At practice Monday I was like "what's wrong with my sound?" I turned the threshold up so I was just barely hitting the compressor and then I was like "ahhhh, less compression, that's it."
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Ambient/Post-Rock/Textural bass playing thread
- Thread starter ttasselm
- Start date
At practice Monday I was like "what's wrong with my sound?" I turned the threshold up so I was just barely hitting the compressor and then I was like "ahhhh, less compression, that's it."
I feel like this is music for one-eye aliens to bop around to on their UFO. Or maybe that's more about me.
- Mar 8, 2011
- 12,232
- 51,187
- Disclosures
- Authorized greenboy designs builder/Owner of BNA Audio
as always, i reserve the right to neither confirm nor deny until i see a recent photo.
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you canadians get the good sh!t, apparently.
Ha! I’ll take it
get a room guys.
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I was doing reverse delay into reverb and then into another reverb recently and got some interesting (to me at least) pulsating weirdness. It didn't give me the slow swell of sound though (at least the way I had it set up at the time). I want as many flavors of weirdness as possible.
I'd agree with delay being more important than verb (both are certainly important). That's because the delay is repeating your strong signal, whereas verb is just continuing a tail.
Digital delays are great for this if you want the clarity, and analog's better for the deteriorated but sustain thing.
FWIW, my question isn't asking about a band context. For the foreseeable future it's just me playing to my cats and making the occasional amateurish (at best) recording that no one wants to hear.
Understood. This kinda stuff, I think, is generally best with solo stuff. I find the rare times that I break out my big board in a band setting, 99 percent of what I normally do doesn't come through.
at least you have cats to play to.
Careful or I might start posting pictures of them.
Been experimenting with my bass signal routing. I used to run the purple Sol preamp in the middle of the chain with dirt pedals going into it like an “amp” front end. Now I’m hitting it directly from the bass and sending the signal into the dirt pedals after it, then the comp and cab sim.
The Sol preamp has multiple outs so I’ve tweaked the routing. Aside from the balanced and line level outs, the Sol has a Ch A, Ch B, and Combined instrument level output. The A and B outputs only pass signal when engaged, and the pedal allows them to engage simultaneously. The Combined output will pass the A and/or B when engaged, but will still pass the incoming signal when bypassed (like any normal pedal). So what’s the big deal?
I’m running the Combined signal into distortion and fuzz pedals, then a compressor, then a cab sim, into the mixer. I’m also routing Channel B into my stereo BIM delay (set mostly wet) into the mixer.
At the mixer level I’m sending the delay into the BAM stereo reverb unit. I’m also sending the Combined (non delay) signal into the reverb so the two bass signals “blend” a bit better.
So, why? Distortion aside, I’m finding that I can better EQ the signal going into to the delay to get the delay effect I’m after. I can cut some bass and push the mids. It takes some tweaking to balance it all, but the end result has been inspiring.
Edit - One extra benefit of this is that the Channel B can be switched on/off by foot, which controls the signal going to the BIM Delay. The BIM doesn't have a footswitch turn on/off (though you could do it over MIDI).
The Sol preamp has multiple outs so I’ve tweaked the routing. Aside from the balanced and line level outs, the Sol has a Ch A, Ch B, and Combined instrument level output. The A and B outputs only pass signal when engaged, and the pedal allows them to engage simultaneously. The Combined output will pass the A and/or B when engaged, but will still pass the incoming signal when bypassed (like any normal pedal). So what’s the big deal?
I’m running the Combined signal into distortion and fuzz pedals, then a compressor, then a cab sim, into the mixer. I’m also routing Channel B into my stereo BIM delay (set mostly wet) into the mixer.
At the mixer level I’m sending the delay into the BAM stereo reverb unit. I’m also sending the Combined (non delay) signal into the reverb so the two bass signals “blend” a bit better.
So, why? Distortion aside, I’m finding that I can better EQ the signal going into to the delay to get the delay effect I’m after. I can cut some bass and push the mids. It takes some tweaking to balance it all, but the end result has been inspiring.
Edit - One extra benefit of this is that the Channel B can be switched on/off by foot, which controls the signal going to the BIM Delay. The BIM doesn't have a footswitch turn on/off (though you could do it over MIDI).
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Others have already mentioned a bunch of good suggestions, but one of the tricks I found to help achieve both of ^^^those aims (having swells hanging around for a looong time, and being able to layer a new swell while the other is still going and not screw up that other swell) is to have two volume pedals, and also either a separate amp (or else a splitting-and-summing array within your signal path). Oh, yeah, and also to have a crap-ton of delays or reverbs in series.
One of the volume pedals is before the input to your first delay-based effect, for your basic run-of-the-mill volume pedal swells (though note it can be very helpful to have any distortion/compression/filtration/pitch shift gizmos before this first volume pedal).
The output of that first -- hopefully of many -- delay-based effect gets split, one output going as usual to your main amp, the other output eventually making its way to a second amp (or summed back into your main path at a later point). And it's somewhere in this auxilliary signal path after (at least) the first delay-based effect but before the last delay-based effect that you want to insert the second volume pedal.
Because that second volume pedal allows you to do two things: 1) You can use it to shut off all these ridiculously looong ambience tails that you easily generate with two or three or four delays or reverbs in series; and 2) you can take the loooong swell that you generated with the first volume pedal into the first delay-based effect and then swell that into the subsequent delay-based effect(s) such that while delays #2, 3, and 4 are still swelling, delay #1 is eagarly awaiting more new input, so you can layer new swells without (necessarily) feeding them into the split ambience chain. Volume pedal #2 functions almost like an Aux Send on a mixing console, and you use it to swell already-swelling signal into a signal chain of additional ambience. The trick is to not use the two pedals simultaneously, but rather use one then the other.
Make sense? Might help if I drew a diagram. I'll get right on that...
I tried to get something along the lines of what you were after. I used a delay for multiple repeats in a reverb. The reverb keeps getting trigged by the repeats so the already lengthy tail keeps going. A little distortion up front to help with the sustain.
I had a sound I was happier with going into my monitors, but once I started recording direct something got lost in translation and I had to adjust.
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Edit - There's also a setting or two on the Empress EchoSystem you might like. I linked to the Triggered Mulit Swell time stamp (around 2:13). Listening to this almost makes me wonder if I should reconsider selling my EchoSystem...
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