Engineers-Question for you...

[Op_of_Faith]

Hi All-

Trying to figure something out...I'm smart enough to know better but dumb enough to ask the question so here we go...

Is there anyway to figure out the natural resonance of a particular bass? Obviously there are many factors-pick ups, active electronics, the medium, the board, the amp, the gear, the strings...

I was just thinking...if you mic'd your setup, then DI, and played through a Spectrum Analyzer and averaged over a period of time, could you figure it out? You obviously Long Term/Short Term are going to go with your ears, but still...just curious...

Anyway, thanks in advance for your thoughts!!!

J

 

[bongomania]

Granting that this might not be a useful exercise, but what I would do is suspend the unstrung bass in midair (e.g. tie a cord from the top tuning peg to a hook in the ceiling) in a room that has been treated to minimize reflections and resonance. Then I'd set up a sweepable oscillator and an amp/speaker facing one side of the bass, and a mic facing the other side, hooked up to a spectrum analyzer. I'd also run the test tone signal directly to a second channel on the spectrum analyzer. Then I'd very slowly sweep the oscillator from one end of the frequency range to the other, and repeat this test many times.

Seems to me that if you compared the analysis of the dry and miked signals, and averaged over a large-enough number of repeats of the test, you could get an idea of what frequency the bass resonates at the most.

The low-tech approach, which might get the same answer if you have carefully-trained ears, is to suspend the unstrung bass and then knock on it with your knuckles, listening carefully to the pitches of the knocks. This is how DW identifies the resonant frequency of their drum shells.

 

[Op_of_Faith]

LOL! I had to read that twice to make sure I got it and that you were serious! I get exactly what you're saying-and I get it on the 'useful' level too. Yeah-I am probably getting too esoteric for it to matter, it was just something I was thinking about...

Thanks and I appreciate your answer-I definitely am going to check out your info on Compression!

J

 

[BassyBill]

To the OP - why do you ask? Just curious.

 

[Op_of_Faith]

Thanks for asking-I'm looking to really optomizing my EQ's and I'm playing with Frequency splits...it occurred to me (on a vary casual level) to stop just looking at the note/pick ups/etc. and look to how the bass itself responded to what I was doing...I thought it might be useful to consider that too...

J

 

[Charling]

Thanks for asking-I'm looking to really optomizing my EQ's and I'm playing with Frequency splits...it occurred to me (on a vary casual level) to stop just looking at the note/pick ups/etc. and look to how the bass itself responded to what I was doing...I thought it might be useful to consider that too...

J

Nah, I don't think that it will get you anywhere, to be honest even eqing to augment fundamental harmonics in a track is a pretty tricky buisiness. Its normally only bothered with by mastering engineers, even most of the greatest recording engineers don't bother with it that much! And the only reason mastering engineers HAVE to eq like that is they are beyond the stage when they have any control over what the band is playing, that would be by FAR the most effective way to tackle a problem in that area!

also, the bass' own fundamental is likely to be not only very complex but almost entirely non existent compared to other resonant instruments. A solid body doesnt have much of a resonant frequency (not musically anyway), neither does a pickup, or a bridge etc.

An amp probably does a lot more, but its still been designed to have one in a musical/very obvious place where you would likely want to eq anyway.

Combine all these together and you don't really have much to go on! No strong fundamentals and a LOT of very weak ones.

Think about how resonant a drum shell is compared to a bass, MUCH more resonant, then think about how much of a note it actually has compared to a vibrating string (for example), not much! So little that the tuning of a shell is almost never thought about in recording, it's just the 'sound' of the drum, you just eq to taste.

the tuning of the drums skins is a different matter, or course, but you'll still find most recordings haven't paid that much attention to the actual notes of them (though some do to great effect).

The perceived resonance would be effected many times more by the room you were listening in than the bass itself! It would be really hard to make a judgement...

basses do have odd resonances but normally only when playing specific notes, ie they change as the note you play changes and I don't think it can be considered an overall resonance!

I've enjoyed thinking about it though, thanks!

 

[Op_of_Faith]

Yeah-starting to realize that...LOL! Thanks!

J