Double bass vs eletric in a mix

[tutubass]

In a very funny video, sax virtuoso Patric Bartley ranked the U-Bass above the electric bass in a jazz instrument tier list. I guess he had a point: the electric bass is denser sounding than the upright, whose hollowness gives more space for the other instruments to fit.


I’ve always felt this, especially in acoustic bands.

Does anyone here know:

1. Why this happens at the sound spectrum level?
2. How to get a fretless to function (not necessarily sound) more like an upright in this particular sense?

 

[tutubass]

The ref:

 

[Paul New]

He has no clue. Banjo is in one key? Patrick is a fantastic musician who talks too much.

 

[Podgorny]

I can't comment on Patric's take, but I can say that it IS possible to make an electric sound an awful lot like an upright.

Step one, use flatwound strings. They decay more quickly. If you need to employ a foam mute at the bridge to further shorten decay, that can work.
Two, run the pickup signal through some sort of acoustic guitar convolution to add some of the hollow-body resonances that are absent from the electric's signal. D-TAR Mama Bear or Universal Audio's SoundMachine Woodworks will do the trick.
Last, mic the strings and pluck like an upright player. Much more forceful (and depending on the genre, percussive) than is typical with electric bass. Blend this sound in with the effected direct sound.

 

[Ric Vice]

I will posit that there is a timbral (tone quality) difference between DB and EB influenced by frets, fingerboard radius, string length and resonance.ADSR etc. That said, any good bassist who doubles on both can get a sound that works in any style of music. It’s my contention that if you put them behind a screen in a concert or club setting, with someone sitting in the mid way back in the house it would sound great on either instrument in a jazz setting. Just my take of course. Sometimes cosmetics influences our ears

 

[dbsfgyd1]

In a very funny video, sax virtuoso Patric Bartley ranked the U-Bass above the electric bass in a jazz instrument tier list. I guess he had a point: the electric bass is denser sounding than the upright, whose hollowness gives more space for the other instruments to fit.


I’ve always felt this, especially in acoustic bands.

Does anyone here know:

1. Why this happens at the sound spectrum level?
2. How to get a fretless to function (not necessarily sound) more like an upright in this particular sense?

I’m not so sure about this conclusion. True there is less mid range with a DB, but that is as far as I’ll go. So much is dependent on the genre, the ensemble, how the sound is engineered, the venue, recorded or live, not to mention the piece itself which makes a blanket statement that one is better that’s the other on somewhat shaky ground.

Question 2. How do we make a pickup truck act like a car? It is possible with the adjusting the EQ, like cut mids boost lows (95hz and lower), roll off the treble on your bass, and buy/install a mute. Frequency wise it is an approximation at best compared to a DB, but it’s not going to be the same.

 

[tutubass]

But DB hasnt got more harmonics than EB? It does sound deeper but from the little i researched i saw it had more highs, no?

 

[tutubass]

I’m not so sure about this conclusion. True there is less mid range with a DB, but that is as far as I’ll go. So much is dependent on the genre, the ensemble, how the sound is engineered, the venue, recorded or live, not to mention the piece itself which makes a blanket statement that one is better that’s the other on somewhat shaky ground.

Question 2. How do we make a pickup truck act like a car? It is possible with the adjusting the EQ, like cut mids boost lows (95hz and lower), roll off the treble on your bass, and buy/install a mute. Frequency wise it is an approximation at best compared to a DB, but it’s not going to be the same.

Its more for the fun of ranking things i guess, but he takes the genre into consideration, in fusion patch, eletric is tier A.
Less mids makes some sense. But middle position on a jazz bass sounds nothing like double bass too…

 

[tutubass]

I will posit that there is a timbral (tone quality) difference between DB and EB influenced by frets, fingerboard radius, string length and resonance.ADSR etc. That said, any good bassist who doubles on both can get a sound that works in any style of music. It’s my contention that if you put them behind a screen in a concert or club setting, with someone sitting in the mid way back in the house it would sound great on either instrument in a jazz setting. Just my take of course. Sometimes cosmetics influences our ears

Yes thats true! But for some reason eletrics never totally convinced my in walking bass. Even when played by genious like jaco or swallow. Would love to hear recomendations of cases that work great.

 

[tutubass]

I can't comment on Patric's take, but I can say that it IS possible to make an electric sound an awful lot like an upright.

Step one, use flatwound strings. They decay more quickly. If you need to employ a foam mute at the bridge to further shorten decay, that can work.
Two, run the pickup signal through some sort of acoustic guitar convolution to add some of the hollow-body resonances that are absent from the electric's signal. D-TAR Mama Bear or Universal Audio's SoundMachine Woodworks will do the trick.
Last, mic the strings and pluck like an upright player. Much more forceful (and depending on the genre, percussive) than is typical with electric bass. Blend this sound in with the effected direct sound.

Wow thats a very sophisticated aproach. Do you think micing the inside of a semi hollow would produce a good effext to compliment the pickup sound or a piezo is better?

 

[Podgorny]

Wow thats a very sophisticated aproach. Do you think micing the inside of a semi hollow would produce a good effext to compliment the pickup sound or a piezo is better?

No. The sound of fingers on the strings is integral to the sound of an upright bass. When I've done this, it's with a lavalier mic taped under the strings between the pickups. Upright with piezo pickup also benefits from a convolution process like I described. Otherwise, it sounds too "electric".

Mind you, this is for recording. If you're thinking of doing it live, I say don't waste your time. FOH will see an electric bass, and think it's supposed to sound like an electric bass, and even if it DOES end up sounding like an upright, the audience will hear electric bass because that's what they see.

 

[tutubass]

No. The sound of fingers on the strings is integral to the sound of an upright bass. When I've done this, it's with a lavalier mic taped under the strings between the pickups. Upright with piezo pickup also benefits from a convolution process like I described. Otherwise, it sounds too "electric".

Mind you, this is for recording. If you're thinking of doing it live, I say don't waste your time. FOH will see an electric bass, and think it's supposed to sound like an electric bass, and even if it DOES end up sounding like an upright, the audience will hear electric bass because that's what they see.

interesting! i didnot wanted to sound like, but have this atribute of being able to be felt more than heard. witch i think happens with the double bass and not eletric.

 

[pbass2]

Listen to Steve Swallow, in particular his new album just out "Winter Songs". Then check out what bass guitar and technique he uses. He sounds and more importantly feels more like double bass in a jazz context than all the cats jumping through hoops trying to get there with dead flats, foam mutes on a Pbass, yadda yadda (myself included). Good interview with him on no-treble: Steve Swallow on the Lifelong Search for His Electric Bass Tone

 

[tutubass]

you are right

Listen to Steve Swallow, in particular his new album just out "Winter Songs". Then check out what bass guitar and technique he uses. He sounds and more importantly feels more like double bass in a jazz context than all the cats jumping through hoops trying to get there with dead flats, foam mutes on a Pbass, yadda yadda (myself included). Good interview with him on no-treble: Steve Swallow on the Lifelong Search for His Electric Bass Tone

ur right! best tone i heard from him, just lovely and amazing album from what im hearing, tks for the recomendations. also, great read, he is using silk strings! they do sound like 600 dolar strings lol

 

[Wasnex]

I can't comment on Patric's take, but I can say that it IS possible to make an electric sound an awful lot like an upright.

Step one, use flatwound strings. They decay more quickly. If you need to employ a foam mute at the bridge to further shorten decay, that can work.
Two, run the pickup signal through some sort of acoustic guitar convolution to add some of the hollow-body resonances that are absent from the electric's signal. D-TAR Mama Bear or Universal Audio's SoundMachine Woodworks will do the trick.
Last, mic the strings and pluck like an upright player. Much more forceful (and depending on the genre, percussive) than is typical with electric bass. Blend this sound in with the effected direct sound.

That sounds like an awful lot of work.

 

[Wasnex]

IMHO the most significant difference is the dynamic envelope of notes. An archetypal acoustic upright has a really strong transient at the front of notes and the decay is way quicker than the typical bass guitar. You can approximate this envelope on bass guitar with dead strings, high action, and string mutes.

Beyond that, (AFAIK) an upright has a range of different mechanism for adding energy above the fundamental: body resonance, interaction between the string and fretless fingerboard, string length, string construction etc. IMHO, an important distinction here is some of these processes vary somewhat over the range of the instrument. You might get a bass guitar to sound fairly similar to an upright in one part of the range. Getting the sound to vary like an upright as you play up and down the neck is entirely a different and far more complicated issue.

I don't have any first hand experience here, but I would not be surprised if @Podgorny is preaching the gospel here.

On a related note. Double bass players tend to pursue a grail called MBOL. The acronym means My, Bass, Only, Louder and it is virtually impossible to achieve with 100% authenticity when playing through an amp.

A piece of technology that is designed to help double bassist get a little closer to MBOL is the Audio Sprockets Tone Dexter. The Tone Dexter has to be trained. This is done by playing the bass into a mic while Tone Dexter samples the output of a contact pickup and compares it to the signal picked up by the mic. I might be talking out of A** here, but my understanding is the Tone Dexter generates a wave map that is used to process the signal from the pickup so that it sounds more like the signal picked up by the mic. I believe @DoubleMIDI is far more qualified to explain how the Tone Dexter works; perhaps he will comment.

After the Tone Dexter is trained, you no longer need the mic. You play through the pick up and the Tone Dexter translates the output of the pickup into something more like the signal from a mic.

Supposedly you can sort of do a hack where you use a wave map generated with a double bass to make an electric upright sound more authentic. Not perfectly of course. I assume the Tone Dexter could also be applied to a bass guitar to make it sound more like a double bass. I assume the processing would be reasonably similar to what @Podgorny has described.

 

[Wasnex]

In a very funny video, sax virtuoso Patric Bartley ranked the U-Bass above the electric bass in a jazz instrument tier list.

I agree that a U-bass can sound a lot like the low range of a double bass. I don't think it captures the middle or high range very authentically. Also I think a U-bass would ultimately be somewhat limiting over the course of a concert.

 

[Wasnex]

During big band concerts I used to switch between a 6-string fretted bass guitar (Yamaha TRB6P), acoustic upright, and a 6-string electric upright (NS Design USA 6).

The NS Design sounded more like a fretless bass guitar than an double bass. There was almost no thump on the front end of notes and the sustain was insane. Additionally, the low B had an incredibly strong fundamental.

In general my first choice for jazz standards would be the double bass. I used the bass guitar for certain balads, funk, and the occasional pop tune. The NS Design was suitable for some of the more modern jazz pieces.

Here is the relevant part of the comment:
Given the choice between the NS Design and bass guitar for jazz standards, I actually preferred the bass guitar as it had more thump and less sustain than the NS Design.

 

[Wasnex]

In case you didn't get it...this is a U-bass

 

[Podgorny]

In case you didn't get it...this is a U-bass

As you said, the U-Bass mimics the low end decay pretty well, but it's completely missing the mids and highs. I think the original Ashbory's strings did it better, but even then, nobody wants to be seen playing these silly things.