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Ambient/Post-Rock/Textural bass playing thread

#19,484
And now, a meme.
D157942E-3A94-49CD-ADD7-6E24E6413080.jpeg
 
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#19,492
that is a nice delay. probably the thing that stuck out the most to me.

really good find for our conversation, @dukeorock.

that is one hella big rack of gear.

i will say that most of the stuff they did was sort of replicating pedals . . . except they could take it farther than most run-of-the-mill stuff. there's probably more to be done with it . . . and then there's the foot control aspect, whihc is key for me on the fly.

but, how many of us would want to take a eurorack on a gig to do that? i can see doing it in the studio (and might try it). i used to to take a big rack around for effects and it became less fun as i went along, so for me the live usgae might be less allurin.
 
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#19,493
scott sinner said:
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.
Click to expand...

i'd be interested to hear how this all sounds. can you point us to some links?

it does seem that you're using a pedal to replicate stuff you learned about from investigating modular.
 
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#19,494
steubig said:
that is a nice delay. probably the thing that stuck out the most to me.

really good find for our conversation, @dukeorock.

that is one hella big rack of gear.

i will say that most of the stuff they did was sort of replicating pedals . . . except they could take it farther than most run-of-the-mill stuff. there's probably more to be done with it . . . and then there's the foot control aspect, whihc is key for me on the fly.

but, how many of us would want to take a eurorack on a gig to do that? i can see doing it in the studio (and might try it). i used to to take a big rack around for effects and it became less fun as i went along, so for me the live usgae might be less allurin.
Click to expand...

I feel like a small rack could replace a pedalboard for some things but it would be a whole lot more expensive and prone to noise. I spent a long time trying stuff like the Morphagene or Nebulae v2 in my effects loop and ultimately decided it wasn’t worth the hassle. Even an Octatrack just plugs right in.

as for the big rack in the video, it’s got the full on science lab vibe. I am really gravitating towards purpose built things, but it obviously works for Andrew Huang.
 
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#19,496
steubig said:
i'd be interested to hear how this all sounds. can you point us to some links?

it does seem that you're using a pedal to replicate stuff you learned about from investigating modular.
Click to expand...
Sure. Nothing particularly musical here, just someone asked me for some samples when I shared my board some while ago and threw this together on the fly.

Not exactly the stuff I was mentioning above. Some of those example are, well, basically what I most recently did and was on the top of my mind. But a couple related examples, a gated envelope and onset switcher at least iirc.

Well into recording with my new band and most all the songs have at least a little Zoia madhattery on them. Should have something polished in a couple months.
 
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#19,497
scott sinner said:
Sure. Nothing particularly musical here, just someone asked me for some samples when I shared my board some while ago and threw this together on the fly.

Not exactly the stuff I was mentioning above. Some of those example are, well, basically what I most recently did and was on the top of my mind. But a couple related examples, a gated envelope and onset switcher at least iirc.

Well into recording with my new band and most all the songs have at least a little Zoia madhattery on them. Should have something polished in a couple months.
Click to expand...


thanks
 
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#19,499
steubig said:
but, how many of us would want to take a eurorack on a gig to do that? i can see doing it in the studio (and might try it). i used to to take a big rack around for effects and it became less fun as i went along, so for me the live usgae might be less allurin.
Click to expand...

I look at it the other way around: you're not taking a Eurorack to a guitar/bass gig, you're taking a guitar to an electronic gig, where the modular is going to be to begin with.

As far as who has done this before, I think Pete Townshend ran his guitar through an Arp synth rig on some of those classic Who tunes, such as Who Are You.
 
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