Hi
My first post here, I wanted to share something I’ve been working on for some time:
A couple of months I bought a ToneDexter (TD) My goal was to give my electric upright a more acoustic character by ‘ToneDextering’ my acoustic bass (which I really do not want to take to gigs and rehearsals anymore) and then run my electric upright through it. Not the intended use but I was hoping it would be possible.
* note: even if you do not have an acoustic bass this might work for you, as long as you can lay your hands on one for a couple of hours to record it.
The idea is simple, but to make it sound good prove to be a challenge. After some experimenting I came to this workflow, which might be of interest to other users:
Step 1: make a really good recording of your upright with a piezo and several mikes into a some multitrack software, like Pro Tools or Reaper.
(see TD website for best placement of piezo)
Play the same stuff as you would when training the TD. So first some long notes on A and D to train it for level, and then play normally covering the whole range.
Step 1a: this was the part where you need the acoustic bass. From now on not needed anymore.
Step 2: now make a recording on the next track in your software of your electric upright (EU), try to play more or less the same stuff, although this is not crucial.
(and no, we’re not going to try and align this with the acoustic version, that is impossible, considering the way the TD works)
Step 3: Now comes the crucial step; you need to adjust the sound of the acoustic upright piezo (AU) so that it sounds as much as possible like the piezo of your EU.
I first experimented with a matching EQ like the Eventide Equivocate. (a matching EQ can compare two signals and EQ one so that it sounds (frequency wise) like the other)
But in the end I decided that doing it by ear works better, at least for me.
So I inserted a good EQ (I used a linear phase EQ, which seemed the best choice to me for this purpose), toggle between EU track and AU track, and adjusted the EQ so that the AU sounded more or less like the EU.
Step 4: connect the TD to your multitrack.
Now route the AU piezo output with the EQ enabled to one mono output, and connect this to the line input of the TD.
Then solo one of the microphones of the AU recording from step 2 and route it to another mono output.
This output needs to go to a DI, because it needs to be converted to a microphone level and impedance. Connect the XLR output of the DI to the XLR input of the TD.
Summary: the idea is that you feed the TD with the AU piezo which now sounds more or less like the EU piezo, and then send one of the mike tracks to the TD so that this piezo track is matched my the TD with the mike track.
Step 5:
Put the TD in training mode and press play. Make sure you first play the sustained notes to level the TD. Check if the levels are right by connecting a headphone to the TD output and toggling between the line and mike input. (as described in the TD manual) This step took me some time and experimentation, and how well this works depends on the output levels.
What I learned: if the TD takes ages to train or pass one of the training stages, then the mike level is too low. (so raise the level of the DI output)
Step 6:
Listen to the result. My first tries didn’t sound very well, but by comparing the TD sound with the AU mike track you can analyse what is missing/is too much, adjust the EQ, and start again. This might take some time, also depending on how experienced you are with EQ and sound comparisons, but at some point you should arrive at some good TD sounds.
Nice thing is that you can document and save everything and try and retry as much as you like.
Some notes:
Bear in mind, this only more or less adjusts/matches the frequency characteristics of the two instruments, not the time domain. Sustain, and freq behaviour over time and other non linearities remain matched to the behaviour of the AU piezo. The TD also works in the time domain, and adjusts the decay of the piezo to the mike’s decay. This not altered by the EQ.
Therefor using the TD channel 2 or 1 settings never sounded right to me. (these ‘replace’ your EU sound totally with the TD captured sound)
But if you think of it just as you would with an electric bass recording, where it is common to record the bass both with a mike and through a DI and use both in the mix (mike for character, DI for clarity and definition) then you can get really good results with setting the TD to a mix between dry and TD sound. (I usually end op somewhere somewhere between 50-70%)
You still have the clarity of the EU, but you can add acoustic character to the sound, which I was missing so much.
===
Other not intended use of the TD.
1 - Once you got the hang of it, there are more options, like Eq-ing the mike sound as well, to achieve different tonal characters. Follow the same procedure, but now also EQ the mike sound you send to the TD to your taste, to get different characters.
Now when playing live I can switch between a warm, a twangy, thick or thin sound, all with an acoustic feel to it.
2 - This is really not the idea of the TD inventors:
Because I also sometime use other fx pedals on my bass (pitch shift, filters, EG) I do not always want the added acoustic character. Combined with other FX it can become blurry and lack definition. I used to switch the TD to bypass and use a different pre amp, but then I thought, why not capture the other pre amp sound into the TD?
Now you do not need a computer, just patch in the jack of the bass into the TD and into your pre amp (my pre amp has a ‘pre line out, unprocessed which does the splitting for me), route the output of the pre amp to a DI (or use the built in DI if your pre amp has one) and route the mike output of the DI to the mike input of the TD.
Dial in your favourite sounds on the pre amp, and put the TD in learn mode. Now you can capture (again, more or less, stuff like saturation will not/partially work) the sounds of your pre amp.
Once done, you now also have some more direct sounding patches in the TD available, which work better in combination with other fx pedals.
Try the character knob to mix the captured pre amp sound with the direct sound of the EU.
Well, I hope this helps some players who want to achieve the same goal…
Good luck, and happy bass playing!
Daniel
My first post here, I wanted to share something I’ve been working on for some time:
A couple of months I bought a ToneDexter (TD) My goal was to give my electric upright a more acoustic character by ‘ToneDextering’ my acoustic bass (which I really do not want to take to gigs and rehearsals anymore) and then run my electric upright through it. Not the intended use but I was hoping it would be possible.
* note: even if you do not have an acoustic bass this might work for you, as long as you can lay your hands on one for a couple of hours to record it.
The idea is simple, but to make it sound good prove to be a challenge. After some experimenting I came to this workflow, which might be of interest to other users:
Step 1: make a really good recording of your upright with a piezo and several mikes into a some multitrack software, like Pro Tools or Reaper.
(see TD website for best placement of piezo)
Play the same stuff as you would when training the TD. So first some long notes on A and D to train it for level, and then play normally covering the whole range.
Step 1a: this was the part where you need the acoustic bass. From now on not needed anymore.
Step 2: now make a recording on the next track in your software of your electric upright (EU), try to play more or less the same stuff, although this is not crucial.
(and no, we’re not going to try and align this with the acoustic version, that is impossible, considering the way the TD works)
Step 3: Now comes the crucial step; you need to adjust the sound of the acoustic upright piezo (AU) so that it sounds as much as possible like the piezo of your EU.
I first experimented with a matching EQ like the Eventide Equivocate. (a matching EQ can compare two signals and EQ one so that it sounds (frequency wise) like the other)
But in the end I decided that doing it by ear works better, at least for me.
So I inserted a good EQ (I used a linear phase EQ, which seemed the best choice to me for this purpose), toggle between EU track and AU track, and adjusted the EQ so that the AU sounded more or less like the EU.
Step 4: connect the TD to your multitrack.
Now route the AU piezo output with the EQ enabled to one mono output, and connect this to the line input of the TD.
Then solo one of the microphones of the AU recording from step 2 and route it to another mono output.
This output needs to go to a DI, because it needs to be converted to a microphone level and impedance. Connect the XLR output of the DI to the XLR input of the TD.
Summary: the idea is that you feed the TD with the AU piezo which now sounds more or less like the EU piezo, and then send one of the mike tracks to the TD so that this piezo track is matched my the TD with the mike track.
Step 5:
Put the TD in training mode and press play. Make sure you first play the sustained notes to level the TD. Check if the levels are right by connecting a headphone to the TD output and toggling between the line and mike input. (as described in the TD manual) This step took me some time and experimentation, and how well this works depends on the output levels.
What I learned: if the TD takes ages to train or pass one of the training stages, then the mike level is too low. (so raise the level of the DI output)
Step 6:
Listen to the result. My first tries didn’t sound very well, but by comparing the TD sound with the AU mike track you can analyse what is missing/is too much, adjust the EQ, and start again. This might take some time, also depending on how experienced you are with EQ and sound comparisons, but at some point you should arrive at some good TD sounds.
Nice thing is that you can document and save everything and try and retry as much as you like.
Some notes:
Bear in mind, this only more or less adjusts/matches the frequency characteristics of the two instruments, not the time domain. Sustain, and freq behaviour over time and other non linearities remain matched to the behaviour of the AU piezo. The TD also works in the time domain, and adjusts the decay of the piezo to the mike’s decay. This not altered by the EQ.
Therefor using the TD channel 2 or 1 settings never sounded right to me. (these ‘replace’ your EU sound totally with the TD captured sound)
But if you think of it just as you would with an electric bass recording, where it is common to record the bass both with a mike and through a DI and use both in the mix (mike for character, DI for clarity and definition) then you can get really good results with setting the TD to a mix between dry and TD sound. (I usually end op somewhere somewhere between 50-70%)
You still have the clarity of the EU, but you can add acoustic character to the sound, which I was missing so much.
===
Other not intended use of the TD.
1 - Once you got the hang of it, there are more options, like Eq-ing the mike sound as well, to achieve different tonal characters. Follow the same procedure, but now also EQ the mike sound you send to the TD to your taste, to get different characters.
Now when playing live I can switch between a warm, a twangy, thick or thin sound, all with an acoustic feel to it.
2 - This is really not the idea of the TD inventors:
Because I also sometime use other fx pedals on my bass (pitch shift, filters, EG) I do not always want the added acoustic character. Combined with other FX it can become blurry and lack definition. I used to switch the TD to bypass and use a different pre amp, but then I thought, why not capture the other pre amp sound into the TD?
Now you do not need a computer, just patch in the jack of the bass into the TD and into your pre amp (my pre amp has a ‘pre line out, unprocessed which does the splitting for me), route the output of the pre amp to a DI (or use the built in DI if your pre amp has one) and route the mike output of the DI to the mike input of the TD.
Dial in your favourite sounds on the pre amp, and put the TD in learn mode. Now you can capture (again, more or less, stuff like saturation will not/partially work) the sounds of your pre amp.
Once done, you now also have some more direct sounding patches in the TD available, which work better in combination with other fx pedals.
Try the character knob to mix the captured pre amp sound with the direct sound of the EU.
Well, I hope this helps some players who want to achieve the same goal…
Good luck, and happy bass playing!
Daniel
