How do you record a drop D or C bass line?

[tom once dead]

my old band used to play in Drop C. What I did was buy a set of medium gage Pro Steels and when I put them on only tune to C. They never got tightened passed there and were never loose.

and to +1 another post. Drop A it is Brutal. I love it, drop my B string down and I got a 5 string drop A. There are a few bands using it now, like Bury Your Dead, Suicide Silence, The Acacia Strain etc.

 

[Nick Kay]

Don't forget to run a low-pass on everything

I meant hi-pass. I'm a turd.

 

[cusar5]

I second the idea that one ought to be prepared to adjust amp settings in order to get the best sound from a low tuning. I always find myself adding low mids when I switch to my C standard bass, particularly when I use my friend's amp to practice with - for some reason it sounds like garbage unless the low mids are dimed.

 

[sonic assassin]

I meant hi-pass. I'm a turd.

i didnt catch and i +1 millioned that. im the bigger turd haha.

i normally think in terms of cut. low cut. the whole pass terminology never got it with me

 

[sonic assassin]

Really? I thought mud was in the higher bass frequencies and very low midrange? So it's just nasty harmonics of low nots not the actual fundamental that causes muddyness. There's plenty of floor rattling bassy sounds that have plenty of sub and are still tight as anything, if you don't have much fundamental then what's the point in having a low B or C or whatever?

heh.. thats what i get for posting at 5 am.

but as far as cutting off the fundamental of the note.. in recording, its necessary. the lower we go, the more its going to make the mix gross. and when you look at a bass track with an RTA, theres SO much of that super low end that cutting 6 dB off of it is hardly scratching it.

i love to let a low B rattle through the mix... live. you can still tell how low the note is even if the fundamental is gone. in a recording, you're just going to peak the master buss like crazy every time a low note hits.

 

[SwamiRob]

That's fair enough then I guess, to be honest I didn't realise that low notes caused that much extra signal to go through a line level stage, I thought the problem of low notes and signal only came up when you get to powering the thing properly and putting it through a speaker system that will handle it.

I was always under the impression that clipping only occurred at certain frequencies where there was too much signal and that if you had a fairly well balanced tone then you could run the fundamental of whatever ridiculously low note you wanted.

 

[seamonkey]

im well aware of the vocal raping going on in live shows these days and it makes me sick. not just t-pain.. im well aware.

first of all.. i dont think anyone should pay more than 20 dollars for a concert ticket EVER. unless there is a lot of expensive theatrics going on (kiss and the like), i cant justify paying that, and no one else should have to. i go to see and hear music... not be dazzled with fire and lights.. but thats coming from a musician with entirely too much integrity.. compared to some sheep of a normal concert goer.

if you cant perform live.. DONT. cant pull it off anymore, change the tuning or hang it up. elton john tamed a lot of his songs down.. still sounds pretty good.

better show? thats subjective. i like performers that are human. if everything is quantized and tuned to perfection, theres no life in it.

your approach is exactly the problem i have with modern day musicians. "oh dont worry.. we can tune it". what happened to being proficient at your instrument? you dont want to spend 20 dollars on a new set of strings and a neck adjustment.. you'd rather just tune it. dont want to work on your feel and string control.. just tune it. you dont want to rerecord the line correctly.. tune it. how long does it honestly take to punch in a part? about as long as it does to fire up melodyne, scan and correct the song.

**** modern pop music and all it stands for. learn to play your instrument. if you want to sing, get good at it and stay good at it. otherwise, dont bother calling yourself a musician.

It's a brand new world - started way back when they first came up with artificial reverb - which made singers sound better. It's never been the best singers are the most popular. There is much more to the popularity equation.

There's just a bunch of new tools now for today's musicians to use. It still all music in the artist hands.

Software based pitch shifters, and top end hardware ones, are far superior to the old pedal based ones. Maybe that's what people are thinking here. It's now a simple task to shift the whole base down a 5th, or just notes you want to shift.

 

[sonic assassin]

That's fair enough then I guess, to be honest I didn't realise that low notes caused that much extra signal to go through a line level stage, I thought the problem of low notes and signal only came up when you get to powering the thing properly and putting it through a speaker system that will handle it.

I was always under the impression that clipping only occurred at certain frequencies where there was too much signal and that if you had a fairly well balanced tone then you could run the fundamental of whatever ridiculously low note you wanted.

youd think that.. in finding a relatively "flat" tone, that your EQ would be kinda.. flat. watching an RTA on a bass track.. with the mids cranked, you MIGHT make them as high as the bass. even in a bridge pickup burpy jazz thing.. still TONS of low end.

low frequencies are a very powerful thing, and they can ruin a mix fast. i used to be of the mindset that all of the bass was going to be in the mix. all of the drums. all of the guitar.. no compromises. dead wrong. i do a low cut on almost every track in the mix to make sure theres not some low garbage collecting in my master buss. bass always has to make the most sacrifices to make the mix even.

most modern rock is scoop and bury. thats going WAY too far. ill make the bass relevant in the mix. i dont bury overheads to make it sound commercial either. that crap is annoying.

in the final mix, post mastering, there will be a high pass on the entire mix, and based on what mastering engineer you have will determine where exactly. that 30 hz fundamental in your low B string.. gone. forget it.

 

[sonic assassin]

It's a brand new world - started way back when they first came up with artificial reverb - which made singers sound better.

There's just a bunch of new tools now for today's musicians to use. It still all music in the artist hands.

It's now a simple task to shift the whole base down a 5th, or just notes you want to shift.

artificial reverb doesnt hit the right notes for you. or create notes that you didnt hit. autotune makes YOU sound better, not the space you are in. id rather use a real room, but its not always possible.

use.. few "use" autotune.. they all abuse it

or.. you can just play it right the first time so you can honestly say that you played all of those notes. you played them in time and in key.

 

[BigBeatNut]

most modern rock is scoop and bury. thats going WAY too far. ill make the bass relevant in the mix. i dont bury overheads to make it sound commercial either.

Scoop and bury ? Bury overheads ? Could you give me some clues or point me at something I should read to be able to understand ?

Apologies, just a bass-player here, not an engineer.

 

[SwamiRob]

Scoop means a usually fairly aggressive midrange cut (which you desperately need to cut through a heavy rock mix especially) and I assume bury just means to make something sound very ambient or distant.

Assassin is spot on about auto-tune though, auto-tune is a synthesis of performance where as digital effects are merely synthesising colouration. In commercial settings I can see why it's done, but if your striving to be a half decent performer then getting lazy is pointless, your only gonna suck live. Obviously it's annoying when you've been a little off on one note or whatever but it just seems like a cop out to me.

After reading that stuff about sod all harmonics low down I'm glad the lowest I got is drop D anyway, with no fundamental no matter how low something seems it sounds really weak, nothing worse then when your playing with a really deep resonance until you hit the lowest few notes on your board.

 

[seamonkey]

artificial reverb doesnt hit the right notes for you. or create notes that you didnt hit. autotune makes YOU sound better, not the space you are in. id rather use a real room, but its not always possible.

use.. few "use" autotune.. they all abuse it

or.. you can just play it right the first time so you can honestly say that you played all of those notes. you played them in time and in key.

Done right, you wouldn't know when it was used
Take this person for example (non-vocal)
Link Removed

And this person is an musician.

Just like people use photoshop and are no less of a photographer.

 

[sonic assassin]

Done right, you wouldn't know when it was used
Take this person for example (non-vocal)
Link Removed

And this person is an musician.

Just like people use photoshop and are no less of a photographer.

it doesnt matter if i can tell. they shouldnt be able to sleep at night knowing they cheated. i surely couldnt.

real photographers feel the same way about people who take a half assed picture and then fix it. thats why true photographic artists often still use film.. you cant cheat.

 

[sonic assassin]

Scoop and bury ? Bury overheads ? Could you give me some clues or point me at something I should read to be able to understand ?

Apologies, just a bass-player here, not an engineer.

if you listen to your typical modern radio rock song, you'll notice that theres not a whole lot of bass in the mix. its often been reduced to a low rumble to fill out the bottom end. the high end is either cut off or buried underneath the rest of the mix.

the fastest way to do this is to scoop out a ton of midrange, which as stated before and 90% of this forum will agree is the key to being heard in a mix (not the fundamental of the note). this weak bass track is then turned down, and down, and down, and buried in the mix as much as possible so that you really cant tell its there until it is taken away. scoop and bury.

overhead drum tracks (mostly cymbals) often get treated this way as well. apparently mainstream mix engineers and producers think that a lot of brass clashing around in the mix makes it sound amateur. they just want a beat, and cymbals arent a beat.

i dont remember my example of that.. but i know i was listening to some really polished modern metal (likely killswitch engage), and the overheads were WAY too low. it was all vocal, guitar, snare and kick drum. bass was pretty absent.

im not sure if it was the exact song i was thinking of, but killswitch's "the forgotten" is a decent example of this. the song would be a lot more raw if i could hear all those crash and china hits a little louder.

 

[Mr_Sore_Fingerz]

Some of us weren't born with "Salad Fingers".

...I've seen every Tool music video that's been created and that video freaked me out

 

[Revvv]

Billy Sheehan plays a 4 and occassionally detunes. He doesn't detune all the time though. He has a pedal that drops the notes an octave if I remember right.

 

[BigBeatNut]

Got most of that, not sure I understand this bit:

the fastest way to do this is to scoop out a ton of midrange, which as stated before and 90% of this forum will agree is the key to being heard in a mix (not the fundamental of the note). this weak bass track is then turned down, and down, and down, and buried in the mix as much as possible so that you really cant tell its there until it is taken away. scoop and bury.

So you're saying an engineer doing this 'scoop and bury' would take a bass track, remove most of the midrange (against the prevailing wisdom of this forum) and then compound the problem by mixing the bass really low ?

Why do they do that ? Is it consistent with some theory about getting the track to sound good through all media (including tinny TV speakers etc) ? Or do most engineers simply not care about our instrument ?

 

[BigBeatNut]

in the final mix, post mastering, there will be a high pass on the entire mix, and based on what mastering engineer you have will determine where exactly. that 30 hz fundamental in your low B string.. gone. forget it.

So what kinds of frequencies are these high pass filters set at (worst case and best case) ?

 

[sonic assassin]

Got most of that, not sure I understand this bit:

So you're saying an engineer doing this 'scoop and bury' would take a bass track, remove most of the midrange (against the prevailing wisdom of this forum) and then compound the problem by mixing the bass really low ?

Why do they do that ? Is it consistent with some theory about getting the track to sound good through all media (including tinny TV speakers etc) ? Or do most engineers simply not care about our instrument ?

they dont care haha. thats why they scoop and bury. bass is a pretty neglected instrument. why do you think you dont hear it in modern rock?

after they compress the snot out of the track for radio, you hear the soaring low end.. because its been boosted a lot by the compression. but on a typical nickelback song.. wheres the bass?

you're theory is right though.. and thats why the instruments they WANT you to hear come through. they'll check on all media and make sure it can be heard

 

[sonic assassin]

So what kinds of frequencies are these high pass filters set at (worst case and best case) ?

ive never really spoke to one, and i dont think they would tell you haha. mastering engineers are pretty mysterious guys sometimes. lots of weird gear that only does one tiny thing.

i always cut 30-40hz, and then run a big low shelf until the bass sounds good on car speakers. then again.. im no mastering engineer. i just know i have to cut anywhere from 40-80hz to make it not sub-y and gross on the bottom. but hell.. im 20. im no expert. more just run by ear and go on what little they touched the subject in school.