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[quote name='risingson' post='951219' date='Sep 9 2010, 10:32 PM']Agreed although the genres you stated I would say are even more reliant on a supportive bassist, the only difference to my ears is that producers have a tendency to mix and master the bass up front due to the nature of the type of music, so I guess they're more prone to being picked out if they make a mistake. A massive amount of 'easy listening' you mentioned about for lack of a better term usually has some session player wailing on a fretless in the background. My point being 95% of music relies on a supportive bass line to propel everything else forward. Improvisation on the instrument is fine but at at very specific moments and in very specific tunes. It's the horses for courses argument again but I'd much rather listen to Pino on a P-Bass with flatwounds thumping away in the background with Erykah Badu or John Mayer than hear any particular bass solo.[/quote] Nah I disagree with you there, loads of funk live the bassists are definitely improvising, a lot, even in some rock (Living Colour's Muzz Skillings said he never played a line the same twice for instance). The thing is improvisation is not all about fret w@nkery at all, and yet people hear the term improvise and assume it must be. Any time you express yourself whilst playing in a way that chanegs any part of the groove at all, you are in fact improvising. I doubt there are more than a handful of people on this forum who really can play a song the same twice in a row, I mean record it twice, put the two versions up and really analyse it, there will be differences, if we are so good at playing in the groove and all that, they should at least timing wise be almost identical. They wont be, its not possible. If you could then getting to be like that would have removed all passion and soulfrom that piece of music, which would render it cr@p. Supportive yes, repetition to the point of drudgery no.

mixing or tracking? mixing you want open - they sound more natural, tracking you want closed, stops the bleeding bleed dunnit....

[quote name='risingson' post='950933' date='Sep 9 2010, 06:58 PM']I don't like improvisation on bass that much at all, although I'll occasionally hear someone playing that will catch my ear. I think a bass player should count himself pretty lucky if people come up to him/her at the end of the night and compliment them on the job they did, usually if you're a good player the only people that will have noticed what you've done will be the token musos in the crowd and the rest of your band. Bass players should be the ones in the band that literally support everyone else, like the bridge between rhythm and harmony, it's not something you notice if it goes right but one mistake and you know a mistake has been made.[/quote] I think that how noticeable the bass is/should be is actually entirely genre dependant. If you are playing country, blue, rock (including a lot of metal), or most pop or easy listening type stuff then I agree the bass is almost purely supportive, and can be said to be at its best when it isnt really notices, if you play drum and bass, dub, funk, reggae then I'd say its much more of a forefront instrument. Improvising or not.

[quote name='silddx' post='950799' date='Sep 9 2010, 04:38 PM'] Thanks mate! All live performances are multi-dimensional, even if the notes are the same each time. There are loads of great bands who don't improvise live, Rush are one. There are minor differences each night but other than that it's the same show. Yet fans see them time after time on the same tour. It's about whether you like the band and their music and the "show". Same with classical concerts.[/quote] Pleasure dude, and you know I'm kidding about that - well a bit

[quote name='ironside1966' post='950690' date='Sep 9 2010, 03:07 PM']It is not a myth that it is more covenants and there is less to go wrong. Mic; ing is easier to mix depends on many variables including if the stage is hollow and the room acoustic and the actual tone of the cab. It is harder to but back something that’s been taken out so if the sound is muffled, has no mids or the player is compensating for a bright room then you are scrweed so I would always use a di as back up[/quote] Close mic'ed (ie a few inches from the driver) the ratio of room to direct signal is so low as to be all but irrelevant. How is DIing more convenient, there are more leads involved, same number of devices and so more things to go wrong with a DI than a mic. The bassist may love what has been taken out by the cab though! Does that make him immediately wrong, and mean he has no understanding of his tone? So why would you insist on putting it back?

[quote name='ironside1966' post='950690' date='Sep 9 2010, 03:07 PM']James Jameson used to DI his bass straight to the desk and we all know what a sterile sound that is.[/quote] To be fair that would have been an all tube desk and they were known to push the desk into overdirve, hardly the same as DIing into a tranny/digital front of house rig!

[quote name='ironside1966' post='950690' date='Sep 9 2010, 03:07 PM']Just to sum up if I gave the impression that bass frequencies need time to develop then that is not what I intended to say, the sound you hear is the sum of many part not just the drivers.[/quote] Fair play, I misunderstood what you were trying to say mate. No probs. I think we are in complete agreement about how a bass cab functions then. [quote name='ironside1966' post='950690' date='Sep 9 2010, 03:07 PM']In my experience as a free lance sound engineer of many years working with anything from small pubs to large out door events with many kw watts working between 200 and 250 show a year so I must have done something right I would say 95% of the time the bass was Di,ed and no one complained apart fro a few original bands but the pros musicians seemed to be happy.[/quote] Not disagreeing with the fact that a DI can work fine for a huge number of players. However would you be DI'ing a bass going into an SVT on full on rawk overdrive? Is it so hard to mic one up then? In your honest opinion, is it really harder to mic a bass cab up than to mic a guitar cab? My point is that some people who have a clean sound like what it is their cabs do to the sound more than they like the sound of their bass DI'ed. Just because they have what is perceived to be a clean sound, doesnt mean the the distortion of the signal imparted by their cab isnt something they want to hear. Just food for thought.... In the case where you DI the bass, do you find you like to compress the signal after the fact. Had you ever thought that if you mic the cab, that cab may inherently be compressing that signal (to a certain extent), since a transducer must be slower than an electrical impulse. Just a thought again... How many of those 200 to 250 gigs a year did you have the bassist come out to where you were doing sound to hear the FOH? I'd better the bigger the gig the less likely it is to happen (its nigh on impossible to for a start - wireless or no wireless). So they may be happy with how things went, but the player doesnt really know what he sounds like FOH, and they accept that as how its going to be (so they should mate, I've done plenty of FOH too - who do they think they are worrying about the bass sound eh ). So how can you say they love what you did to their sound? They may love the experience, it may have all gone swimmingly, but unless they are in the audience they have no real idea how they sound FOH, its all about trust, making them feel comfortable etc etc.

[quote name='silddx' post='950659' date='Sep 9 2010, 02:30 PM']I didn't say that. I was just asking if it was important to the band if the audience enjoys watching their "process". I have tried it, it is fun.[/quote] It is important that the audience are entertained - providing that is a goal of the artists I guess. I've seen several artists for whom audience enjoyment and entertainment was not a requirement, improvisation had no bearing on the situation mind. Didnt necessarily make them a bad artist, in some cases it allowed tem to produce iconic works of massive importance to a very few people. Do the audience need to appreciate the fact that some part of what they are experiencing is improvised - no. Will the band necessarily play as well if the are not allowed to deviate from the composition at all - depends on the musicians. Does not allowing the band any room for deviation make moments of absolute genius less likely to happen - IMO yes. Does not allowing the band any room for deviation make moments of absolute disaster more likely to happen - IMO yes. Is improv a bad thing live - IMO no! In your opinion YES! I rather like the 'spice' of watching music performed in the moment, I feel that cannot be as true when every note, every nuance, every aspect is predetermined. If any aspect of the performance is not predetermined then that is improvised. However small that is it coul dgo wrong, it could end in disaster OH NO, how can we have unsafe potentially disastrous music performances, think of the children, surely we need to get HEalth and Safety ion on this at once!!!! Question for you Nige, you often say how you like to get down and boogie whilst playing, are those dance moves all predetermined, are they choreographed? If not then maybe you should look at tieing that aspect of your performance down next? Cant say I'd ever need to see your band more than once though, and I cant see why anyone else would really either....

[quote name='silddx' post='950625' date='Sep 9 2010, 02:04 PM']Is it important that the audience appreciates that art?[/quote] How can you say or even suggest that the audience will appreciate the songs less if there is an element of improvisation in there. Especially if you haven't tried it....

[quote name='silddx' post='950596' date='Sep 9 2010, 01:40 PM']Understood. But what you are doing there is the opposite of improvising, in a sense. You do not know the part, but you have a fair idea of it. And you are trying to get as close to it as possible based on what you know of it. Not really improvising, just playing along to the chords hoping you don't f*** it up. And I am not winding people up for the fun of it. I have a serious point to make, although I phrased it to provoke some conversation, rather than [i]"Improvisation on a bass, is it a good fing or a bad fing? I don't want to upset anyone"[/i]. And get three replies. I am genuinely interested in what people think, sorry if you feel manipulated.[/quote] I dont understand. Are you really suggesting that improvisation is playing along to the chords and hoping you dont make a 'mistake' then? I mean I have played in bands where every note has been strictly composed, and whilst its fine to be able to do that, it isnt very satisfying for me before I do feel that the need to express the 'moment' of that time of playing that track makes me rewrite on the fly. Improv is after all composition whilst playing, not grasping at notes at random and hoping you dont make too many obvious mistakes. Nothing impresses me less than a band playing their album at a gig note for note to be honest. They wrote it, they recorded it, so of course they can play it, what I want to experience is their interpretation of their music at that point of time, otherwise I'll save my money and listen to the CD rather than go to the gig.... Of course certain bands are in a real predicament when it comes to this, mainly those who rely on sequenced backing tracks, but even then in the moment in a song you can embellish or disembellish (?) your part to reflect that instnace of the performace of that song.

[quote name='ironside1966' post='950138' date='Sep 9 2010, 01:18 AM']The actualle sound you hear 3 feet from the cab is made up of the speaker the bass port maybe a tweeter then the acoustics you place a cab near a wall or in a corner that will reinforce the bass also. all this takes space to gell together, what about multi speaker set ups. What you said about a tube is a good example because the sound of a brass instrument is not just what comes out of the bell it is the combination of breath the keys in fact the entire instrument, again a cymbal the sound is made up of the entire cymbal vibrating with various harmonics throughout the cymbal but a mic far enough away to pick up the entire cymbal. If you have an overdriven or distorted bass sound then I can see the sense in mic'ing up the cab but if you have a super clean head then why? In the real word if I you do a lot of work with a sound engineer they can try things out over time and improving things. You may hire the PA with plenty of time for a sound check then I would have no hesitation in mic’ing a bass cab but in a lot of venues you are rushed of your feet trying to get 2 or more bands sorted in half an hour then it’s not going to happen will the band sound suffer I doubt it. In the real word if I you do a lot of work with a sound engineer they can try things out over time and improving things. You may hire the PA with plenty of time for a sound check then I would have no hesitation in mic’ing a bass cab but in a lot of venues you are rushed of your feet trying to get 2 or more bands sorted in half an hour then it’s not going to happen will the band sound suffer I doubt it. In smaller rooms there is often enough sound coming from the cab anyway so only a little help is needed. A full room sounds completely different from a empty one and the Di signal is a lot easier to correct then a mic one. With sound men and PA you get what you pay for mayny venues uses students of people working for expreance. anybody can buy a PA and say tey are a sound man and but how many work 5 days a week. Ask 100 engineers and get 100 different answers.[/quote] The point I made was that the bass does not take room to develop. That is a complete myth. A bass cab with multiple different transducers (ie driver, port, tweeter) will create different parts of the overall sound you hear from all of those, but the room plays as big a part in that as all the individual items, as such so does how far away you stand. However the idea that the [b]bass[/b] 'develops' further away from the cab somehow is a nonsense, it is all there at the source, it just gets quieter as you move away from the cab (inverse square law applies, and cancellation from room nodes not withstanding). Moving away from the source further merely mixes different transducers. If you have a Bergantino NV215, NV610, NV412 or Ampeg 810 though, you have asealed cab with a single type of transducer, no ports, so why would you not close mic these cabs to get the actual sound you want to hear (or a better approximation of it) to the sound guy? Regardless of whether or not you use a distorted tone, the cab changes the tone - a great deal! So if you love the sound of your cab and ampo and you want to reproduce it, then mic it up! A DI doesnt sound anything like a well mic'ed clean cab. not even close. It will have way greater extension both into the treble and bass than a cab will have, even mic'ed with several mics. This is a harder thing to mix in with the band then, not easier - its a complete fallacy that a DI is always easier to frequency mix into a band's sound IME. A DI will be punchier though, it will have faster transients, and it will have a wider frequency response. Doesnt make it sound better necessarily - it will often sound pretty sterile, and need help to make it sound interesting (a nice opto compressor is a great way to achieve this), many engineers dont understand where bass pitch info is IMO, and eq it all out anyway. Leaving you as a nasty wooommmwooomwommm sound in the room. So it wont matter if you ask them to mic or DI - you'll get a crap result. Same point with a tuba, the bass frequencies are all there close mic'ed, if you close mic a cymbal you hear the bass that is too low energy to go very far, you would be amazed at how deep the frequencies a crash cymbal actually produces (sub 80Hz typically) - is this a bass instrument? No but your seem to suggest that the bass cannot be captured with a close mic. I agree the full sound of a tuba in all its parts is only heard several feet away, but the bass is there at the bell, and micing a tuba for a live gig is a wonderful lesson in conpromise (a friend of mine is a pro tuba player in various bands doing eastern european gypsy music - we figured out how to mic his tuba pretty much, its taken a couple of years to absolutely nail it down, but its brilliant now, for a live setup with a musician who needs freedom of movement as well as great tone). Why do guitarists get mic'ed always, even if they have a tranny amp and a clean sound? How long do sound engineers take micing a guitar cab for live, and do the results sound OK? Its a nonsense to presume that it is so difficult to mic a bass cab! It isnt. Its no harder than micing a guitar cab. It more accurately reflects the sound you want to produce as well in many cases. If you happen to prefer the sound of your bass DI'ed to your bass through your rig, then by all means give the sound guy a DI and go with it - whatever works for you!!! If you want to get the sound guy to work with your sound then ask (nicely, with a beer ready for a bribe if need be) to be mic'ed, it really takes no more time than setting up a DI or micing a guitar cab, and will mean that his staring point is your sound from your rig. An sm57 can do a remarkable job on a bass amp, if you get serious though save up for a HEil PR40, they are the mutts undercarriage! As for feedback, as I said before the soundguy will be busy getting sub bass frequencies out of the kick at SPLs far greater than the bass and lo-mid he should be looking for from your bass, if they dont feed back why would the bass? Why would you assume that a DI signal is easier to correct than a mic'ed one? If you fill a room with people they will suck up more of the upper mids and treble than they do bass, but they will have an impact there too. Any enginneer worth his salt will be trying to accomodate the room as it will be with people (best guesses involved here naturally), so the soundcheck should be a little bright. How is that harder to achieve with a mic'ed bass? Turn up a shelving eq a couple of dB more above 1KHz and you are there - oh your bass sound doesnt do anything above 800HZ (old strings for instance) then dont worry about it, the bass will not change much in the mix...

Chris, if you want something offering studio quality, that you could then use in the studio as well go for this:- [url="http://www.fmraudio.com/rnp.htm"]FMR Audio RNP[/url]

Just want to debunk a myth or two:- Many soundmen in smaller venues cant be trusted to tie their own shoe laces and know f all about acoustics. They just own a PA, with luck they may know how to set it up reasonably well, but dont count on it! Bass does not take space to 'develop', its all there at the source!! Try [i]close[/i] micing a tuba, or even a ride cymbal if you doubt this, bass is bass is bass.... A mic an inch from a speaker will get a fairly good dose of bass boost due to proximity effect, positioned off axis will take out the extreme top end. If you need less boost then move the mic away a couple of inches. It will have all the low mids you could ever need, and thats where the real pitch info is. If you need some tweeter in the mic then move the mic, mic positioing is an art aswell as a science, but it does follow some pretty sensible guidelines... A mic an inch from a speaker will not cause undue rumble or feedback, it wont need to have its gain set high enough to feedback, if there is likelihood of feedback from a monitor then try reversing the polarity of the monitor signal... Ports produce mainly deep bass, which most sound guys will be pulling out of your FOH sound anyway, (they want mainly kick down there for that all important whump thu the chest cavity) so a mic helps in this regard Kick mics are pretty crap bass amp mics (IMO), especially if the same make and model is used for both, you want to mix the two sources to compliment each other, that is harder f the two signals have the same enforced mic eq on them to begin with. A better bet is a full range dynamic (like a PR-40 or RE20 for instance), but you can do surprisingly well with a decent SM57 put in the right place. The sound that matters is the sound in the mix, not the FOH solo'ed bass sound!!!!!!!

[quote name='Beedster' post='949967' date='Sep 8 2010, 09:52 PM']Right, a couple of questions re monitors: Firstly, Yamaha NS-10s, what the general view? I have the opportunity to get some pretty cheap. This would likely be a stop-gap between setting things up at home and moving into a bigger space sometime in the (hopefully near) future. Secondly, I think I'm going to have to mount these either on a bracket or a shelf to get them at ear height. Does this make a lot of difference and if so, which is preferable? C[/quote] I hate mixin on them, yeah they have some detail in the mid range, but you have to guess how much bass energy is going on by watching the cones for signs of flapping (really, they are tuned pretty high and if there is too much low end you cant hear it and have to watch for it) - so mixing on them is an art in and of itself. You can very easily make a decent sounding mix on NS10s that wont translate very well at all IMO. They are crap IMO

How many ways are there to skin this cat?? My advice is get down to [url="http://www.bassdirect.co.uk/bass_guitar_specialists/Home.html"]bassdirect, Mark[/url] will happily spend a couple of hours or more going through masses of options, neo/non-neo ultra-lightweight/standard weight. NB, take your credit card, and dont expect it to get out of there alive Whilst neo drivers have a different sound to some old school drivers, its nothing that cant be sorted in the right cab, but they will not sound the same as old school drivers in the same cab. Its not an issue if they are in a cab designed or tweaked for them IMO. Hence the Bergantino ae410, a one man lift that fits in the tiny boot of my car and will knock over walls with big fat booty-shakin' bass. Might be a bit beyond the budget though?

[quote name='Musicman20' post='949605' date='Sep 8 2010, 04:50 PM']IMO, the LM3 is the best, unless you really like the Rocker 'drive' sound. You can get the same effect or better with a dedicated and small pedal (which may even be used as a high quality DI). The LMT has nice features, but the tube only adds a very very subtle difference at higher volumes.[/quote] +1 Totally agree, esp about the LMT being ultra subtle

[quote name='silddx' post='949500' date='Sep 8 2010, 03:11 PM']+1 it's complete bollocks![/quote] HAHAHA!! Love it mate

Nigel, mate, thats a load of old bunk. I have lost count of the number of funk gigs I've done where the groove was 'explored' from start to finish, occasionally brilliantly, by everyone in the band, from the beginning to the end of the song, much to the delight of a packed audience getting very sweaty to it too. Yes there was an absolutely defined structure, but from the dynamics at a macro level to the rhythmic diversity at a micro level, every instrument was jamming to some extent, including the vocals. Improv is not jazz, jazz is not improv, do not confuse the two. You can perfectly well improvise with a single note, just try it, one note, no octaves, and a drummer, simple groove, doesnt need to be complex, just embellish about, mix it up. Does that mean this is something we should not play on a stage in front of an audience unless we are in a 'jazz' setting. I hope not! Music is a conversation, between not just all the musicians, but crucially between the musicians and the audience as well. If you always try and have the same conversation with your audience you will soon become boring.... Bass is the foundation of music, hence it is the foundation of that conversation, therefore it is most important that the foundation of the conversation is not boring. The song is (to my mind) the subject of that conversation. It better not be boring either

Verse part of Funky Monks Utterly brilliant

[quote name='gafbass02' post='949287' date='Sep 8 2010, 11:36 AM']I know there is a 'jumper' I'm guessing not the woolley kind? I've seen some pics, do I just unplug the black plastic bit and put it in some other holes? Do I need to solder? Will it kill me? Will I kill it? Will it suck once I've done it? Can i put it back? Help! (very slowly and using small words and big pictures etc!!)[/quote] OK, first off this is REALLY easy, so dont panic. [url="http://www.talkbass.com/forum/showpost.php?p=4363780&postcount=624"]Here's the detailed answer[/url] You do not need solder. Enjoy!

For best results have him mic the cab For very best results buy a Heil PR-40 and make him use that to mic the cab.... The cab is a major, major influence on tone - all cabs are, the entire concept of 'neutral' bass cabs is utter tosh, none of them are really flat, some a re less flat than others mind, if you want a flat audio reproduction system you need huge studio monitors, and the exact right room. Same with PAs (they are often even worse, when set up by idiots who consider bass to be all about sub - rant rant rant!).

[quote name='Musicman20' post='948377' date='Sep 7 2010, 03:17 PM']Agreed, most decent 2x12 should be more than ANYONE really needs. But some people need insane amounts of volume, low end, and punch, and that would require a really quality 4x10, or even 6x10. I use different 2x12s, and I agree, they are very loud. Even the TC RS212 is VERY loud, and at the old prices an absolute bargain. Its more, as I understand from other reviews, to do with 'pushing your cab to its limits' and the sound compressing. Pushing a 2x12 every gig at its limits is not ideal. A 2x12 will only do so much. If you play a 5 string bass in a very heavy doom band, I would want more than a 2x12. I dont, so im alright [/quote] Surely the people in these 'very loud doom bands' are using a chuffing ENORMOUS PA to create the 'volume singularity'(tm)* fix they need? In which case huge stage volume is utter pants anyway.... * 'volume singularity'(tm) = A noise so immensely loud that you are unable to perceive anything else around you - it 'sucks in' all other sound

The MB LMII & its derivatives (sa450 etc etc, not the SD ones or F1/F500) had the same limiter circuit in , and when runninginto 8ohm loads the would choke a bit early, leaving the amp not as good at delivering into 8ohms as into 4ohms. Whilst 2 8ohm 4x10s is louder than 1 4ohm 4x10 (by a lot) the ae410 is loud enough on its own, I really dont need another cab, I might like one for the pose, but then I've got to transport it, and set up/pull down is way more agro so I wouldnt recommend that option to anyone playing normal venues. If you are on a 50ft stage you might want to get an amp that pushes 2ohms and go for it though!

LH500 For the beer tokens its the beans. [url="http://basschat.co.uk/index.php?showtopic=99358&hl=ae410"]I have compared a Super12T pushed by an LH500 against a MBsa450 pushing a Berg ae410. [/url] Both VERY loud. Didnt have a dB meter and the object was not to see which was the out and out loudest rig, both crushed a loud drummer and guitarist though. If you need more volume you need to get involved in drag racing....

Relax - FGTH, just for the sheer bloody mindedness of a one note bassline, and the fact that it somehow makes for a brilliant song...