Playing soft and sounding aggressive. How?

[BullHorn]

As title says. For the last 4 years I've been playing bass like a gorilla as suggested by our band's lead guitarist ( ._. ). This is not working for me.

What should I do?

 

[LuckyBassPlayer]

If you lower your action quite a bit, you won't have to dig in as much. And if you move around as a gorilla as you did before, most people will probably be fooled into thinking you are playing aggressively as well.

 

[BullHorn]

Hmm, how does having low action make me sound more aggressive?

 

[RedLeg]

playing like a gorilla doesnt really tell us the "problem". does your guitarist not like your right hand technique?

 

[Crazyeelboy]

The aggressive sound comes largely from the sound of the stings hitting up against the fretboard (as with slap), so with lower action, you don't have to work hard to get that kind of effect.

 

[BullHorn]

Oh, makes sense.

The problems I had with that were:

A) I'll have less dynamic ability with the bass
and more importantly
B) I kept playing as hard as before but this time the strings got choked by the fretboard.


RedLeg, my guitarist loves my technique. But I don't. I never saw a bassist play as hard as me. Here's a video filmed at our studio of a not-very-heavy-song (I play harder on many songs):

 

[RedLeg]

turn up way loud. force yourself to use dynamics with your technique alone.

 

[Joe Nerve]

turn up way loud. force yourself to use dynamics with your technique alone.

+ 1. It will force you to use a lighter touch. And it will force you to also tweak your EQs to achieve the aggressive sound you're looking for. May take some time, but I think it's part of the fun of discovering and creating your sound.

Liked the music by the way. Super tight, melodic, full... I didn't think your playing was all that aggressive either, though I understand the desire for a lighter touch. I've been waging that battle my entire playing life. Aggressive playing works for me though. I like it.

 

[BullHorn]

I'll try that on the next rehearsal. My volume with the hot-output P is around 2/10, I'll turn it up to like 5/10 and try to play softly.

Oh and thanks, I'm glad you liked the music.

 

[Fliptrique]

I use a rather low action, smallest possible relif, fresh, light gauge (.40-.120) strings and SOME distortion from my ebs valvedrive.

I would not call my attack light, but it sounds a lot more agressive than it actually is.

With a good fretwork even a low action is perfectly usable and does not really limit your dynamics. There is also a added bonus - the bass I have set up this way is REALLY comfortable.

Here is an example (marcus 4 jazz, ampeg cl and a sansamp psa 1.1.):

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it was not played that hard and sounds plenty agressive to me.

And a darker tone:

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my mayo be5 gothic, ampeg with tweeter off, and 1 mic only. Also played with a relatively light touch - sounds good to me. Some folks think that they really need to dig in to avoid getting lost in a mix - our songs have preety dense arangments with lots of keyboards and guitars and that particular light-gauge-low action setup seems to work the best for me.

 

[BullHorn]

It sure does! My guitarist would love me forever with that tone. I'll see what I can do, I have a cheap Ibanez PHAT HED which actually sounds quite nice in the mix.

It sounds better than playing aggressive actually because when I play hard, no matter how high the action, I still sometimes choke the string. :x

 

[BullHorn]

Update: I just took the advice from the Metal-fingerstyle-thread (Low action, light strings, pluck near the neck and let the string bounce off the fretboard) and recorded a bass track on top of half of the original song I posted earlier in this thread and it sounds fat and delicious!

Half-song: Invalid Link Removed
Just bass: Invalid Link Removed

I think this could be the way to go.