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[quote name='ThomBassmonkey' post='1318491' date='Jul 27 2011, 05:55 PM']I don't understand why people think that gain needs to be set just below clipping point on a bass amp, especially with valve amps you use input gain to control the drive and grit. In a studio (on studio preamps, not counting instrument amps) you set the gain as high as possible to reduce the noise floor but live, so long as your amp isn't fuzzing loudly it's fine.[/quote] You have a point, but if you provide too little gain then you are hamstringing the poweramp section, it can only amplify what you give it. If you are talking valve amps then by the time you are soft clipping (overdrive) then you are already past that point anyway.

[quote name='Prime_BASS' post='1318463' date='Jul 27 2011, 05:30 PM']Ah!! Exactly what I was thinking. The later was working since I was playing pretty damn hard but it's more than likly a sure fire way to develop some hand issues, hopefully the blisters will stop soon aswell. My only worry about the one song the band does once in a blue moon involves a slapping section for a verse, would I have to develop a better slap technique to fit in with the gain setting? It's not a major issue but I'm not one to fiddle, I lick to set my amp and go with no worries. So it's fair to say I'm going the right way around this now?[/quote] Slapping doesnt need to be louder than even moderately quiet fingerstyle, however much you see Flea bashing the cr*p out of his bass, it isnt necessary. However a decent well set up compressor/limiter can help you control the difference in level, I would suggest you work on the technique first and foremost.

Bilbo has pretty much hit the nail on the head. The gain is the to get the amp operating within its optimimum conditions. The factors that act as boundaries on the gain setting are the signal to noise ratio at the low end and distortion of the signal due to clipping at the upper extreme. There is no point setting the input gain lower than you need to just because you are capable of hitting the string harder than you ever would, for one thing you are lowering your signal to noise ration, and for another you are lowering the maximum output of tha amp, since the gain is lower than it need be. So try the following (best done in a full mix situation - ie in reheasal with everyone playing):- Set the eq flat and the main volume minimum. Play at a level you would consider a loud accent in your technique, not as hard as you possibly could, rather as hard as you will ever play in the real situation, and set the input gain based upon that. Set the output volume to justy right in the mix. It can be a godd idea to just try nudghing the gain down and the output volume up to see if it is beneficial to the tone, usually you cant hear any difference, but some preamp circuits sound best at not quite the optimial s/n ratio setting. Eq the sound, aim to cut the stuff you dont like rather than boost what you do. The most important point here is to [i]use your ears and [b]not[/b] your eyes[/i]. Make the bass fit into the mix, try and be aware of mud (too much low mids) vs warmth (enough low mids) vs thinness (too little low mids), enough bottom withput it being boomy, some presence in the upper mids without harshness, and the right amount of 'zing'. In a mix situation less eq is usually (not always) more if you have a decent instrument and amp IME. If you get the band to stop playing and listen to your bass on its own dont be surprised if it sounds very different from what you would normally expect. That is fine.... Double check the input gain. You are now set.

Isolate rhythm reading practice away from normal bass playing practice. Just read the rhythms for a good while (clapping like a demented happy clapper in the car helped me)

[quote name='Jase' post='1303716' date='Jul 14 2011, 04:31 PM']They sound very, very naughty...who are they?[/quote] Its a single chap called Jeff Schmidt's side project. Its very very good too:- You can download the complete album free [url="http://www.ruinerseverhead.com/"]from here[/url] I recommend you do, its excellent, and Jeff is a top fella....

2 stereo tracks IS the only option. But in any halfway decent DAW you can seperate the stereo tracks into mono and then pan them as you will....

To hell with it, one more for luck I'll stop now!

Another example, this one is Larry Graham again, with Betty Davis:- If bassists had stuck to this as the template for good slap funk bass lines we wouldnt all be bitching about it!

Slap can sound phenominal, and very restrained....

[quote name='silddx' post='1303608' date='Jul 14 2011, 03:02 PM']Mate you can't black-up these days, it's racist.[/quote] Nige, thats a new keyboard and some screen wipes you owe me!

Reminds me of Ruiner Severhead's Jesus Fist Tapes, which are brilliant!

On a lighter note I really wish more pop-rock bands had just a tenth the creativity of plus tech squeeze box:-

Best gig I ever saw was Ground Zero, they were the most incredible thing I have ever witnessed on a stage:- Warning this one is an hour long! I could go on....

[quote name='mcgraham' post='1300764' date='Jul 12 2011, 11:14 AM']So what would people like to hear at the Bass Bash?[/quote] People enjoying all things bass....

If the settings are set right for gain (ie the gain overload lamp isnt coming on) at low levels, and you get no speaker flap, then if you get speaker flap when you turn the master volume right up then you are exceeding the limits of the speaker. The wattage is merely an indicator of the thermal rating of the speakers, it is in no way a real indicator of the excursion limits of the speaker design. You have effectively reached the excursion limit of the speakers when trying to cope with very high transient levels. You need either new speakers that can cope with the transients, and also work correctly with the cabinet in question - not an easy thing to guarantee, or you need to change either your playing style, or eq and gain settings to no longer exceed the design of the speaker. If you dont you will damage them.

[quote name='waynepunkdude' post='1300697' date='Jul 12 2011, 10:06 AM']It can get that way when people play non-stop punk riffs.[/quote] Fixed for you

[quote name='SlackAlice' post='1299161' date='Jul 10 2011, 06:13 PM']Being the stupid bint that I am the wedding is not on the 24th ........so I will be able to come along - although[b] I'm very rusty in comparison to the rest of you guys[/b]......& my 'gear' isn't exactly going to set the bash on fire! [/quote] Doubt it, I havent played a gig in over a year, its getting rather embarrasing really

[quote name='Basszilla' post='1297166' date='Jul 8 2011, 01:17 PM']Something else that has been bothering me. How do I visually monitor my input gain when recording a track, say bass? My interface doesn't have meters. I'm assuming the meters are on the software are they? I'm going to be bugging people on the reaper forum a lot I guess! Thanks [/quote] Yes use the meters on the track. Record at 24 bit and leave yourself a good 6-12dB of gain above your highest peaks for drums, and everything else. With 24bit you wont lose any resolution at all. With reasonable gain staging and so on you wont have any S/N ratio worries. Dont be tempted to drive too hard into the front of your interface, the AD wont handle it well near 0dbFS, and its often the weak point in the chain. The reaper forum is a superb place to read info and ask questions, very cool people on there as a rule.

I'll expect that I'll know when you are getting your head around this when you ask how to make the fader on the tracks within the group control the send to the reverb... Consider this though, with Reaper you can add any effects you want in a chain on a track insert, you also have a wet/dry level on every effect in a chain. You can control pan and volume and muting of any track by programming control changes, or automating their control You can control any parameter on any effect, either manually by programming them or setting up automated controls. You can choose any opne of 7 pan laws for the project, and any track within that project can be set differently. Given a decent set of ears, a reasonable monitoring environment some free vsts and the time you can make a track do anything you like. I have just completed the most complex mix I have ever done. At one stage approximately 30 parameters in the mix are changing to control the sound of the drums and the levels of the instruments over about an 8 second period. Literally, independant control over ratios, attack times, thresholds and releases on various compressors, effects sends, effects return levels, different eq parmaters, all at the same time. The result is completely seamless, and you would think it was just the sound of the musicians playing, in reality its a hugely complex mix automation to make it sound like that. Turn off the mix automation and it sounds nothing like as emotionally powerful within the mix. Turn off all the effects and it sounds a site less impressive again. I'm thoroughly proud of it actually And its only possible because of the power of the modern DAW, you couldnt fit enough people around a desk to turn that many knobs and push that many faders in an old school mixdown, not possible.

[u]Groups[/u] Ok, this is simple to explain. Say you have two mics on a guitar cab, that you have painstakingly phase aligned by getting them positioned just so. Both mics sound great on their owm and mix together beautifully giving a wide range of available choices of timbre at mixdown. WHen you get to mix down it becomes apparent that a certain blend (say 55% mic A, 45% mic is exactly right for the track. Once you have decided this you want to maintain this mix throughout the song, but ride the level of the overall sound up in the choruses by a couple of dB. This is an ideal case for a group. So in reaper you have your two recorded tracks of guitar (Guitar A & Guitar , and you want to group them together. Add a track (ctrl t IIRC), name it Guitar Group, then click and drag the Guitar A track up to the new track, a little light blue line will appear as you hold the track and it will indent slightly. Do the same with Guitar B. Now during playback if you watch the meters on the Guitar Group track you can see signal in that track at the same time as in the two child tracks of the group. Simples! [u]Auxes[/u] Similar thing, you want to put a reverb on your guitar group and the vocalist, and you have a really super, but processor heavy VST that will do the job beautifully. You can either put an instnace of the processor on each trck (guitar group and vocals) and adjust the wet dry mix on the vst or you can set up an Aux buss style track put the reverb on that track (set compltely wet) and send a bit of signal to it offany tracks that you want to. So we add a new track, label it reverb, add the reverb effect, set it completely wet. Now on the Reaper tracks you can see a little I/O button (I/O, Env, S buttons exist on each track). Click the IO button of the guitar group and drag to the reverb channel. Play the track and watch the meters on the reverb channel. Now click the IO button on either channel, a dialog will come up. From the perspective of the reverb it is Receiving signal from the Guitar, from the perspective of the GUitar channel its sending to the Reverb. The level can be adjusted at either end. Simples....

If you find that once you get your rig up and running you get issues with clicks on audio, then its likely a device or service that you arent using muscling in on cpu power. Download this tool:- [url="http://www.thesycon.de/deu/latency_check.shtml"]http://www.thesycon.de/deu/latency_check.shtml[/url] And follow the (fantastic) instructions on the page to help diagnose wqhat is causing the issue. One of the nice things about my Vaio is it has a hardware switch on the front which turns off blueray and wireless, two sets of services then shutdown, and the chances of them requesting cpu time at an inopportune moment decreases. The fact taht you got a dedicated audio lappie means it is like ly to be set up to really 'work' at audio - you've saved a lot of heartache there! The recommended Behringer ADA8000 above is considered an alarmingly good bit of kit for the money, mainly for the AD converters rather than the mic pres, admittedly. The thing is, coming from a 16 track world you are already schooled in the use of aux sends to maximise the paltry available hardware resource (ie reverbs & choruses), and if you used an 8 or even 4 group desk, chances are you are well versed in setting up groups. If you were lucky that desk had inserts on the groups and all the channels which you used to apply dynamic control to those groups and channels, or a bit of dirt or whatever. All that knowledge is completely applicable to Reaper, just more so. The inbuilt fx are many and varied, Stillwell ones are superb, as are the Cockos ones (one of the best non-linear phase eqs I've used, and the most versatile compressor I've found, not a character comp as such, just a superb workhorse, use it all the time). The application of these effects hasnt really changed, just the interface. Dont be daunted! Really the quality of the outcome hasnt changed, if anything all thats happened is the plying field has been very greatly (not completely by any means) levelled between you and a full studio. If you can get some acoustic control in your tracking/mixing space (basstraps, absorbers etc) and have reasonable mics, then there is nothing to stop you getting broadcast quality results with that set up....

[quote name='Arco' post='1296501' date='Jul 7 2011, 09:40 PM']I'd like to do this - but I'm a bit nervous about it. Not done anything like this before, like to spend my time hding behind the rest of the band. S'funny - when I started I didn't read and always busked, now after 5 years of having to read /sight read because of the standard of the band, improv etc seems hard! A lot of my playing is of the Eric Morecambe variety "All the right notes, but not necessarily in the right order". Hopefull I will learn some and not embarrass myself too much..... Anyway, sign me up. I'll bring the Yamaha SLB200 / Precision / Markbass 121P combo.[/quote] No need to be intimidated, really, all levels, all styles completely cool. It is not in any way competitive, quite the opposite. The worst that can happen is you spend a day looking at, listening to, talking about, and trying, lovely gear that you would may or may not want to own from that point onwards.... ...sometimes more than your arms and legs. In all likelihood you will also learn some interesting stuff, meet some lovely people, and go away thoroughly happy.

[quote name='essexbasscat' post='1294938' date='Jul 6 2011, 04:50 PM']Did Plux get bumped off the list ?[/quote] Looks like Plux and I aren't wanted doesn't it

[url="http://www.bluenoise.no/mydrumset.html"]MyDrumSet[/url] Free vst drumset. Very nice, has individual outs for all the drums, room and OH. Proper spill and crosstalk as well. Means its exactly like working with a real kit. Which is superb if you know what you are doing, and less super b maybe if you dont. Did I mention its free already?

slap ban? Wachootalkin'boutWillis?