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Fun with Spectrograms, EQ, and Frequency Response Curves

FullumMusic

Commercial User
Oct 13, 2022
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5,686
Queens, NYC
www.fullummusic.com
Disclosures
Audio/Music software developer, contracted with a company you've heard of and deving my own stuff.
In another discussion with @Passinwind in another thread, we were talking about the amount of usable audio information above 2KHz, or thereabouts depending on your bass & strings & pickups & preamp, etc. Everyone's bass is different and i use 2KHz as my go-to generalization frequency. Some basses obviously make frequencies above that, but also how much of them are useable frequencies?

Thought it would be fun to run a couple of my basses through a spectrogram at full spectrum, and then bandpassing different frequency bands so we can hear what's in them.

- I ran my basses direct into the instrument input of my Audient iD24 into my DAW (Ableton.)
- I played each string once at the Open, 5th, 12th, 17th, and 20th for each filtered bandwidth
- I played that full spectrum, and then bandpassed octave by octave
  • 41.2Hz - 82.4Hz
  • 82.4Hz - 165Hz
  • 165Hz - 330Hz
  • 330Hz- 659Hz
  • 659Hz - 1318Hz
  • 1318Hz - 2637Hz
  • 2637Hz - 5274Hz
  • 5274Hz - (no LPF on top)

Olinto P - La Bella Deep Talkin' Flats - Tone Open 100%


Olinto P - La Bella Deep Talkin' Flats - Tone Rolled Off 100%


Squier Jazz 40th Anniversary Gold - Nordstrand Big J Blades (warm & wooly) - La Bella Superpolished - VVT all at 100%



Squier Jazz 40th Anniversary Gold - Nordstrand Big J Blades (warm & wooly) - La Bella Superpolished - VVT all at 100% - SLAP & POP
- i only did this up to the 12th fret because slapping higher than that is silly.
- I slapped by smacking the string with my thumb bone down onto the last fret, not by "slapping through" Wanted it to be different enough from finger-style.


Spectrograms are nice and all because you can see the peaks at the harmonics and the shape of their response amplitudes. But i thought filtering each band would be nice to put a sound to what that part of the signal sounds like "extracted" from the full-spectrum tone.
 
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