How many bassists out there experience a drop in volume when switching to slap? I studied the technique extensively in my younger years, and retained enough skill with it to execute the small handful of songs in the repertoire that I'm responsible for.
In my fingerstyle playing, I tend to use more of my fingers than some other people might. I start the string kind of half way between the tip and first knuckle. This is probably a consequence of having played and studied a lot of double bass in school and out in the world. It produces a MUCH louder and forceful note than I can ever manage to get out of my thumb and index finger when slap/popping.
Anybody have tips or tricks to bring my slap volume up to my fingerstyle volume? Is it a technique issue or should I address this with gain staging/compression? What ends up happening is I'll start a song that slaps, but when I simply disappear from the mix I switch back to fingerstyle and the subs start pumping again.
I'd have to be in the room with the amp and maybe some level meters to know, but i think this might be an issue with perceived level vs actual level. There can be a difference, where something sounds less loud but the VU meters will be reading the same peak level or even higher peak level. This often happens when the peaks & transients are way louder than the body of the notes. The peaks are momentary and fleeting and your brain kinda just disregards them and just perceives the loudness of the less-loud body of the note.
This could be happening when you switch from finger to slap because in finger-style, the transients are roughly the same level as the body of the note and the body of the note sustains longer. The all the parts of the note are coming through at the same level. On the other hand, slapping is very fast transient heavy, and then really short note bodies that are way less loud than the initial attack, even though i bet if you were going direct into a DAW, the slap style would show higher dB peaks.
Fixing it is a mix of technique, compression, and EQ.
You mention your finger technique, but you didn't go into detail about your slap technique. There's a few different slap styles. The one you use will change how it sounds. Are you bouncing your thumb & string off the fretboard or are you slapping your thumb through the string?
- If you're bouncing your thumb & string off the fretboard (often either "Thumb Up" or "Thumb Down" method, where your thumb crosses the string) it's gonna be very transient/attack heavy, and will be less low end because the nature of smacking the string on the fretboard aggressively isn't conducive to the string reproducing that fundamental frequency.
- If you're slapping through the string (often called "thumb parallel"), the string will be able to produce more low end information, and there will also be less of a differential between the level of the transient and the body of the note.
Each slap style is completely legit, but they'll absolutely sound differently.
So adjust your technique to allow the string to vibrate more freely. And part of that technique is gonna include Gain/Compression/EQ. By making the amp and compressor do some of the work, you can slap "less hard" and get more low end from the technique. It's a feedback loop where the gear settings help the technique come alive, and the technique helps the gear do its job too.
For this situation i'd say Compress first, EQ second. (Although without hearing it, i'm just making an educated guess.) You're trying to use the compressor to tame those transients and bring them more in line with the rest of the note. You're going for the so-called
Sausage Note Shape, not
Traffic Cone Shape. Then do some makeup gain to bring the whole note back up a bit, and then EQ the lows if they're still lacking.
