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Ambient/Post-Rock/Textural bass playing thread

#19,461
lordradish said:
26326284[/URL], member: 76495"]Can't you just play quieter? ;)
(ducks and runs for the exit)
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I dig both quiet and ear splitting loud gigs.

Not many quiet ones these days though.
I sooooooo don’t miss jazz standards in a suit at the wedding cocktail. Drunk brides are epic though.
:)

images (2).jpg
 
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#19,462
ugly_bassplayer said:
I dig both quiet and ear splitting loud gigs.

Not many quiet ones these days though.
I sooooooo don’t miss jazz standards in a suit at the wedding cocktail. Drunk brides are epic though.
:)
Click to expand...
I'm actually playing in a jazz sextet now, but just for fun. Have vibes and a ripping' B3 player and my drummer used to room with Greg Osby back at Berklee and used to play with Mulgrew Miller, so I'm the odd man out, here. But having a blast, especially when I bring the Mingus.
 
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#19,463
lordradish said:
26326563[/URL], member: 76495"]I'm actually playing in a jazz sextet now, but just for fun. Have vibes and a ripping' B3 player and my drummer used to room with Greg Osby back at Berklee and used to play with Mulgrew Miller, so I'm the odd man out, here. But having a blast, especially when I bring the Mingus.
Click to expand...
you guys pull off some Mingus?? damn, what tunes??
Big Mulgrew fan also, who’s the drummer maybe I’ve heard on some of his records
 
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#19,464
ugly_bassplayer said:
you guys pull off some Mingus?? damn, what tunes??
Click to expand...
Right now just a meager Pork Pie Hat... but I play the head on the sixer, so it's fun. We also do Nostalgia in Times Square, which is easy. My goal is to get em to play "Free Cell Block F, 'Tis Nazi USA". That one has a lot of notes.
I'm also bringing in the Freddie Hubbard, Red Clay and Little Sunflower. Milt Jackson did a great job on Little Sunflower on one of his 70's albums, so I figured the vibist would dig it. Also bringing in some Zappa on the next round.

Although I'm not a fan of Yellowjackets (or 80's fusion in general), the drummer brought in Rush Hour. That Haslip line's gonna give me a run for my money.
 
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#19,465
lordradish said:
26326587[/URL], member: 76495"]Right now just a meager Pork Pie Hat... but I play the head on the sixer, so it's fun. We also do Nostalgia in Times Square, which is easy. My goal is to get em to play "Free Cell Block F, 'Tis Nazi USA". That one has a lot of notes.
I'm also bringing in the Freddie Hubbard, Red Clay and Little Sunflower. Milt Jackson did a great job on Little Sunflower on one of his 70's albums, so I figured the vibist would dig it. Also bringing in some Zappa on the next round.

Although I'm not a fan of Yellowjackets (or 80's fusion in general), the drummer brought in Rush Hour. That Haslip line's gonna give me a run for my money.
Click to expand...
Awesome, I’d really like to hear some jams from your band.
Any Mingus IMO is crazy hard to pull off, my pork pie hat tips to you guys

how about fables of faubus next
;)

I really like the live trio records of Mulgrew with Kariem Riggins and Derrick Hodges.
 
#19,466
ugly_bassplayer said:
Awesome, I’d really like to hear some jams from your band.
Any Mingus IMO is crazy hard to pull off, my pork pie hat tips to you guys

how about fables of faubus next
;)

I really like the live trio records of Mulgrew with Kariem Riggins and Derrick Hodges.
Click to expand...
I think Fables is gonna make it in there, too.

When I send this one to the guys, I wonder if they'll bite. I sure ain't playing the head on it.
 
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#19,473
Thanks! I was happy with how it turned out, though overdoing reverb is the most ambient cliche ever :D

AudioThing Fog Convolver has a confusingly named "pitch" control for the impulse response. I originally had it at 8X but it was killing my CPU and I had to back off a little. I also used some fadeout so the reverb tails were only somewhat ridiculous.

I'd never used it for slow-attack reverb before, but now that I know how well it works I'll definitely come back to that.
 
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#19,474
steubig said:
@monsterthompson gave the interfaces (and thanks!).

after being in the modular/semi-modular world for about six months now, i’m not sure that i would want to do the bass into modular thing—even though this is something that i had pondered doing for a few years.

not sure i can adequately articulate why (and it may be more about my limitations than anything), but i’m not sure you’re gonna really get a lot that is going to be conducive to bass playing. effects, yes, but pedals already exist that do most of what we want. imo, the magic of modular synths (and other synths) is modifying oscillators (either through another oscillator or some sort of lfo/slew, etc.) and i’m not really sure one can transfer that to a note from a bass. even triggering and following pitch accurately is problematic. @JES seems to be starting on his research for that.

i have a feeling some other more knowledgeable folks will chime in on this.
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Bob_Ross said:
My interest and experience with synthesis developed way back when your only choices were analog, many of which were "modular" just cause there weren't too many other ways of doing things, and where every synthesizer had CV and Gate/Trigger i/o. So perhaps I was already predisposed to wanting or expecting this functionality...but, fwiw, the few times I have screwed around with playing my bass through a (modern) modular synthesizer I quickly came to the same conclusion monsterthompson and steubig did: The "magic" in modular synthesis seems to come more from manipulating or modulating parameters within the various modules than it does from the audio signal path through modules, and if those manipulations/modulations aren't somehow related to physical gestures you make on your instrument it just makes the whole process seem disconnected from actual music.

Now, if I had a bass guitar that could output Control Voltages based on articulations, playing dynamics, fret pressure or vibrato, pitch range, etc. ... :)
Click to expand...

I think of it and do it like this….I have tons of control already over the timbre of the "oscillator," i.e. the sound of the bass…be that tone controls, different kinds of transients, finger, tap, slap, flamenco, bass/treble emphasis from string choice or where I am playing relative to the bridge.

So what I do is exactly use "manipulations/modulations ...related to physical gestures"

Doing this all in Zoia but I frankly wouldn't have known how to do it if I hadn't first explored old school Eurorack for a while...
So use some of the very low hanging fruit, tap tempo, a momentary switch, and an expression pedal, but the more interesting stuff involves using Zoia's
-onset detector i.e. transient detector
-envelope follower
-pitch detector
as controllers.

I think the envelope follower is rather easy to think of uses of BUT it can get fun when you do things like, gate its input. For example I have a patch where synth sounds are added but only when I'm playing loud. In another patch, I have the input to the envelope very high passed, like 2k. So normal playing does little, but if I scrap the strings or play very close to the bridge, I get a modulated noise...I was originally wanting like an ocean sound, but I made it more fuzzy.

Using the envelope to control speed of things is wild too. Speed of sequencers doubly wild. A granulated starting note that becomes normal after a second is awesome.

The onset detector can be cool to use with parts where you can play a stronger transient, like a slap and then, pluck a little. You can e.g. use that to trigger an ADSR to only make and effect effect the transients.

And pitch, of course, you can use that for pitch stuff like keying a synth, but it is fun as a controller too. For e.g. I have a patch where I use the pitch detection just to control the octave down level. So that I'm getting a cool octave down effect, but only at any significant volume on higher notes so I don't have a mud fest. It also partly controls some granular pitch modulation so the highest notes are a little swimmy.

This is mostly coupled with a Boss SY-200. I love the way it reacts to playing timbre using an FFT process rather than pitch to MIDI. On its own, I do find the sounds a bit digital sounding, but running it through the filters on the Zoia (when I'm being wild with them) or through the simple but awesome filter of the Moog MF Drive, I love it.
 
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