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Ambient/Post-Rock/Textural bass playing thread
- Thread starter ttasselm
- Start date
Oooh, when you do that let me know.
I did some more work on my recent track "Lozenge" - I thought my "raw" mix had reverb but I was a bit inebriated by the time I was finishing up and I think it really is the raw tracks! The new one has Moogerfooger delay on the bass and RE-20 Space Echo pedal on the Sirin - I was going to put stereo Moogerfooger phaser on the Subharmonicon but it didn't really fit, so left that and the DFAM clean. Not my best work but it was a fun experiment and I think the Subharmonicon part gives it kind of a melancholy feel...
LOL - yeah, it's kind of ridiculous to bury the pure Alembic sound under effects - during the pandemic I came to really appreciate the clean sound of this bass. But it does well with effects too, and also gives me 24 frets (something I don't have on any of my other basses, well the Les Paul Triumph but you need to play thumb position to get up there!) and the low B.You turned that Alembic into the prettiest and most expensive tb303 ever
I tend to let the Subharmonicon lead - it supplies colors that I don't think I could come up with otherwise, plus I appreciate the randomness of it. Definitely not an easy synth to make do what you want/expect! So far my two main flavors depend on the attack and sustain - either crisp notes, or letting them kind of slide in and out of each other like on this recent track.
- Mar 8, 2011
- 12,232
- 51,187
- Disclosures
- Authorized greenboy designs builder/Owner of BNA Audio
I somewhat regret not trying to integrate the Subharmonicon into my eurorack more, but the window was closing to get to return it from where’re I bought it. The few tracks I got out of it that I liked, I liked a lot. Might borrow a buddy’s SubH and give it another go at some point
It doesn't seem too difficult. You just need to set up a Zoia keyboard module and map the midi notes to the clips in Ableton (MIDI button on top left). Unfortunately, I haven't found a quick way to map colors by column from Zoia to Ableton. I think I need to either have multiple keyboards all colored by row, or create a page of UI buttons and map them to a second page with a Zoia midi keyboard module.
dunno, to me it’s just string as oscillator (and a really good one at that).
I don't think I ever realized before that Trevor Dunn and Mike Patton were in the Melvins…
The crossover work with Fantomas was where the Patton connection came in. Dunn was part of both bands. The doc covered their work with Jello Biafra and Big Business, and several others. It was overwhelming to follow the history of who they worked with and toured with and the albums produced. Buzz is a songwriting machine. They had over 400 songs in 2016. They toured like mad, even doing 50 states + DC in 51 days. Doom, sludge, alt, punk, noise. They are truly one of a kind.
Everything seems difficult to me on this pedal, other than making the most basic effects.
The bass sound in your video reminds me of a brighter version of the sound in this track.
Also, this video is fantastic.
That's a great way to think about it - and the Octavius Squeezer setting makes it a square wave (fuzz) through filter being manipulated by an envelope follower which also seems to be connected to an LFO that gets wider as the envelope lessens. I'm tempted to try and recreate it with Moogerfoogers but I don't think I have enough wall-warts!
That's awesome - never heard that track nor seen the video - might have to try and cover it with a friend who plays turntables - unfortunately he doesn't have them right now.
Give them a listen. They've got some hidden gems. They often straddle a line between Stabbing Westward and Alice In Chains. God Lives Underwater was a band that caught my ears when I was still a metalhead, and they got me thinking about synth sounds.
That was around the time I was also obsessed with Prong's Rude Awakening album.
What I did:
1. Make a row of UI buttons in the first row and color them. These will align with track colors in Live.
2. Make a keyboard (aqua) and extend it to the end of the page. This allows for 32 steps. It might be easier to start with fewer while patching connections.
3. Add a MIDI Out module that connects to the keyboard module. Once I patched the connections, then I moved the MIDI Out to Page 2, and then I extended the keyboard to 32 notes.
4. Set up 8 tracks in Live and color code then to align with the Zoia header row I started with. The tracks can be any combo of audio/midi tracks. The matching grid is 8 columns and 4 rows.
5. Hit the MIDI map button in Live and then map each column of notes on Zoia to each column in Live (click a cell in Live and then the corresponding button on Zoia).
Dude, I was already planning on checking out the Melvins video, now I've been listening to God Lives Underwater on Spotify and a live show on YouTube from Las Vegas in '95 with an mediocre audience (some of the synth bass parts almost sound like they could be played by a bassist, but it's "just" keyboards?):
I think I only ever heard one song by Prong, it was on a compilation that I loved called "Invalid Link Removed" with a monkey seemingly doing that to a zebra on the cover - it had Prong's "Another Worldly Device" - it also had Fight, that weird phase of Bad Brains without H.R., a remake of "Institutionalized" by Suicidal Tendencies (by Suicidal Tendencies), "Killing in the Name Of" - and of course sound bites from Ren & Stimpy!
Semi silly question… cos I’m running out of room on my board…
Can you have ambient without reverb or delay?…
The only “ambient makers” I guess I would have would be octave, sy1, chorus and wah unless I removed a few dirt pedals… hmmm
Can you have ambient without reverb or delay?…
The only “ambient makers” I guess I would have would be octave, sy1, chorus and wah unless I removed a few dirt pedals… hmmm
I think drones are ambient in nature, so something like the EHX Superego is a useful "ambient" tool.
In any case we're way beyond the old conventional definition of "ambient" in this thread lol
In any case we're way beyond the old conventional definition of "ambient" in this thread lol
I think verb and delay are more essential to ambient than dirt, but then again I'm the old school ambient guy in these parts.
