"Popular" songs with two bass tracks

[Kerem Koseoglu]

I could point out many Muse songs, but Chris seems to use like 10 bass tracks or something

 

[rollie 55]

pink floyd one of these days david gilmour and roger waters both playing bass

 

[Fialka]

Neds Atomic Dustbin had two bass players.
The Reddings's The Awakening made popular by Les Claypool had two tracks originally.
Trick of the Light by The Who.
Monk Montgomery's solo albums have at least two bass tracks.
These are just a few that floated through m mind. Not the most popular examples tho.

 

[nnnnnn]

Take a walk on the wild side. 2 bass tracks. 1 double bass plays the bass riff. And the electric bass plays 10 semi-tones higher.

10 semitones? Not a tenth above?

 

[Londo Molari]

 

[Kubicki Fan]

RHCP: "Go Robot"

 

[CrunchyFrog]

[QUOTE="JTE, post: 22237462, member: 113014"

David Crosby oer Roger McGuinn said the line Larry Knetchel did for "Mr. Tambourine Man" was a couple of tracks to make it fatter.[/QUOTE]

Almost. According to the musician's union contract, Larry Knechtel was credited with bass, and William Pitman is credited with one of two guitar spots. It's clear from the session tapes that both Larry and Bill are playing bass in unison - even sounds as though they may both be playing 6-string basses (either Fender or Gibson). They play the same notes but have slightly different tones. One of them makes lots of clicking noises.

 

[Michedelic]

It's always interesting to see on these kinds of threads how many people don't bother reading through all of what's been posted before they put something up.

 

[Abe-of-Bass]

 

[blastoff]

10 semitones? Not a tenth above?

yup ten semitones is not the same as a major tenth

 

[MNAirHead]

Rio or anything from an orchestra

 

[Nephilymbass]

Some time ago, I recorded a line for an original track by a band of an acquaintance of mine, who had asked me to play as a sub since they were bass-less...
Anyhow, a riff at the end of the song sounded great with effects, and I wanted to record the effected riff (with distortion and octavers and wah wahs on etc.) over the clean one. The engineer wouldn't hear it, said he couldn't think of any track in history where two bass lines ever sounded good. I was kinda stumped to hear that, the line I had recorded was kinda crap anyway (but hey, I was doing it for free and you get what you pay for, right?) so I didn't really feel in a position to question anything, and while I could name some good bands bands that had 2 bass players and sounded great, they were more onto the metal/noise rock side of things. I couldn't think of "popular" or "commercial" or whatever songs that had more than one bass track.
Then I found out Every breath you take has two or three tracks - electrics and DB. I've just read a thread here on TB about Walk on the wild side, Herbie Flowers said (and I feel kinda stupid for not noticing) that the slide thing is done by tracking an electric a tenth above the DB slide. Black or white has some synth bass mixed with the electric for all those slidey sounds.
So we've got already two major international hits with two, or more, bass tracks.
I wonder how many others are there?

Lot of Snarky Puppy songs have bass guitar and keybass going at the same time. Pretty cool sounds especially how Micheal can play tightly with the keybass at times and then Add fills msking it obvious that there's two different instruments creating those bass sounds. They use a variety of keyboards for the keybass stuff but it seems like the moog sub phatty is the one that's used the most if you watch a bunch of their stuff.

I plan to do some stuff like that in March when we head back into the studio

 

[cnltb]

Pastorius's Continuum.

 

[Jaygetsreal]

Hotel California. I heard the isolated track and it's definitely two.

 

[Axstar]

The engineer wouldn't hear it, said he couldn't think of any track in history where two bass lines ever sounded good.

Rubbish engineer doesn't want to step outside of tiny comfort zone, or doesn't have the chops to make it work. Coasts by on limited skillset by hoping that they can maintain a hegemony over any bands in the studio by being the brightest bulb in a fairly dimly lit room.

"That wouldn't work, the pros never record bass like that", and gets back to texting their coke dealer buddy.

I've found that the line between engineer (making the record you want) and producer (making the record they don't think you are smart enough to realise you want) is very blurry unless you are willing to pay a lot of money. You wind up paying some bedroom savant guy to record your folk rock band, and his frame of reference is Jesus Lizard records or that one big 'n' bleedy Steve Albini drum sound with all the messy room ambience (a good excuse to never mic up a kit properly while still going full Rain Man about mic placement).

Been there many times in several different bands. Finally progressed to a guy who didn't insist I run my bass into a taped up, static-ridden Behringer DI box prior to running any effects or (gasp) mic'ing up an amp. This is progress!

I suppose the big, ugly questions are:

• Will 90% of people listening to your recording notice the difference or is this an easter egg for stoned people and/or bassists?
  
  
• Do the guitarists in your band get treated like the golden children, and have all their complex requirements taken care of? Does the engineer instead say "no, leave your amps at home and use this unserviced red-knob-era Fender Twin for everything, because it breaks up nicely on '9' once it has had an hour to stabilise?".
  
  
• Will you be able to claw back the cost of your recording session from sales of your album/EP? If your band is like mine, ie a fun hobby and part-time money pit, then you have to let these things go versus blowing studio time perfecting weird setups.

 

[onda'bass]

Paul Simon call me Al has two different bass parts going on

 

[eukatheude]

Honestly, none of this matters. There are probably tons of songs that were recorded with a clean bass channel and on with effects. In essence it's the same thing, only you play once and get two tracks.

Multi-tracked basslines are nothing spectacular. Most Police songs have more than one bass track, and 99.99999% of listeners cannot tell.

That's not what I'm saying, nor I'm claiming anything about it. It's just a curiosity.
Also, recording the same track with two mics/DI and playing two distinct bass tracks are something very different.

Rubbish engineer doesn't want to step outside of tiny comfort zone, or doesn't have the chops to make it work. Coasts by on limited skillset by hoping that they can maintain a hegemony over any bands in the studio by being the brightest bulb in a fairly dimly lit room.

"That wouldn't work, the pros never record bass like that", and gets back to texting their coke dealer buddy.

I've found that the line between engineer (making the record you want) and producer (making the record they don't think you are smart enough to realise you want) is very blurry unless you are willing to pay a lot of money. You wind up paying some bedroom savant guy to record your folk rock band, and his frame of reference is Jesus Lizard records or that one big 'n' bleedy Steve Albini drum sound with all the messy room ambience (a good excuse to never mic up a kit properly while still going full Rain Man about mic placement).

Been there many times in several different bands. Finally progressed to a guy who didn't insist I run my bass into a taped up, static-ridden Behringer DI box prior to running any effects or (gasp) mic'ing up an amp. This is progress!

I suppose the big, ugly questions are:

• Will 90% of people listening to your recording notice the difference or is this an easter egg for stoned people and/or bassists?
  
  
• Do the guitarists in your band get treated like the golden children, and have all their complex requirements taken care of? Does the engineer instead say "no, leave your amps at home and use this unserviced red-knob-era Fender Twin for everything, because it breaks up nicely on '9' once it has had an hour to stabilise?".
  
  
• Will you be able to claw back the cost of your recording session from sales of your album/EP? If your band is like mine, ie a fun hobby and part-time money pit, then you have to let these things go versus blowing studio time perfecting weird setups.

Nope, the engineer was a grumpy old guy who recorded some of the best selling pop "artists" in italy, and that was not my band. Also, it wasn't a request for advice as in "how can I convince this engineer" (if I was paying him, you could bet there would have been two bass tracks), that was just an anecdote to get the conversation on multi-bass songs started. So you may want to brush up on you reading comprehension skills, Sherlock.

 

[lokikallas]

Something is going on in "American Girl". During the intro and the bridge, it sounds like two different bass parts layered.

 

[Nashrakh]

Not overly "popular" (but in its time still accused of being commercial) would be Miles Davis' Bitches Brew, which features double bass and electric bass simultaneously on some tracks (and not just doubling, they're distinct). Not sure about his other works from his electric period.

 

[two fingers]

Something is going on in "American Girl". During the intro and the bridge, it sounds like two different bass parts layered.

I have played it before. When you're trying to pick one to play (in both the intro and bridge) AMD sing the dang song, it feels like 45 bass tracks.

There are at least two, and possibly more.