getting that prrrrt tone

[Element Zero]

HPF at 100-150 Hz. Good amount of compression. Boost 400 ish Hz and 800 Hz. Roll off any highs above 3 KHz. Bridge pickup humbucker if possible. Play tight and aggressive near the bridge. Note release with fretting hand is key. Add a hint of sub synth effects like a Meatbox and I mean a hint.

 

[Thumpin6string]

A bass synth can get you there with no other things needed. I can get that with my Markbass synth.

 

[spatters]

Flatwounds are exactly the wrong thing and will not get you this tone.
You don't need a bass synth, either.
Try these steps.

Start with any bass that has a bridge pickup and roundwounds.
Dial in 100% bridge and 0% neck pickup.
Play hard, play clean, play towards the bridge. Be strict with your muting.
Compress the heck out of it.
Add a lot of midbass (100-200 Hz) via EQ.
Turn up the gain until you get a little bit of grit.
Turn down the treble until you stop hearing finger noise and string squeak.

 

[crguti]

You have to learn how to play midi.

 

[jking138]

Lots of compression, bridge pick up focused and a gated fuzz with the high end cut off / tone rolled down could get you a similar (not exactly the same) tone.
A hpf and noise gate will help keep the sound tight and punchy.

 

[Deleted member 271037]

There's a lot of compression too.

Yeah but most of it on the entire mix to create "pumping". Compressing the bass itself won't give you that vibe.

 

[Deleted member 271037]

I have no idea what they used for these tones but if I wanted to emulate it I would use a bass with a bridge pickup (soloed) and play close to the bridge (for that somewhat nasal tone). I would then use a slightly dirty/glitchy sounding octave down pedal with a dry/wet blend to give the tone a little bit of that synth-like quality.

Of course there are several synth bass pedals out there too but none that I've tried sounded even remotely like this. Maybe with a dry/wet blend?

I'm sure there are synth pedals that could work but there are definitely also some that won't give you anyting close to that tone. My advice would be to try before you buy, or this could turn out to be a very expensive goose chase.

 

[ToddB1963]

Bridge pickup + octave down will get you close

 

[crobasster]

Bridge pickup without highs and fretless simulator if you have a multieffect !

 

[Bassiclees]

I find the SA pedals paired with a TC Spark brings out the nuances so…
Bridge PU -> heavy Compressor -> SA C2 -> TC Spark. That'll get you there.

 

[6-3-2]

Justice are great! But I'd say their tones are pretty different. Lots more high frequency info in them. The similarity is that both are in the genre of french house and they're both super compressed. But coming from an electronic production world I'm used to everything being really compressed and in your face.

I doubt much of Justice is unedited live bass- a lot of has to be stuff that was tracked in the way you would record any bass, which was *then* chopped up into an electric arrangement & compressed/distorted/processed even further. Kinda how I intend to approach things- recording a lotta improv then cutting out the good bits to make something entirely different.

No, you're right. I went back and listened to Justice and they have a rubbery bass tone like Daft Punk, but it's much crunchier and heavier. Even without distortion the fundamental sound has more growl and funky snap.

 

[Klangfarbe]

Here is an Ableton tutorial on how to create that Daft Punk Voyager sound. Guy comes quite close to the original. However, it also shows how deliberate these sounds were created. Recreating it on an Electric Bass would certainly take a little more effort to just turn down the tone control on your Jazzbass. If you really want to go that path, I would suggest getting one of the elaborate Synthpedals available. Something like the Boss sy 300 or Source Audio C4.

 

[Engineer_Josh]

The Daftpunk bass sound is great, for some reason it says J-Bass with scooped EQ and tons of compression to me

 

[lyralain]

Here is an Ableton tutorial on how to create that Daft Punk Voyager sound.

I've actually seen that before. As an Ableton user so many practices in it got me heated (using dual-band comp on a sub, arbitrarily alternating between EQ8 & Auto-filter for filtering, not just doing both your HPF&LPF in one instance of EQ8, the not-shown master chain altering the sound's flavor) but it's ultimately cool

Could use a synth pedal, could combine it with a Boss octave pedal or such as well, both to emulate that Operator layer. Or I could even use a pitch->MIDI effect to sequence that exact operator patch over the live bass. But I'm thinking with a muted tone, plenty of compression, gentle saturation, filtering & maybe even some pitch-tracked FM, I could get the bass signal itself sounding like that. Eager to try when it's here tomorrow.

 

[Swampish]

Like some have mentioned, playing closer to the bridge will help and if your bass has a humbucker (like a Music Man or similar), that may go a long way to achieving that tone. I have an SBMM Ray34HH going through a Zoom B3. The bass combined with some EQ and compression can get very close to that tone. I think the instrument plays a pretty big role.

 

[Nunovsky]

Maybe you can get that tone rolling off the tone knob of the bass, adding compression, a mild od, and eq to add some mids.

 

[mrjim123]

This just popped in my head (keep in mind I have no experience with this) - isn't there a multi effects pedal where you can download "effects" from a website then upload them into your pedal? I think it might be Line 6, but I'm not sure.

 

[Geogio]

Daft Punk electric bass tone sounds a lot like an Octaver to my ears. And the way each note comes in I'm thinking there might be a touch of reverse gate on it.

There's a lot of keyboard bass on this but the actual electric bass sound is in there too, but it's not the prominent groove.

 

[Geogio]

Goldtone sounds straight forward and as you stated the possible settings are a good starting point.

 

[Geogio]

I think Alavi is using an Octaver too. I thought it might be a Synth at first but the hammers and pulls don't say keyboard to me.

But with the saturation of all three of these selections it's hard to say... there might be doubling up with synthesizers in the less than prominent electric bass lines.