51m0n

A well set up compressor can make the bass be heard with far more clarity in the mix against the real evil that we compete with, the kick drum On this forum there is so much guitar hate, and yes in certain genres the guitar is a real frequency pig in the mix, but in more live mixes than not the real centre piece of the sound guy's world is the kick, it is usually mixed to be insanely loud, totally drowning out the bass. It is not uncommon on a really big rig to duck the bass around the kick, to help it stand out (happens a lot in recording to, but you get to be extrememly scientific with it). So how can a compressor help you? Well for one thing it can help to even out the level between the attack stage and the sustain stage of every note you play, by boosting the sustain stage in comparison with the attack level. This helps because it gives the part of the note after the transient more volume for longer, so the bass can be heard better after the kick, and is stronger for longer on every note. You can also use a limiter to control extreme peaks in the attack phase as well, allowing you to get more gain out of your rig, which in turn means you hear yourself better on stage, and present the engineer with a more controlled signal, far less likely to cause his precious 20K rig an issue. In which case he is more likely to turn you up louder in the mix, if he believes your signal to be better/easier to handle. Finally if you are a player who tends to change timbre, either with pickup selection, playing style, or effects, a compressor can help you to achieve a more even output in each case, again giving you the best chance to be there in the mix. Its not the be all and end all, and by set up well I mean its doing its job, but you cant feel it, or hear it working [i][u][b]until its in the mix[/b][/u][/i], butin the mix suddenly you can hear the bass 'properly' all through the set. Very hard to do without metering and a fully featured comrpessor, but not impossible if you really know what you are doing. If you dont know how to listen for compression I would recommend a cheaper rack unit (Alesis 3630 or a dbx unit) and learn to use that properly in context. It ownt matter that its a rack unit in your fx loop, because we are talking about always on compression. And lastly a well set up compressor will not, in any way, prevent you from playing with dynamics. That is just not the case. A poorly set up compressor may do to a certain extent, but it would have to be fairly extreme settings (more than 6dB of gain reduction, with a highish ratio, and you start to achieve compression as effect rather than just an aid to being heard in the mix). It is quite possible that the bassist you saw really knew his beans about setting up a compressor, and that helped you really hear his playing so well, even in a club, even with sound bouncing off walls, and I dare say, the ceiling too.....

How you doing for time though? Its all looking spiffy as, but will it be complete in time for the upcoming album, or do you have a plan B?

Insured, yes Fastidious about looking after and keeping an eye on the kit, yes Never had an issue yet, fingers crossed I dont take my eye off the ball now. However if the Roscoe has anything going for it to allay my fears its the fact that noone knows what the hell it is, and it doesnt look nearly as xpensive as it actually is.

Low and high eqs will be shelving eqs, the middle will be a bandpass eq. As for the frequency centers and Q's of each. Couldnt know without doing some measurements, or at least knowing the make and model of amp. Typically on a smaller practice amp you are looking at sometyhing like 100Hz for the low, 700Hz to 1KHz for the mid, and 3KHz for the highs, all with nice wide Q (or steepness of eq slope). Typically you can boost or cut upto 12dB in any of those ranges. Which is a huge amount. If you use too much low end, you will disappear in a mix, the human ear doesnt hear the pitches very well below the midrange, we take most of our pitch info from the midrange, so for all it sounds great solo'ed to cut those mids, when you get into a band try and cut them less. Gain on an amp like yours is just volume, on more fully featured amps you will often find an input gain and a master or output volume. This allows you to set the volume going into the front of the amp to an optimum level before distortion or clipping occurs. Since different basses have different electronics there is a very wide range of input levels that amps must cope with. There is a correct procedure for setting the input gain, requireing a clip light of some kind which will indicate that you are pushing too much signal into the amp.

All the soundguy wants is good strong even level in the bass. If you use a compression pedal or a dustbin to help, he doesnt care, he may well add more compression (or not), and he will almost certainly eq your bass to fit it into the mix better. The only time he will be upset by use of a compressor before the sound gets to him is if it adds a lot of noise. And yes whatever you add/remove with fx, if they are before the DI or the mic on the cab then they will change the signal that he gets.

I would talk to our own OBBM at http://bassic-bits.co.uk/ and ask him to turn you out an insert cable the right size for your board. That way you know it will be quality bale (Klotz is his favourite) using quality (Neutriks) jacks, made right.

Holy walls Batman!

Thats pretty cool, have you heard the JesusFist Tapes by Ruiner Severhead (aka Jeff Schmidt)? That would be right up your street....

Cracking groove there sir! Meeting BH must have been very cool.

+1 for the Zoom kit, I have the H4n (yes I do actually use a lot of the 'extra features' otherwise I would have got an H2) and its truly superb. The next thing you will find is you need some way foediting the huge amounts of stuff you will generate in rehearsal (by far the best bet is to just leave them recording in the room for the entire session). I'd recommend Reaper for that, its superb.

Totally taken the wind out of my sails today. R.I.P Bob, thanks, for everything, you couldn't know how much you will be missed....

Haha yeah, how many inputs do you need (1 per instrumetn at the same time) and two outputs, plus headphone out as a minimum. I'd say get an RME Babyface if you have the cash (not cheap!), simply because the drivers are rock steady, and the kit is very very good. Reaper gets a huge +1 from me. You can try [url="http://www.bluenoiseplugins.com/plugins/drummix/beta-edition/"]MyDrumSet[/url] for drums, its free, and simple, nut you need to know drum processing to get the most out of it...

Easy mistake to make, thats a 12" speaker and an asian leprechaun

Wow! Reminds me of the lights on the front of the Rolls Royce 20/25 at my wedding - absolute quality!

Definitely, Bob Babbit has stated that he and James Jamerson [b][i]both[/i][/b] got their big fat tone by plucking softly and turning the amp up The transient peak on the note is significantly lower in volume compared to the sustain level if you pluck more gently, that transient peak is largely upper harmonic 'clack', so plucking more softly and turning the amp up removes that from the sound giving you a far fatter tone. And your hands hurt less. What is not to like?

[quote name='BigBeatNut' timestamp='1342303878' post='1733144'] Count me in. Let me know if there's anything in particular from [url="http://basschat.co.uk/topic/113354-my-little-lot-iii/page__view__findpost__p__1044499"]this lot[/url] that you want me to bring. Andy [/quote] That Rob Allen Deep 5 fretless is very very very sexy.......

A Robbie The Robot jukebox?

If the mixer has a PAD switch on each channel then you can always turn thta on to significantly (-20dB is not unusual) lower the level coming into the channel...

Morris Minor? Winston Churchill?? 2 pints of lager and a packet of crisps??? Tell me I'm warm....

[quote name='groovebuster' timestamp='1342186041' post='1731114'] wen i wer a lad y sat down got the key and went from there. now unless ur a jazzer and its just a popular tune UTUBE fool. some1s probly bin there. still using ur ear is never a bad fing. get root notes, get chords, get fiddly bits. wana take it further get melody and play chords. find relavent scales, learn over 2 octives then solo y ass off. [/quote] Errr, pardon?

Get hold of the track in digital form on the 'puter (rip from a cd, record 'live' from youtube, buy the mp3, whatever). Import it into Reaper, which allows me to:-[list] [*]mark sections out, and put notes in the sections, which can include lyrics to a certain extent - also allows section looping to become trivial! [*]apply very surgical eq and noise reduction algorithms to lift the bass out (ReaFir an FFT eq/dynamics processor is excellent for this kind of shenanigans) [*]slow it down, no really this can help [*]pitch shif tthe song up or down a few cents to get it in tune [*]pitch shift it up an octave, can sometimes help pull out the bass line a lot! [/list] Once I've worked it out, and written out the structure and any notes (if I'm feeling brave or deluded I mean even write some of the dots out to particular fills, but this is only asking for trouble as my reading skills are so poor), then it is merely a case of repetition, and reading the crib sheets. Interestingly I have found that reading the crib sheets and mentally playing the song is every bit as helpful in terms of gross structure memorising as strapping on the bass and playing it for real. Just dont do this whilst driving!

He has a point you know....

A friend of mine has an H1, its good, but it doesnt allow you to turn the gain down enough for loud rehearsals in small rooms. IIRC the H2 does, and the H4 does and the H4n definitely does, although if you get an older one you would almost certainly need to flash the device (not a difficult operation) to update the firmware to allow the input gain to be a fraction of 1. Worth double checking though! The H1 hasn't had its firmware updated to allow this (yet) - which is a real shame, since other than that its a great looking tool. Other than that, they are superb tools, and can easily easily fit a coupl eof hours rehearsal recorded at 24bit 48Khz on to a 2Gb flash card (I would still suggest you get something far larger though)

[url="http://www.zoom.co.jp/english/products/h4n/"]Zoom H4n[/url] Sounds incredible at recording all sorts of stuff. [url="http://soundcloud.com/51m0n-1/track-7/s-T7TIC"]Here [/url]is a recording of a jam in a rehearsal room on Sunday night

Soul to Squeeze - my favourite bass line of all time....