Isolated bass track shock

[scotch]

Yeah Justin, I believe that click tracks and Tempo maps have their place in certain types of music. But for things like straight-up rock and roll or jazz, or even certain types of dance music that don't rely on sequencing, I'll pass.

Agreed. If the drummer and bass player are worth their salt, no click is necessary!

 

[Kijuer]

As someone said in one of the first replies, "the eq that results in an instrument sitting well in the mix isn't always what you'd find to be a pleasing tone if the track is soloed". I remember a particular song my wife recorded last year whose bass sound was really deep, round, perfectly balanced. When I listened to the isolated bounce track I thought it was another take, it sounded thin, weak, felt like no lows were there. Putting everything back in the mix made the magic happen.

 

[Jay Corwin]

My first question when hearing a YouTube isolated bass track is what was the source? I refuse to believe that all these people had access to the master tapes, and even if they did, older recordings were sometimes to four- or eight-track machines and giving the bass its own track wasn't always possible. This leads me to wonder if the tracks are created through some creative filtering which, if that's the case, I'm sure the result isn't exactly how the track originally sounded.

That being said, I've also heard quite dramatically that the eq that results in an instrument sitting well in the mix isn't always what you'd find to be a pleasing tone if the track is soloed.

This has always been my viewpoint as well. So we are listening to what.....an analog track that's been "mastered" digitally....then extracted from a video game soundtrack...compressed into an MP3 or something....uploaded to YouTube and probably further compressed.....then streamed over wifi.....then streamed via BT to our headphones? I take it with a grain of salt as far the tone is concerned. I'm sure we aren't hearing anything that is relatively close to what the producers and engineers were hearing while monitoring/mixing. Some of us older dudes remember what stereos and recorded music in general sounded like prior to MP3's and the internet.

Also, any idiot can post anything they want on YouTube and call it whatever they want. I could solo track myself into my phone playing along to any record I want, then post it to the YouTube as "whatever song - isolated bass". Everyone is an expert on the internet.

 

[JimmyM]

This has always been my viewpoint as well. So we are listening to what.....an analog track that's been "mastered" digitally....then extracted from a video game soundtrack...compressed into an MP3 or something....uploaded to YouTube and probably further compressed.....then streamed over wifi.....then streamed via BT to our headphones? I take it with a grain of salt as far the tone is concerned. I'm sure we aren't hearing anything that is relatively close to what the producers and engineers were hearing while monitoring/mixing. Some of us older dudes remember what stereos and recorded music in general sounded like prior to MP3's and the internet.

It's not like Youtube fundamentally changes the sound. There's a tiny bit of compression, yes, but the basic sound is still there. Not like they add reverb and fuzz

 

[honeyiscool]

Everybody complains about YouTube compression but I remember reading a shoot-out of various streaming sites, and YouTube actually did very well in preserving sound quality. And in my experience, this holds true. SoundCloud is by far the worst sounding site in my experience. It's noticeably worse than other streaming sites. It makes everything, especially treble, sound terrible. YouTube, meanwhile, is one of the least offensive sites when it comes to sound quality, and if you give it a good file, the compression they apply is more or less transparent at 480p+ resolution, which basically describes all videos made in the last 10 years.

I think people who blame YouTube for destroying sound quality don't know how to properly prepare their videos for upload. Upload a 2-channel PCM lossless encoded track, and I guarantee you, you will hear no compression artifacts. Meanwhile, if you give it a low fidelity lossy compressed file to upload, then it will compress it further and be noticeable. But that's the uploader's fault, not YouTube. Their video compression is pretty good, too.

Meanwhile, Facebook's compression algorithms are complete, utter crap. Their video, audio, and photo compression all stink.

 

[honeyiscool]

It's not like Youtube fundamentally changes the sound. There's a tiny bit of compression, yes, but the basic sound is still there. Not like they add reverb and fuzz

If you're really bad at preparing video files and have a poor understanding of codecs and such, you can definitely introduce distortion through encoding.

Reverb, no.

 

[AdamR]

Agreed. If the drummer and bass player are worth their salt, no click is necessary!

It depends on the genre. Hard rock, or blues rock, sure you can get away with no click with a good drummer. Death metal or something more technical your gonna need a click and your gong to want to quantize t to the grid. Especially if your replacing drum has with samples.

 

[scotch]

It depends on the genre. Hard rock, or blues rock, sure you can get away with no click with a good drummer. Death metal or something more technical your gonna need a click and your gong to want to quantize t to the grid. Especially if your replacing drum has with samples.

Yeah. I said that in my previous thread. Having a grid is very important to many styles.
Almost all commercial music is recorded to some sort of click. Often just for ease of editing.
I still like the feel of an organic, classic rhythm section best. Ebbing and flowing, breathing at times. Has its own magic when executed properly!

 

[scotch]

Case in point: you just wouldn't get the solid foundation you need for crabcore without a grid!!!! ;-p

 

[AdamR]

Case in point: you just wouldn't get the solid foundation you need for crabcore without a grid!!!! ;-p

Grabcore is best recording on mute.

 

[mbene085]

As someone said in one of the first replies, "the eq that results in an instrument sitting well in the mix isn't always what you'd find to be a pleasing tone if the track is soloed". I remember a particular song my wife recorded last year whose bass sound was really deep, round, perfectly balanced. When I listened to the isolated bounce track I thought it was another take, it sounded thin, weak, felt like no lows were there. Putting everything back in the mix made the magic happen.

This is super common. Just like how all the metal guitarists with their fullstacks and bass cabs and extended-range guitars for MOAR BR00TALZ get everything south of like 100Hz (or higher) filtered straight out. I played in a stoner metal band recently whose guitarist used a bi-amp setup with an SVT refrigerator so he could get "enough low end" and watching an engineer high-pass his tracks was so satisfying. I had to stick to bridge pickups and really high-mid-heavy tones to find any space in the live mix. I kept trying to explain the concept of leaving room for the bass in the mix, but like most guitarists, he was convinced that what sounded good to him alone in his basement sounded good, period.

 

[-Asdfgh-]

A large number of those tracks are reproductions made by Guitar Hero/Rock Band musicians.

I doubt they went as far as to reproduce JPJ's out of tune string on 'Ramble On', plus the bleed of the other instruments onto that track.

 

[blipndub]

I hate producers and engineers who demand everything be put on a click for that reason...because music is not meant to be played perfectly to a click track. I consider click tracks the death of music. Sure, I will use them when I'm forced to, and sometimes I am due to circumstances, but I can't think of anything that sucks the life out of Music more than a click track.

I could agree with this but I think off tempo tracks are worse. A good band should be able to keep a steady tempo through a song...sure. But most guys playing aren't pros, I play with my band once a week, my drummer works 40 hours a week and can't practice at home, so we use a click when we record because we just don't have the ability to be that together. It's not ideal nor preferred but kind of the way it is. I just responded because I thought this comment was a little too general to go un-commented upon!
Love this thread!

 

[blipndub]

Agreed. If the drummer and bass player are worth their salt, no click is necessary!

Yeah, I don't think this is true even though I agree!

Here's my contribution: I love this track with Ben Orr

 

[denhou1974]

I doubt they went as far as to reproduce JPJ's out of tune string on 'Ramble On', plus the bleed of the other instruments onto that track.

I said "a large number". I didn't say "all".

 

[-Asdfgh-]

I said "a large number". I didn't say "all".

All the ones I've heard have had similar errors, or bleed, or both. I've yet to hear one that sounded like it had been rerecorded, unless they do go to the effort of introducing errors. Hence my original post.

 

[denhou1974]

All the ones I've heard have had similar errors, or bleed, or both. I've yet to hear one that sounded like it had been rerecorded, unless they do go to the effort of introducing errors. Hence my original post.

Why do I care what you've heard or what your assessment is?
Here. I found this in less time that it took you to write your response. Now stop wasting bandwidth.

Invalid Link Removed
" WaveGroup Sound were used to create the covers of the licensed songs provided in the game.[10] Marcus Henderson of the band Drist provided many of the lead guitar tracks for the covers.[11] WaveGroup Sound also went to efforts to try to recreate effects for some songs. In the case of Black Sabbath's "Iron Man", the team learned that the vocal effects were created by having Ozzy Osbourne sing from behind a metal Invalid Link Removed. The team sought out the same model of fan through Craigslist to generate the same effect in the game's cover.[8] Many of the bonus songs were from groups that Harmonix employees were part of or knew"

 

[-Asdfgh-]

Why do I care what you've heard or what your assessment is?
Here. I found this in less time that it took you to write your response. Now stop wasting bandwidth.

Invalid Link Removed
" WaveGroup Sound were used to create the covers of the licensed songs provided in the game.[10] Marcus Henderson of the band Drist provided many of the lead guitar tracks for the covers.[11] WaveGroup Sound also went to efforts to try to recreate effects for some songs. In the case of Black Sabbath's "Iron Man", the team learned that the vocal effects were created by having Ozzy Osbourne sing from behind a metal Invalid Link Removed. The team sought out the same model of fan through Craigslist to generate the same effect in the game's cover.[8] Many of the bonus songs were from groups that Harmonix employees were part of or knew"

Thank you, that is interesting. But I don't see the need to be rude.

 

[-Asdfgh-]

For RockBand, Beatles: The Beatles: Rock Band - Wikipedia. This demonstrates the original recordings being use.

It's entirely possible that all the isolated recordings I have heard are from RockBand, not Guitar Hero, in which case my original point stands, but so does the one about Guitar Hero.

Now, if I can find out more about the isolation they did, I can maybe rescue some of my own old four track recordings with bounce down.

 

[mikewalker]

I'm sure that it's probably been mentioned ( I havent read all 7 pages yet) but a lot of the time when you pull an old reel of 2 inch tape and play back whats in a track, its simply the RAW TRACK, as dumped from the DI or Mic to the tape. What actually ended up "ON THE RECORD" is what you hear after mixing, when that track has subsequently passed through the mixdown channel strip ( EQ, compressor, gain) and likely some outboard gear. PLUS, the effects and artifacts of the final mix compression and mastering EQ, after the tracks were mixed down to a final stereo or mono master .

All you hear on auditioning the raw multitrack playback is "typically" just a mild compressor, maybe a hi-pass shelving roll off, and/or the natural tape compression if they recorded it hot...