How best develop ear for great bass tone?

[longfinger]

Have your students to read and understand the manufacturer's manual for the gear they are currently using.
It helps to know how to use the gear they have. What do those knobs, buttons, faders do? Read the manual, experiment with the gear, listen learn.

 

[klattman]

Lots has been said above but here’s a big one. Take breaks. Your brain and ears will get tired of something so you add more of the same until you can convince yourself it’s great. Then the next day you realize you overdid the corrections.

record different tones and listen to them after a break. Describe what you hear and take notes of the settings.

for students you could take pictures of the bettings, a video or at least a description of the playing technique and record the sound. Try to have them or yourself predict what you expect based on the settings or predict the settings based on what is heard and understood.

 

[micguy]

To me, the most important thing is to start with a clean solid state amp, with the controls set flat, no overdrive.

I kinda agree with this, the "kinda" being that bass amps, with the knobs set at noon (what people think is "flat") almost always aren't flat - they have a baked in eq. Every amp manufacturer has their flavor of baked in eq, which means that "setting the eq flat", which is supposed to take you to some neutral state, doesn't end up doing that.

With a pedalboard, if you choose wisely, you can sometimes actually know what's going on eq wise, though there are also pedals (preamps and such) that have baked in eq.

 

[bigdaddybass12]

Once you get past pop/slap you can really hear True Tone. A lot of people love the big muddy p bass sound, some like a cleaner sound. Active eq gives you the best variation on tones. Nice big lows with a little punch.

 

[JeezyMcNuggles]

Hey all, just wanted to get some thoughts on how to develop and refine one’s ear for recognizing and dialing in great bass tones. This is both for myself to continue honing my ear, and for beginning bass students (I teach in a music store). I have some thoughts on this, of course, but would love to hear from other experienced bassists.

Personally, my ear for bass tone has improved a lot over time, but it’s been a pretty haphazard and prolonged process, and I wondered what advice veteran players might have for jump-starting this process for beginners and making progress more rapid and methodical. Ideally this would also include an awareness of tone as it relates to different genres and styles of playing (and even live versus recording).

Obviously great bass tone is super subjective, but I’d guess that most of us can recognize a really pro and genre-appropriate tone (whether it’s our own favorite or not), as well as an amateur and kloo-less tone. Just would like to help students streamline their progress on this front, have more fun with tone and not be intimidated, and sound more professional as soon as possible.

Thanks for any thoughts.

Bass in amp. If you're too honky, dial back your mids a little. If it sounds like you're too thin, dial up the bass up little. If you can't hear yourself, either you're perfect, or you need a little more mids.

Treble is a taste thing. Some people like bright and clicky, some people like smooth and supple. Everything else is a situational change.

 

[Snarf]

Years of experience.

 

[HolmeBass]

I don’t know about “great” tone. I go for functional tone: clear, good attack, even throughout the register of my bass, with maybe a slight tilt towards louder low end.

Rounds and basically flat is my home tone. I just want every/any note I play to be clear, audible, with enough attack to support rhythmic intensity and to have clear pitch definition. I prefer a full range tone with a very slight low end emphasis.

This kind of tone to me is functional. It allows me to play dynamically and lock in rhythmically.

Then for some genre specific sounds I use effects or onboard EQ, but the basic tone is a full range fairly clean tone that is even across the neck of my bass.

 

[SteveCS]

No matter how great you think your live sound is, the sound engineer will probably screw it up.

Probably the biggest bear trap of the lot right there!!

 

[MrDinsdale]

For me the thing that helped me most was just finding some artists with bass tones I really liked and trying to replicate them.

Starting with just technique and trying to get as close as possible on the bass alone. Then I’d start applying different compression, eq, amp tones and effects (via Boss GT-1000) to start getting as close as possible. A decent multi effects unit is a great way to experiment.

I learned more about tone by setting myself a few challenges over a couple of weeks than I have in the 18 years of playing. While I’d never want to just emulate someone else with my own tone, understanding a little more about how to achieve different sounds is an important skill to have.

 

[Nashrakh]

I love how this threads runs totally contrary to the "backline" thread, where consensus goes along the lines of: I plug into whatever, most people just care about guitar tone anyway.

 

[ga_edwards]

I love how this threads runs totally contrary to the "backline" thread, where consensus goes along the lines of: I plug into whatever, most people just care about guitar tone anyway.

Yes and no. Understanding how to eq properly means you can adjust the eq of 'whatever' amp so that your bass tone sits in the mix with those guitars.

To the OP. I agree with other comments that tone is largely subjective. The primary job of a gigging bassist is to be the glue between the drums and (usually) guitars - the bridge between rhythm and pitch. Knowing how to sit in the mix in a cluttered soundscape is crucial. Perhaps it would be useful to teach your students how to identify certain frequency bands and their typical names, such as 100hz boom, 250hz mud, 500hz honk, 800hz bite. Then demonstrate how they work and how to fix issues a bassist may come across. You could even explain why a hpf is useful for instance, the fletcher munson effect, boundary reinforcement.

The concept of "Tone" really is a huge rabbit hole. Even more so, when chasing consistency!

 

[Fynn]

Hey all, just wanted to get some thoughts on how to develop and refine one’s ear for recognizing and dialing in great bass tones. This is both for myself to continue honing my ear, and for beginning bass students (I teach in a music store). I have some thoughts on this, of course, but would love to hear from other experienced bassists.

Personally, my ear for bass tone has improved a lot over time, but it’s been a pretty haphazard and prolonged process, and I wondered what advice veteran players might have for jump-starting this process for beginners and making progress more rapid and methodical. Ideally this would also include an awareness of tone as it relates to different genres and styles of playing (and even live versus recording).

Obviously great bass tone is super subjective, but I’d guess that most of us can recognize a really pro and genre-appropriate tone (whether it’s our own favorite or not), as well as an amateur and kloo-less tone. Just would like to help students streamline their progress on this front, have more fun with tone and not be intimidated, and sound more professional as soon as possible.

Thanks for any thoughts.

That's a really general question for something that has to be very situation specific. A way you can train you ear is to do audio engineering ear training. Meaning figure out how different frequencies sound (there's loads of videos on such topics out there) and then you can try to figure out how those sound in a mix. Then just fit and fill your bass tone into whatever mix you're trying to fit into. Learn which tone shaping device of yours changes your tone in what way. Maybe learn the frequencies of your amp and how large the Q is and so on.

 

[Microbass]

I think there's a level of musicality and feel on this. I remember when I started out how I wanted to sound, but there was no way I could afford to buy the gear my idols were using so I would play for hours trying to use technique, set up and messing with EQ's to try and get as close with what I had. You play and learn what works as you develop skills really.

The only thing you can teach is the whole bedroom tone vs live mix tone and maybe how typical parametric EQ's work so if any of the students end up with something for a school show or open mic then can dial something in. The rest is listening to as much music as possible and listening to the bass.

 

[dangevans]

For me, it was listening to what bassists played on the most hit records, and studying how they got that tone. Then, after that, coming up with my own style/variation without trying to be EXACTLY like 1 bassist. This involved studying a mixture of James Jamerson and Joe Osborn for me, and eventually Chuck Rainey.

 

[climber]

...how to develop and refine one’s ear for recognizing and dialing in great bass tones.

listen to a lot of music, totally focus in on the bass player (preferably using great headphones or earbuds) and do your best to match your sound to what you hear on the recording. it's hard! IMNSHO that's the only way.

PS: there are as many "great bass tones" as there are players, great or otherwise.

PPS: studio and live are two completely different beasts. I can't count how many times I've heard a band and the bass player's live tone sounded very different from on record.

PPPS: just remember that the gear used in the studio is so much more complex than live. I've got a middling studio and I often have more than one compressor and EQ on the bass on a given track to give it the tone that makes it sit perfectly in a track. and it can sound totally different isolated.

 

[Lostgallifreyan]

That's a really general question for something that has to be very situation specific. A way you can train you ear is to do audio engineering ear training. Meaning figure out how different frequencies sound (there's loads of videos on such topics out there) and then you can try to figure out how those sound in a mix. Then just fit and fill your bass tone into whatever mix you're trying to fit into. Learn which tone shaping device of yours changes your tone in what way. Maybe learn the frequencies of your amp and how large the Q is and so on.

I like this because it goes into the possibility of examining our own hearing. None of us have the same sensitivity across the range. Learning how to detect where we have strong or weak sensitivity to parts of the spectrum can really help us learn to hear things a bit more as others might. It's very hard to generalise good tone, but if we have to try, this is a very good way to do it.

EDIT: It's also a good argument for trying wide EQ band changes first, only going narrower if a wider one won't do it. This is less likely to make something that sounds good to one person, and bad to another. (Although narrow is good if there really is some objectionable single pitched noise, but in a good setup that's unlikely to happen).

 

[H K]

So work on ear training and plucking technique. vMake for example a minigame where you got to match a bassline with its genre. So for Jazz you'd have like a smooth thumpy walking bass line as an example. That should help them recognize the different "tones" as stylistic choices for each genre.

But I also think it's important to not get too hung up in what youre "supposed to" sound like, IE the cliche's of genres. Putting too much emphasis on tone alone will cause those poor kids to be the type of player that twists knobs for the entire show, never loanding on a sound..

 

[fishdreams]

What an interesting question. Thank you OP for bringing it up.

For me, (took me decades to figure out), my good bass tone is the tone i connect with, so that i am fully invested, mind, soul, spirit and body, when I am making music. Then I sound good.

I will sound much better in any genre by adapting that tone (technique, settings, string choice etc) to the musical situation i am in, than by taking some stock idea of what genre XYZ is supposed to sound like (super subjective to begin with) and essentially straightjacket myself into that

I was a guitar, bass and band teacher for 10 years and if there is 1 thing i learned it is this: if I can't play it convincingly, i should not teach it.

 

[jschulman]

I know it's kind of a cliche at this point, but if you've got good technique, you're 90% of the way there. String choice, pickups, pedals, FOH....all that is important, but none of it can mask poor technique. A strong player who knows how to use their fingers or a pick well, and understands muting, will make any bass with any strings going through any signal chain sound good.

That being said, once you've got your technique down, you can start listening to the nuances in your own playing as well as the nuances in the playing of your heroes. That can help you figure out what your ideal bass tone sounds like, and how that tone will shape and be shaped by the mix. That takes active listening, and tweaking, and finally decision-making.

Also, listeners hear mids, and they feel bass.

 

[dbsfgyd1]

Hey all, just wanted to get some thoughts on how to develop and refine one’s ear for recognizing and dialing in great bass tones. This is both for myself to continue honing my ear, and for beginning bass students (I teach in a music store). I have some thoughts on this, of course, but would love to hear from other experienced bassists.

Personally, my ear for bass tone has improved a lot over time, but it’s been a pretty haphazard and prolonged process, and I wondered what advice veteran players might have for jump-starting this process for beginners and making progress more rapid and methodical. Ideally this would also include an awareness of tone as it relates to different genres and styles of playing (and even live versus recording).

Obviously great bass tone is super subjective, but I’d guess that most of us can recognize a really pro and genre-appropriate tone (whether it’s our own favorite or not), as well as an amateur and kloo-less tone. Just would like to help students streamline their progress on this front, have more fun with tone and not be intimidated, and sound more professional as soon as possible.

Thanks for any thoughts.

I don’t have experience with pedals, so I’m not so sure if this is going to help you much. I think the most critical part of developing a good bass tone is to have pretty good idea mentally of what sound you want for the musical project you are working with. For instance, the tone you would want for a doom death metal project would not work real well with a 15 piece Motown vocal review band.

Once that idea crystallizes, then do your search. Best wishes.