I don't get the "not cutting through" thing...

[bassbully]

Thats why i like trio's. The guitarist and drummer need you bad. You are the driving force and without you it falls apart when they solo or do picking parts etc.The more members Key, extra guitars or whatever fills the space and you compete. If you are in a trio you will be heard.

 

[cheapbasslovin]

If you can convince a band to chill out on all their volumes, everyone can usually be heard, no matter how crappy their gear is. I've found that when everybody agrees to do that; the music sounds better, and each member can focus on getting the sound they want rather than having to sacrifice tone to "get heard". Sometimes it can be hard to convince the band, but even with hard rock or metal it sounds better to have everyone chill the volume a bit. Makes it easier on a sound guy, too.

 

[Jeff K]

Play with a keyboard player who has a heavy and busy left hand. You won't be able to hear yourself while standing right next to your amp. So you turn up; then it becomes a volume contest to which guitarists are only too happy to respond.

Amen, brother! I can attest to that because I'm dealing with it. If I tell him about it, he'll "lighten up" for a little while, then bam - he's at it again. If I try to "compete", it just makes everything sound like crap. The most effective way I've dealt with it so far (at least at practices) is to just power down and take my bass off my shoulder. Everyone looks at me like, "What are you doing?!" I just shrug and say, "I don't think you guys need a bass player on this one. (His) left hand is already covering the bass line."

 

[ggunn]

I'm a not so experienced bass player, and could likely use some educatin' here, but......I don't understand the many comments I read here complaining that "my
bass/amp/cab/strings (etc.) are not cutting through or lost in the mix".

I mean, either your rig is extremely underpowered for the venue/band type, or you simply aren't EQ'ing properly, no? It seems that people often say things along the lines of "I switched to x brand strings and cut through much better at reherasal last night.." or whatever piece of equipment they changed. Sitting well in the mix or "cutting through" is simply a matter of proper EQ'ing, isn't it? Why do some people blame their gear, as if it's a defect or something? It has been my (limited) experience that if I can't be heard well, then I fiddle with my eq and the problem is solved. Now, I did say "limited" experience. Am I missing something or being too newbie/simplistic? (This is not a rant or anything, I really am interested in what the real nature of these kinds of comments are).

It's not a matter of volume or even EQ; it's a matter of texture. If the bass has too pure a tone, it can get lost in the mix when combined with an ensemble which contains a lot of other textured sounds. When you hear it when this is happening, you can tell that there is plenty of low frequency content - too much sometimes - but you cannot discern what notes the bassist is playing. Sometimes EQing can help, but not always.

 

[T-MOST]

I think "cutting" through refers to how the bass tones sit in the mix. Sometimes the bass tones can just blur into the mix with no "presence". To my ears this happens when the tone is too bass heavy or at the other extreme too thin. I generally like a heavier bottom but with the mids at the 1/2 to 3/4 mark. This gives the overall tone a nice "bite or texture" that "cuts" through the mix. It's definately NOT a volume thing.

 

[Cristofre]

Ditto on all the comments about EQ.

I'd like to suggest that "Timbre" is often what we are talking about though. Timbre is that quality of the musical sound that, for example, separates one instrument from another. If a violin and flute both play an "A", they still sound much different. This is because each instrument has a different timbre.

But you can also distinguish timbre between similar instruments. A P-Bass won't get certain Warwick sounds no matter how you EQ it. You can add Mids, but you still won't get that Warwick "sound". Same holds for all kinds of models of basses.

Take this one step further, and we see that strings have a huge impact in timbre as well. Flats just can't be EQd to sound like Rounds, etc.

The reason for this is harmonic overtones. When an instrument plays a 440hz "A", it is also generating lots of harmonics - at 880, 1320, 1760, 2200, 2640, etc. Each harmonic has a different relative amplitude to the fundamental. Different instruments have different relative amplitudes for the harmonics. And this basically is timbre - it's why a violin doesn't sound like a flute. A violin sounds so rich because it has a very complex harmonic spectrum, with (generally speaking) high relative amplitude.

I know what you're thinking: "Hey, I'll get a 31-band (or 63, or N) EQ and I'll fix fiddle with those pesky harmonics, and I'll turn my flute into a violin! Cool!! Ahhh... Not so fast! It turns out that the harmonic spectra is pretty complex. There's a lot of stuff going on "in-between" the whole number harmonics as well, due to the mathematical nature of how those frequencies interact. I'm a former signals engineer, so I'll try to keep that hat OFF, but the point is that the harmonic spectral content of various instruments is very complex.

So, little changes like strings, pickups, finger vs. pick, etc, all do have a very real impact on "cutting through". EQ is a necessary thing for balancing out the large scale sound issues (boomy room, high end treble for slap, etc). It can help you cut - especially the mids as stated - but only so much. As an exercise, play an E on the 7th fret of the A string, and then play the same octave E but on the 2nd fret of the D string. Sounds different, no? Playing higher up the neck chokes off some harmonic content, changing the timbre. And that's on the same exact bass!

Here's a neat mathematical example: Take a fundamental freq, then add only the odd harmonics. Furthermore, make the amplitude for each harmonic equal to 1/N (where N = the # of the harmonic). So that the 3rd harmonic is 1/3 the amplitude of the fundamental, the 5th harmonic is 1/5 the amplitude of the original, etc. What do you get? If we do this out for several harmonics, we get a nice square-wave! And most of you know how buzzy and harsh a square wave sounds - nothing at all like the adding some nice even order harmonics at varying amplitudes.

Sorry for the long ramble - hope somebody finds the geekier aspects of the hobby as interesting as I do!

The bottom line: You can't turn a flute into a violin.

-M

p.s: Yes, you're correct: most people actually mean "timbre" when they say "tone".

I think you perfectly answered this question. I've known about how timbre works forever, such as your example of the flute and violin- but it never occurred to me to apply it to different members of the same species- bass guitars.
Now it makes perfect sense to me why changing a pickup or a different type of wood in the body would give you a different timbre.

Thanks

 

[Cristofre]

Amen, brother! I can attest to that because I'm dealing with it. If I tell him about it, he'll "lighten up" for a little while, then bam - he's at it again. If I try to "compete", it just makes everything sound like crap. The most effective way I've dealt with it so far (at least at practices) is to just power down and take my bass off my shoulder. Everyone looks at me like, "What are you doing?!" I just shrug and say, "I don't think you guys need a bass player on this one. (His) left hand is already covering the bass line."

On your situation- have you tried instead of fighting the "key bass" player when he gets crazy- have you tried occasionally moving up and maybe playing some complimentary parts instead of the bass line?
I know that would be an absurd idea for some people but it has been done- for example Peter Hook in Joy Division/New Order often played way up the neck with some chorus- the synth player took care of the actual bass line in those cases.
I've heard it said that Peter Hook's bass playing technique was the signature of the band.

 

[Wadge]

I think it has been explained very well. But to add a practical take to the question, bassists value instruments which cut through properly in a mix because they involve little fuss.

To use an analogy, if you have a bass which has a lot of undesirable his and hum, you could could eq it, add a gate to kill the sound when your not playing, make sure you keep your hands on the strings all the time (to earth it), etc. Alternatively you can purchase a bass which does none of those things. The results might be identical but the second option is much less fuss.

And it is one thing to plug a bass at sound check and spend minutes eq'ing and adjusting the eq when the rest of the band come on, and its quite another to just plug in and have it cut through a mix. Easier, no fuss and sound engineers will love you.