The video is a great silent film! - Wait it's a song?
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What effects used to get this sound? Toxic.
- Thread starter AK Bass Guy
- Start date
It seems he played on a lot of tracks for Britney and also even on Celine Dion
Sounds like a heavily compressed/EQd and fuzzed out bass. It’s a legit synth tone which makes this more interesting to me.
The mix is incredibly good. I’m guessing they low passed the bass or rolled the tone knob off. What is impressive to me is how much weight the sound has. May have been some plugin magic like Rbass thickening it up.
The mix is incredibly good. I’m guessing they low passed the bass or rolled the tone knob off. What is impressive to me is how much weight the sound has. May have been some plugin magic like Rbass thickening it up.
I'm definitely hearing some real electric bass (heavily compressed, and gated) in the mix - there are some slaps / pops, that give you an idea of its level in the mix.
What I suspect the producers did, was to have the bass tracked as a performance, and cleaned up, then heavily augmented with some digital synth in unison (possibly the upper octave set to sawtooth, and the sub-octave set to square wave).
I never made the jump and I'm still sorta lo-fi all told. I kinda set the effects aside.
That isolated drum and bass it sounds like more than just fuzz and tone rolled off, there is a high end fizz to it that sounds like a bit crusher or a filter with the resonance cranked up, but it's super smooth, no sloppiness to it at all.
O.K. listening to the isolated track, I'm inclined to revise my earlier post to say that I think there's probably some confusion / mythology going on by the fact that a bassist is credited on the song :
I think the parts I previously mentioned were tracked by the bassist, but the majority of it was probably done (perhaps replaced) by a synth.
You can clearly hear the slap bass parts, and slurs / glissandos, and some parts where the bass is in unison, beefing up the sound - but the rest is either entirely synth, or there's some heavily gated electric bass going through an octave divider, and synth / filter (I guess possibly a Mutator rackmount?) and possibly distortion.
Basically the track is a hybrid compilation - and the stem includes guitar parts, and octave up to enhance the bass - there's a lot going on.
Personally I think its all bass just overdubbed in layers. Maybe even re-amped from a DI for some spots (particularly the bridge, check that seemingly off time hit at about 2:38. I know things can get quantized but the layers in the bridge seems really on top of eachother)
There's the main synth tone throughout the whole track (except the bridge) that still sounds like a bass with fuzz and filter to me (check the faster notes at like :24, that feels more like a bass than a synth to me)
Theres a clean tone that seems to get mixed in for slaps pops and slides but isn't there 100% of the time. It first pokes in to my ears at :58 with the slide into the first chorus, but then it feels likes it out for the actual chorus. Slaps and pops seems to get mixed in only during the final chorus.
There's some kind of brighter tone that gets mixed in under the first half of the 2nd chorus.
The bridge seems to have 2 tones stacked. There's a way more squirty filter, and then a more straight forward distorted bass on top of it.
Either way you're not gonna be able to produce all 3-4 tones live simultaneously, so i think sticking with the main filter/fuzz tone would be the plan. Maybe switch to a thinner sound during the bridge so the chorus hits harder when you come back in.
There's the main synth tone throughout the whole track (except the bridge) that still sounds like a bass with fuzz and filter to me (check the faster notes at like :24, that feels more like a bass than a synth to me)
Theres a clean tone that seems to get mixed in for slaps pops and slides but isn't there 100% of the time. It first pokes in to my ears at :58 with the slide into the first chorus, but then it feels likes it out for the actual chorus. Slaps and pops seems to get mixed in only during the final chorus.
There's some kind of brighter tone that gets mixed in under the first half of the 2nd chorus.
The bridge seems to have 2 tones stacked. There's a way more squirty filter, and then a more straight forward distorted bass on top of it.
Either way you're not gonna be able to produce all 3-4 tones live simultaneously, so i think sticking with the main filter/fuzz tone would be the plan. Maybe switch to a thinner sound during the bridge so the chorus hits harder when you come back in.
Totally agree. The beginning sounds really unnatural for a bass. It also seems really tight quantized. It could be bass but heavily edited and processed in the studio or put through a synth. Soundwise it doesn’t sound like a bass at all. Half way through the song you can hear the real bass coming in.
These two YouTubers played it with a Source Audio C4 pedal.
Holy cow. The bass in the top vid is right on target.
That is one bad ass pedal sound.
I will try and refrain myself from ordering one of those right now.
Cheers.
I can confirm the C4 works for this kind of stuff. It's my go-to pedal for all my synth tones on wedding gigs.
If you could get that sound out of a 1983 toy Casio without a ton of external processing, please tell me the model so I can pick one up before the prices go through the roof (if they haven't already)!
Props to the person playing in the vid. They are playing with very methodical string muting. That is probably helping the synth pedal track much smoother as well.
While it might not be Michael Jackson’s Thriller level of sale, over 5 million in sales is no small feat.
This doesn’t even take into account the stats of streaming services.
You don’t have to like a song to subjectively view it as a well written (or recorded) pop song.
If subjectivity doesn’t work for you then sales should be a valid enough quantification.
