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To scoop or to mids? That is the question.

bassartist

bassartist

Apr 26, 2005
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#1
Happy New Year fellow bassists! For all my Gospel players out there, I have a question. As much as I love a scooped mids tone, I find that it doesn't cut through a live mix. So I want to know how do you set up your tone to cut through, if you too, like a scooped EQ? I like the sound of my bass with both pickups on, mids slightly scooped. Depending on the room, I may cut or add bass and treble. Looking at a lot of players on social media, I see a lot of players favoring the rear pickup, and it really cuts through so much better. For fingerstyle, I can get with this. But if I'm slapping, I dig the scooped tone more, although if I do runs, they are not cutting through as much in this position. I have basses that have mid controls and some that only have bass and treble. On the other hand, I look at Marcus Miller, who also plays with a scooped tone, and he cuts through like no other.
 
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#3
Unfortunately, you'll have to find some middle ground between the sound you like and the sound that works live. Keep in mind two things:
- The sound that you hear on stage and the sound that the audience hears up front (when running a PA system, of course) doesn't have to be the same - more mids may be desirable for your monitoring while a more scooped sound might still work in the mix.
- When dialing in a sound with mids, it might sound a bit honky when playing solo. It does not, however, sound honky when you add the other instruments. Your bass may still sound deep and warm in the mix, but with more note definition.

While slapping you can generally get away with more scooped mids, because the attack makes the bass come through anyway.
 
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#4
It's a tale as old as time... really with every instrument. You dial in a killer tone solo, show up to play with people and you get swallowed up... and in almost every context, guitar, bass, etc.... we need more mids than we realize, and are pushing a lot of frequencies that are unnecessarily low or high when comparing solo performance to group performance.

So find a tone you dig and then cue up some bass-removed recordings, play along, and tweak your eq until it sounds right. You can still sound like you, you'll just need more mids than you were originally planning for.
 
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#6
(Not gospel or church player, but I think it's the same for any venue)

Agree with previous comments, about setting up your tone for solo practice being different from the band mix.

I would add:
  • Maybe you can force yourself to get used to mid frequencies and learn to appreciate them. In France will call that "Méthode Coué". Initial effort to get out of your confort zone, but it would pay-off IMHO.
  • Sometimes a High Pass Fliter can help removing the mud generated by sub frequencies
 
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#7
In addition to all this, one thing I have noticed is shockingly a large factor with how my bass sits in the mix is the bass itself. Not the pickups, preamp, even the wood choice... literally just the bass itself. Each individual bass.

Some basses just have a really sweet baked-in tone that is perfect for gigging, others might have a natural scoop that really jumps for slap.
 
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#8
The more room you have in the audio spectrum, the more you can get away with scooping. In a crowded mix, mids are not only your friend, they are your only friend.

I remember many moons back when I had just bought an expensive and very powerful amp for myself.
My plan was to set a tone I like and then use the master volume to get it loud enough - I ususally had to push mids and reduce lows because my prior amplification was too weak to deal with the deaf guitarists and the heavy handed drummers I was playing with.

Set up with the new amp, I got trapped in a cycle:

I came to rehearsal, hooked up my bass, played a note and thought "what happened here? This sounds terrible!" So I proceeded and change the EQ and gain and all that until I had a glorious tone. Then we played a few songs and I started tweaking tone. There was too much mud in the lows, so I reduced them. The top was a bit too shrill, so I took it back a notch. The carefully set gain that gave me just a hair of drive was inaudible, so I raised it and there was something missing in the middle - so the mids went up. I ended up with a tone that sat in the mix perfectly and sounded absolutely great.
The next rehearsal I came in, hooked up my bass, plucked a note and thought "what happened here? This sounds terrible!"


I repeated this for longer than I care to admit until I understood that what works in a mix is not necessarily the same tone that works in a bedroom.
 
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#10
i love scooped mids for some kinds of music, but i used to have to really crank the amp to hear myself (and my bandmates complained they couldn't hear me). some mids make a bass player a lot easier to hear as it stands out in the mix in a band situation.
 
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#14
gtirard said:
Maybe you can force yourself to get used to mid frequencies and learn to appreciate them. In France will call that "Méthode Coué". Initial effort to get out of your confort zone, but it would pay-off IMHO.
Click to expand...
Over here we have this, it's been utterly debunked, but it's worth considering

I can only add my support to the discussion of "bedroom tone" vs "performance tone" and the need for mids live.
 
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#15
bassartist said:
Happy New Year fellow bassists! For all my Gospel players out there, I have a question. As much as I love a scooped mids tone, I find that it doesn't cut through a live mix. So I want to know how do you set up your tone to cut through, if you too, like a scooped EQ? I like the sound of my bass with both pickups on, mids slightly scooped. Depending on the room, I may cut or add bass and treble. Looking at a lot of players on social media, I see a lot of players favoring the rear pickup, and it really cuts through so much better. For fingerstyle, I can get with this. But if I'm slapping, I dig the scooped tone more, although if I do runs, they are not cutting through as much in this position. I have basses that have mid controls and some that only have bass and treble. On the other hand, I look at Marcus Miller, who also plays with a scooped tone, and he cuts through like no other.
Click to expand...
When playing with a good sound person mixing the FOH, they prefer by a large margin a direct feed to the board and your pickup and tone controls wide open. For your stage monitor you need a the bass at flat, a boost at 160hz-170hz, flat high mids and treble. Your will hear your slap just fine. You will also find you don’t need to be as loud to hear yourself which is the point of stage monitoring. Don’t worry about the Uber lows or highs not being as prevalent as when you are playing at home. The sound tech will add in what is needed
 
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#17
The facts, 98% of the time, the primary role of the bassist is to support the structure of the music. Find a sounds that sits well in the mix. That generally means:

1. Bumping up the mids.
2. A sound you don't like soloed.

Rush is my favorite example. I hate the sound of the bass in almost every song, but it fits the mix perfectly.
 
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#19
Problem is it's not just the bass EQ that makes a mix. It's all the other instruments, what octaves they're playing in, and what freq bands they're present in.

Bumping the mids will only help be heard if there's space in the mids for the bass. If everyone has their mids boosted, or everyone's crowding the midrange, boosting the mids won't help. When everyone's in the mids you get that "it's too loud and i can't hear anything" situation.

This is why Marcus cuts even though he's scooped. The instrumentation, arrangement, and composition are thought about ahead of time and every instrument has its little bit of sonic space, and the space left for the bass is in the lows and highs. And the keys don't step on the low notes too much, etc. There's room for it in his mix. Similarly, reggae bass has very little mids or highs, but nobody complains about not hearing the bass in reggae. It has a home in the low end and there's space for it. Conversely, in a lot of rock, the overdriven or distorted guitars are big & scooped, and the kick is big in the lows, so there's space in the mids for the bass. It just a matter of finding space for each instrument.

-----

Part of the solution is other players playing their instrument in the right octave to blend well with the other instruments. Part of the solution is all the other musicians using a mix-tone instead of a bedroom-tone, leaving space for the other instruments. Unfortunately that involves other people changing what they're playing and how their EQ is set up, which a lot of musicians don't take kindly to, no matter how necessary. 🤷‍♂️

Until everyone else adjusts to the situation, all you can do is adjust your own situation.
First, if you're playing through an amp, make sure it's pointing directly at your ears. You might not be able to hear yourself, but the mix might be fine out in the FOH.

Then it's just a matter of finding what frequency band has space for the bass and boost that, and maybe pull back on some of the other frequency bands that are cluttered. It might not be your preferred personal tone, but none of that tone matters if it doesn't work in a mix and nobody can hear the bass. Without hearing the mix ourselves, we can't say what band to boost. Might be the low-mids, might be the high-mids. Might be somewhere in between or somewhere else. You just gotta find it. (And hopefully there's actually space to find. If everyone else is stepping on everyone else's tone, then it's a job for the BL and Mix Engineer to sort out and tell people what to change.)
 
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#20
bassartist said:
Happy New Year fellow bassists! For all my Gospel players out there, I have a question. As much as I love a scooped mids tone, I find that it doesn't cut through a live mix. So I want to know how do you set up your tone to cut through, if you too, like a scooped EQ? I like the sound of my bass with both pickups on, mids slightly scooped. Depending on the room, I may cut or add bass and treble. Looking at a lot of players on social media, I see a lot of players favoring the rear pickup, and it really cuts through so much better. For fingerstyle, I can get with this. But if I'm slapping, I dig the scooped tone more, although if I do runs, they are not cutting through as much in this position. I have basses that have mid controls and some that only have bass and treble. On the other hand, I look at Marcus Miller, who also plays with a scooped tone, and he cuts through like no other.
Click to expand...
I played a passive Jazz for a number of years with both pickups turned all the way up - loved that tone when practicing by myself - but I would always have the other guys asking me to turn up a little bit. That inherent scoop in the mids just doesn't want to stick up for itself in a band mix compared with let's say a P-bass tone that includes some inherent midrange "honk".

When I turned down the bridge pickup on my Jazz and just solo'ed the neck pickup, my drummer got happy in a hurry because he could really hear me and lock in with me without having to pick my sound out from everything else sharing the acoustic "space". As our pals mentioned above, this is a rather classic issue and many of us need to learn it for ourselves to really understand how to manage it.

My current #1 bass has two pickups and also has an on-board eq that's quite handy. If I play both pickups full open with the band to get in the neighborhood of that slappy Jazz tone, I might bump the mids, but maybe not. If I'm solo'ing with that setting, everybody else might be a little more quiet so that I have room to let that mid-scooped tone fly. If I shade the blend knob toward my bridge pickup for more of that nasally attitude, I'll usually also cut a little of my highs and also give a good bump to my lows - nice to have the preamp controls right there on the bass to dial up a tone in a hurry.

I've never seen/heard Marcus live, but his sound is truly yummy. I'll probably call up a couple of tracks for a listen to see if I can pick out something that he does to help his mid-scooped tone to not get lost in the background. It's wonderful for solo'ing, but when we need to drive the bus with a thicker, more supportive fundamental, that tone can often be found from a lone humbucker positioned further from the bridge than where we find the bridge pickup on a Jazz.

Look at where a typical P-bass pickup lives or maybe the lone humbucker on a G&L L-1000. Yes there are some players that get a terrific fundamental tone from a Jazz or 2-pickup bass that does great in a mix, but they probably need to do a little more massaging of their sound to help it with sounding more out front in a band mix.

Experiment with this and that. If that Marcus tone doesn't work for you with the band, you might actually want to try trimming back your highs and/or lows a little bit and then turn up your master volume to perhaps get more of the audible range you need (often when there's a sound problem, there's too much of one frequency or another, not a deficit). Your drummer may be a great barometer for how your tone is working for the music you're doing. When the drummer gets happy, the smooth groove can really start happening.
 
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