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[quote name='itswac' post='982008' date='Oct 8 2010, 08:47 PM']Hi Everyone, Just checked into this thread here...my apologies for not jumping in sooner! (sidenote: PM received and replied regarding Tri-Mod Wah). /CUT/ [youtube/youtube] [youtube/youtube] /CUT/[/quote] Cheers for that, as a software engineer as well as a bassist that was really interesting to watch!

[quote name='Paul S' post='981682' date='Oct 8 2010, 03:24 PM']This might sound like a daft thing to say but would it be of value to anyone other than myself if someone were able to demonstrate how various amp settings - low gain/high gain, different EQ settings etc - affect the sound. Happy to volunteer my TE rig for the purpose. It is something I just never seem to get time to do it at rehearsal as everyone is always noodling as soon as they get set up, so I press the 'pre-shape' and get on with it.[/quote] [quote name='Happy Jack' post='981690' date='Oct 8 2010, 03:31 PM']A good idea in principle (it must be - I've thought of suggesting it too! ) but an absolute bugger to demonstrate. Different basses, different rigs, different venues, above all different bands. Not saying 'No', far from it, just not sure how even a real expert on the subject (paging S1mon, paging S1mon) would actually present it.[/quote] Well I'd certainly be up for an informal chat about anything like bass tones and stuff - thats why I'm going, I'm hoping to learn something I'm pretty sure that by the time I've finished yacking about compressors the last thing anyone will want is me to talk more about, well anything actually! Alex C is comng along, he's a reknowned talker about all things bass tone, and a chap who really knows his beans, maybe he'll fill in on this one?

Cheddatom let me grab the stems of this off him to have a crack at a mix. Anyways, heres my wee effort done on cans. Its a VERY different approach to the drums from Cheddatom's, far more close mic'ed and compressed to 'pop' more. If anyone is interested I could waffle on a bit about how I got this far, I sent Cheddatom the project file so he could see for himself.

[quote name='lowdown' post='978232' date='Oct 5 2010, 12:36 PM']Another bunch of nice VST freebies here. Enjoy. [url="http://varietyofsound.wordpress.com/vst-effects/"]http://varietyofsound.wordpress.com/vst-effects/[/url] Garry[/quote] +1 - and a very big one at that, I use these ALL the time, they rock!

Priceless! What a tool....

[quote name='Mr. Foxen' post='976096' date='Oct 3 2010, 04:11 PM']People worry too much about bass breaking guitar speakers. Bass amps will, if you try and make it sound like a bass with eq, sticking a bass output into a guitar rig is happy though, unless you have loads of bass boost somewhere to try and make it sound like a bass. Trying to sound like guitar is fine.[/quote] Massively disagree with this, I've seen this fail occur. As soon as you turn it up to gigging volumes the whump causes far greater excursion than a guitar will, result over excursion and very bad things.... You dont need to octave up (though you can if you want) you do need to filter out the whump and it would be considered belt and braces touse a limter to tame the larger transients.

New I'd seen one before:- [url="http://www.sfxsound.co.uk/mainpage.asp?page=xm"]SFX XM[/url] I'm sure this little wee beastie from SFX would do exactly what you need, preventing damaging low end from trashing your guitar combo. Excellent!

Surely our very own Mr SilentFly of [url="http://www.sfxsound.co.uk/mainpage.asp?page=home"]SFX[/url] could do that kind of mod for you?

What you really really need is a crossover or hi-pass filter on the line going to the guitar to knock the bottom octave or so off. Maybe a limiter too so you dont hit the guitar amp/cab with too big a transient. Then you could go from your amps tuner out of fx send and not damage the guitar amp.

[quote name='M-Bass-M' post='973840' date='Oct 1 2010, 12:43 PM']Have to say I'm finding this thread useful reading, so cheers to everyone for the advice so far. One of the things that I am a bit stuck on is getting a good slap sound to come from my amp. I think I read previously that from an EQ perspective, you're looking to boos the treble and bass, and really cut the mids. Is this correct? Anybody have any more specific advice to give? PuP blend would also be useful too.[/quote] Well thats one sound. If you blend pups on a jazz bass equally you get a mid cut due to the phase of the two signals. A little bit of low end and a little bit of top may be necessary, but if you have a nice new set of strings on you shouldnt really need to eq a special 'slap' setting at all IMO. If you do scoop the mids then you will diappear in the mix with a band....

That is a righteously funky tune, and I [b]love[/b] that bass tone!

[quote name='mrtcat' post='914357' date='Aug 3 2010, 10:12 PM']Nice bass tone! I wrote a blues tune way back when for my GCSE music (I was only the 3rd year after GCSE's were created which shows my age) which was about having everything reposessed (how the hell a middle class boy from oxfordshire was any kind of authority on blues especially reposession is beyond me) and it was nowhere near as well tracked as that and it earned me an A so I'm sure that'll be a winner.[/quote] Ibanez BTB470 with DR Lo-Riders into a Joe Meek TwinQ, lots of top rolled off, and squished beautifully by the opto compressor. Its a yummy chewy sound isnt it! Personally I think being a middle class boy from Oxfordshire warrants its own special kind of blues

Sorry chaps, didnt see the replies before! Well he got 100% for it, and an A overall The mix that went in had a bit more upper mid on the bass to help it with less than excellent playback equiptment. I think the bass is right on this one if you listen on a decent hifi though. Anyway thanks for all the positive comments!

[quote name='dood' post='973108' date='Sep 30 2010, 07:48 PM']Ahh yes! Considering i'd been chatting to Ken on a thread over on TalkBass AND had watched all his videos - i'm daft as a brush, because I didn't think for a minute to post a link! DOH! - It's my age.. the ole grey cells.. in my day.. etc etc etc[/quote] Excellent!

[quote name='cheddatom' post='973011' date='Sep 30 2010, 06:10 PM']I just watched the drum tuning videos. Thanks very much! That's very informative. I don't have the back skin for my kick drum, but I don't think that should matter too much. I'll try and tune it. I did tune it up a couple of weeks ago because it felt too slack, but that's probably just my crap kick technique (and horrendous kick pedal). Would you suggest damping the toms at all? I've been to studios where they do that, but they sound so good I don't want to kill it. I'm suppose to start the new creep joint album ASAP but i'm going to wait until I have the best drum sound possible, because I think it kind of ruins the last one.[/quote] No worries, I found them completely enlightening! A friend of mine recently bought a really nice fusion kit but was fretting that the kick wouldnt go low enough, we tuned it up following this exact technique and it was monstrous, hugely deep and full sounding - fantastic! You can damp the toms, but only a tiny amount or they sound like 70's cardboard boxes. Another drummer friend of mine likes to make dampening rings for his toms out of old skins. He initially cuts out the skin then cuts progressively larger holes in the middle until he gets exactly the right amount of dampening. Works really well for close micing! A small piece of bluetack on the snare skin about 1/2" from the rim can do wonders for the snare, experiment with the size of the piece, but do make sure its properly stuck! A resonant head on a kick is not really necessary for recording. In fact you can really improve the sound with a second mic if you build a drum tunnel off the front of the kick drum with some really heavy blankets and mic at least 3 times further away than the close mic (which would be really aimed at getting the click off the beater in this case) at the far end of the tunnel. The tunnel is there to give as much isolation from the rest of the kit as possible, and to allow the sound of the entire kick drum to be miced (not just a spot on the batter head) Looks a bit lik this:- You can get really nice results with this trick!

Theres no reason you shouldnt be able to get a fantastic sound from that mic on a properly tuned kick drum, but you will need to experiment with tuning the drum, dampening it, and mic position. It may seem like a lot of effort, but IME getting the drum sound absolutely as good as it can be first, then getting the mic position absolutely bang on makes more difference than any number of mics and preamps and effects later on. The only other drum sound influencer in the same league is the room itself - but that really effects the room mics and overheads more than the kit itself...

[quote name='cheddatom' post='972905' date='Sep 30 2010, 04:47 PM']The rumble i'm on about on the toms is more the actual toms resonating, rather than spill. The mics on the toms are pointing almost directly down to the skin. The toms sound great in real life. Maybe it's the amount of low cut i'm using on them. I'll play with that later. So, maybe I should bring my room mics a bit closer to the kit, and play with my kick drum sound a bit more. I'm using the Red Audio kick mic, do you reckon I should be getting a real punchy kick sound from just the close mic? If so then that would negate the "need" for the room mics to be so high up. I did get a tape measure out to get the overheads equi-distant from the kick and snare. I've never tried time aligning within the DAW before, although i've read about it. Thanks for all the tips - plenty to play with from just one poster [/quote] If the toms are resonating with the kick then it s a kit tuning issue. In all likelihood your kick drum can be tuned a lot lower than it currently is. I've used the techniques for tuning that this guy suggests really successfully on several different kits, and never had toms resonate too much with the kick:- This one is really really good:- Really not trying to teach grandma to suck eggs, but I was shown a couple of ways to tune drums by various drum folk (with years of experience) and all of their methods were less successful and harder than this guy's explainations IME.

[quote name='cheddatom' post='972788' date='Sep 30 2010, 03:14 PM']Sorry, I said I was micing the tops of the toms, should I be micing the bottom instead? Or maybe as well? I do have a bit of parallel comp on the whole drum mix, but maybe I should send more of the snare to that. The reason I love the room mics so much is that they transformed my kick drum sound. Maybe I can try carving some of the frequency bands that I don't need out, reducing the reverb effect? I think it's low mids where they added an extra punch that I just wasn't getting from the close kick mic.[/quote] Sorry, misread your post (doh!) You should be micing the top of the toms However if you are getting a lot of kick spill you can review the direction the tom mics are pointing try to make the most of their cardiodness. Simply put if you can get the diaphram to point in such a direction that it is perpendicular to the kick whilst still pointing at the sweet spot of the tom it should help some. Room mics are great (dont get me wrong) but that snare is a mile away from the kick, in a different universe even I find with kick micing that position is ultra critical. Move the mic a couple of inches and that low mid might just come back! Another good trick is to time align you overheads with the snare and kick in your DAW (that is line up the transients so they are all at EXACTLY the same point in time) it makes every drum kit sound much much bigger IME. You want the mick transient in the kick mic track to happen at precisely the same time as the the kick transient in the overheads (and track snare if possible), at the same time the snare transients need to line up wiht the overhead transientts too. Its usually a fair few samples out.

[quote name='cheddatom' post='972742' date='Sep 30 2010, 02:32 PM']I put a pair of mics at the back of the room for this, as well as some close overheads. I liked it, is it 80s and cheesey?!? I was going for "spacious" rather than "sickly". I do have the snare close mic'd but it's not that high in the mix. My toms tend to rumble a lot with the kicks, so there's quite a lot of low taken out with EQ, then I have a bit of compression and a touch of extra attack with the stilwell transient monster. They still sound sh*t though. Should I try micing the bottom instead of the top?[/quote] mic the tops of the toms yes!!!! Mic similar to a snare, although I've had good results pointing straigth at the skin about 2" inside the rim too.The bleed will kill you if you dont, guess you already found that out! If you cant get it with that, then how old are those heads? I would have a taken the close miced snare and parallel compressed it to really really grab the attack (and kill everything else) then pull that up drier in the mix. It is a tad too reverby for my loking, but thats a taste thing isnt it - its not 'wrong'...

[quote name='TimR' post='972682' date='Sep 30 2010, 01:54 PM']OK, I misunderstood. "technically capable of playing" is a pretty big umbrella. Similar to "What makes a bad driver?" "Someone who can't mechanically operate their car." as opposed to someone who doesn't look at signs, hasn't read the highway code and takes no notice of other road users. A bit of a general answer.[/quote] "Technically capable of playing" is IMO as I stated before someone able to play the bassline they need to in time enough and clean enough for the genre in hand

Drums sound waaaaaaay back in the room (esp the snare) to my ears. Is that just room mics? The toms will need some judicious eq and maybe a bit opf parallel compression, hard to say without having the tracks to play with though!

[quote name='TimR' post='972472' date='Sep 30 2010, 10:54 AM']Correct, but I will clarify exactly what I mean by muting. All musicians must be aware of note lengths. It's not just related to bass players. It's something I've noticed amongst bass players AND rhythm guitarists. Often they will leave the notes ringing until they play the next note. Often this is not a problem but will destroy the feel of a song and make the song sound cluttered if notes are not kept to their proper length. This may be a self taught thing. My son (6) is learning trumpet. The first thing he is doing is practicing playing quarter notes. With a trumpet you have to keep blowing right to the end of the note or the sound stops and you must stop blowing or the sound continues. With a bass or any plucked instrument you have to mute or you end up playing a dotted quarter note or worse...[/quote] I was replying to blackmn90, talking about whether you can tell a bassline is improving a song, he stated you would have to mute the bass (ie mute the track). Nothing to do with muting ringing strings here (which falls under my technically capable of playing umbrella IMO!)

[quote name='JTUK' post='972542' date='Sep 30 2010, 12:04 PM']No aversion to it at all...and of course they are likely to use it on a recorded track.. I don't use it or need it live for my mix, IMO.[/quote] Fair enough