANGERS with just an MPC and one 808 kick sample.
Again, I have a hard time putting into words my clear train of thought. (Life long struggle right there)

My 2 cents.

 

[monsterthompson]

.

They are pretty dry, they sound straight out of the drum machine.
Next step is pitch, drive & saturation to make it « bass » like.
(Saturation and drive to add harmonic content. ESSENTIAL part of the process)
Adjust filters and EQ also, very important. (Fundamentals of the note, cutoff points etc...)
Also adjusting the « kick » attack. It can go from straight up pitched kick drums to no attack filter sweeps.
Sounds easy but its not. Like, pretty much everything in music. Hehe.

There’s a deeper feature or two you probably didn’t see. You can link the kick to the root for the key of the track. I need to explore if that can change pitches. I’m sure it can since there are per-step parameter locks and pitch adjustments. There are several samples to select from for your kick, and I’d assume imports are possible. There’s also a drum synth and you can blend two drum engines (say sample and synth). There’s also FX sends to internal delay and reverb.



Thinking about my next modular rig step. I’m imagining the Erica or Frap sequencing module in a skiff, along with a few of the Erica “pico” modules. I can get some simple drum sounds going and still control my oscillators and filters.

 

[ugly_bassplayer]

.


There’s a deeper feature or two you probably didn’t see. You can link the kick to the root for the key of the track. I need to explore if that can change pitches. I’m sure it can since there are per-step parameter locks and pitch adjustments. There are several samples to select from for your kick, and I’d assume imports are possible. There’s also a drum synth and you can blend two drum engines (say sample and synth). There’s also FX sends to internal delay and reverb.



Thinking about my next modular rig step. I’m imagining the Erica or Frap sequencing module in a skiff, along with a few of the Erica “pico” modules. I can get some simple drum sounds going and still control my oscillators and filters.

Just edited OG post with more info.
Ill get in the lab this week and try some stuff. Something more interactive than stacking plugins and drawing in midi sequences.
What I was definitely hoping for was a MicroFreak 808 patch.....

Atta boy, get that BMW to sing!!!

 

[ugly_bassplayer]

Cheers, more analog synth/noise (i hate that term) goodness/badness/aweful stuff.
2 trax to attack the senses. Make your neighbors hate you.
Stay safe everyone.
More stuff brewing, but not ready yet ( tape manipulation sampler stuff, more solo bass.....)

 

[emjazz]

Cheers, more analog synth/noise (i hate that term) goodness/badness/aweful stuff.
2 trax to attack the senses. Make your neighbors hate you.
Stay safe everyone.
More stuff brewing, but not ready yet ( tape manipulation sampler stuff, more solo bass.....)

Hell yes!! You're on a roll!

 

[ugly_bassplayer]

Hell yes!! You're on a roll!

Solo Bass stuff is on hold for a couple weeks.
Both my EADG tuned bass' unavailable.
One is in the shop for a tune up and a much overdue shielding job and the other one after 20 years of gigs and abuse the trussrod nut gave it's final 1/16" of a turn and is completely stripped. Waiting for a replacement....not until late April.

My band is meeting up tomorrow to get legal papers to practice and book studio time for album #3. So pick playing woodshed time!!!!

Everything breaks....period.

 

[Bob_Ross]

Found this lovely article in yesterday's New York Times, thought some of you might find it enjoyable (full text quoted below)

Invalid Link Removed

A Lego guitar and a “war tuba” are among the highlights of this year’s Guthman Musical Instrument Competition.
By Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim

• Published March 12, 2021Updated March 19, 2021

What possesses someone to invent a new instrument? Ask the finalists of this year’s Link Removed, and you get different answers — among them boredom, curiosity, frustration.

The creative impulse is often sparked by a question: What if a piano could sing? How does a guitar learn to play microtones? Can a keyboard instrument be taught to swoop like a cello? Some of the entrants had to widen their skill sets to encompass woodcarving or soldering. One sought help from his plumber; another from his Lego-obsessed 7-year-old.

In a normal year, finalists get to see their creations come to life in front of live audiences. Though the annual competition, organized by the Georgia Institute of Technology, took place online this year, videos submitted by the contestants have allowed viewers to dip into a world teeming with ingenuity. On Friday, Link Removed.

The guitarist Kaki King, one of the judges, said in an interview that it had been well-nigh impossible to compare and rank entries that included a harp-guitar hybrid and an electronic khipu based on an ancient Andean encryption method using knotted strings. King said that what ultimately guided her was the tactile allure and magnetism of an invention.

“As players, writer and composers,” she said, “you have that desire to put your hand on something, and that determines the measure of its worth.”

Here are five highlights from the competition, brand-new members of the huge family of instruments.

Segulharpa
Ulfur Hansson (Reykjavik, Iceland)

The design for Ulfur Hansson’s electromagnetic harp came to him during a monotonous class in college. He logged into a computer graphics program and drew a doodle: a circular line looping inward, gathering in a heart-like shape at the center.

“It was definitely vision before sound,” Hansson said in a phone interview. That coiled diagram, which emerged from a mathematical ratio, now adorns the flat wooden surface of a shieldlike structure that conceals 24 strings made to vibrate by electromagnets. The magnets can be activated by keys carved into the front panel or remotely by computer, releasing an ethereal hum, like a ghostly organ.

Because the strings can vibrate either at their fundamental frequencies or at one of the harmonics of their overtone series, the segulharpa is “kind of chaotic,” said Hansson, who has carved four of the instruments and solders the electronics by hand. “It’s always evolving as you play. You can feel that it’s shaping itself.”

Electromagnetic Piano
David Shea, Monica Lim and Mirza Ceyzar (Melbourne, Australia)

Experimental pianists have long toyed with hand-held electromagnetic devices called EBows that make the piano’s strings vibrate without direct contact. Prototypes exist of pianos with a built-in electromagnetic component, but their size and expense keep them out of reach of most performers.

The composer David Shea dreamed of an instrument that would turn any concert grand into an electromagnetic piano capable of producing both traditional sounds and the evenly sustained drones of electronic music. “I thought, could there be a traveling version that would be modular and could be constantly adapted by anyone playing it?” he said in a video interview with Monica Lim, a fellow pianist-composer who helped shape the design.

Their breakthrough idea was a mini computer for each note that hovers above the string without touching it. A pianist can play both the electromagnetic component and the traditional keyboard at the same time — “a dialogue,” Shea said, “between the old and the new” — or perform in duet with another person (or a computer) making the drones sing. The device is portable and easy to install.

“It’s more like a layer that sits on top of the other, more percussive sound activated by the keyboard,” Lin said.

Microtonal Lego Guitar
Atlas Cogulu, Tolgahan Cogulu and Rusen Can Acet (Istanbul)

For years, Tolgahan Cogulu has been teaching the guitar to play new notes. “I love the guitar,” he said speaking in a video interview recently. “However, I cannot play my own music.”

Turkish music relies on microtones, while the traditional guitar has frets that arrange pitch according to Western tuning systems. In 2008, Cogulu designed a microtonal guitar with movable frets, but it has remained a specialist instrument.

One day his young son Atlas made a Lego replica of his father’s microtonal fretboard. Cogulu immediately realized its potential. “It is a miracle idea,” he said. “It’s the most popular toy in the world, and it’s the most popular instrument. And if you combine them it becomes a microtonal guitar — because you can move the frets on the Lego studs.”

Rusan Can Acet, an engineer and graduate student at Istanbul Technical University, came up with the idea to 3D-print a base plate for the fretboard. The Lego pieces are snapped into place, and a set of 3D-printed movable frets are attached on top. Production was almost laughably cheap, Cogulu said, and only briefly halted when they had used up all the thin single square pieces in Atlas’s Lego collection that are essential to their design.

In lessons with his students, Cogulu realized he had hit on a tool for teaching music theory. With its movable frets, the Lego microtonal guitar makes visible the changing intervals in various Western, Turkish and Balinese modes. Cogulu and his team are making the 3D-printable files available to anyone for a modest contribution. He also plans to build fully assembled versions that he hopes will be useful in music schools.

Evolano
Clark Battle (United States)

“I’m basically an unreasonable cellist with guitar envy,” Clark Battle said. As an improviser, he admired the chordal flexibility of a piano or guitar. But, as he explained in an email exchange, he wasn’t willing to give up the flexible pitch of his chosen instrument, the cello. He began to wonder what a piano might look like that allowed a musician to vibrate and slide notes — as you can on the cello.

The result is the Evolano — an “evolved piano.” The instrument has keys, action and hammers like a piano, aligned along a central ruler. The strings move with the keys, sliding over a curved fret that determines pitch. Chords are played much in the traditional way of a keyboard, by pressing multiple keys. But by moving the hands, the entire chord structure can travel smoothly, as in a cello glissando.

Battle said that his study of kung fu had impressed upon him the importance “of honoring the natural vertical symmetry of the human body.” As for the sound, he added, “I honestly had no expectation for the tonal aspects of the instrument. Since there’s no precedent for the tonality it would sound like whatever it did.”

War Tuba
Steve Parker (Austin, Tex.)

Steve Parker’s musical instruments make no sound. Instead, this trombonist repurposes brass instruments as sculptural listening devices. His inspirations are the early-20th-century military sound locaters — some called war tubas — that were used to detect approaching enemy aircraft before the invention of radar. Parker’s instruments exude a similar gangly menace, with yards of Seussian tubing ending in the flared bells of trombones and sousaphones.

Parker’s devices — some wearable, some attached to a gallery wall — become part of compositions that play with the dimensionality of sound. They also connect music with aggressive modes of listening like surveillance and espionage.

“They are picture frames — but they are more than that,” Parker said in a video interview from the American Academy in Rome, where he is currently a fellow. “They not only select and amplify certain sounds; they also resonate at certain frequencies. Because the instrument vibrates when the sound hits it, it harmonizes it in a subtle way.”

Parker says the effect on the listener is disorienting. He likes how the repurposed marching band instruments — rich in associations with warfare, protests and modern gladiator sports — can be transformed into tools for communal listening. And he enjoys the “bit of bricolage” that goes into disassembling instruments and soldering their components with copper pipes from the hardware store. In the process, he said, “I’ve become quite friendly with my plumber.”

 

[Real Soon]

If you like saturated 808 sounds, on the That Sound website, one of the packs, I think Dark Chill or Future, has a pile of them, and they do indeed sound great both as is and processed further, couched in ambient space, etc. It's stuff any decent sound designer could do, but if you'd rather focus your time on getting the hardware ready for performance, they're rock solid.

I, too, am a fan of well-made 808 bass tracks... and though it's definitely nothing like a real 808, I managed to get a pretty decent Jupiter-esque subby, punch-decay sort of patch worked out on my C4, too. Fun when I'm at a jam session and need extra punch on the fly.