The bass tone

[Reggaebass]

When I play reggae or heavy dub I have my bass on about 2 o clock and a little bit of mid so it’s a nice low and you can hear the notes clearly   

 

 

[PaulWarning]

39 minutes ago, Jus Lukin said:

 An alternate question- has anyone stood in front of a powerful, full range system pumping out a sine wave at 40 or 30hz? It's quite an experience, and not very musical!

that's why it's best left to the bass drum 

[Al Krow]

31 minutes ago, Reggaebass said:

When I play reggae or heavy dub I have my bass on about 2 o clock and a little bit of mid so it’s a nice low and you can hear the notes clearly   

That makes a lot of sense to me. So bass boosted and a 'touch' of mids (rather than being "mid heavy" as was suggested earlier). 

Out of interest do you dial-back your treble also?

[Al Krow]

5 hours ago, Jus Lukin said:

An alternate question- has anyone stood in front of a powerful, full range system pumping out a sine wave at 40 or 30hz? It's quite an experience, and not very musical! Amongst other symptoms I have actually had cold sweats, biliousness, and yep, something of a niggling sense that I really ought to clench lest I void myself. 

You're probably right: nightclubs and the dance music scene are best left to the nation's youth, right? 

Edited May 16, 2018 by Al Krow

[Reggaebass]

Yeah I keep the treble back on my amp  for a warm mellow tone  but clean        I found I was spending more time messing around with my amp than I was playing or practicing  you just got to find the sweet spot 😀

[isteen]

1 hour ago, Reggaebass said:

I found I was spending more time messing around with my amp than I was playing or practicing  you just got to find the sweet spot 😀

Sounds just like how I spend most of the time in with the band

[Al Krow]

18 hours ago, Skol303 said:

Download a 30Hz test tone and play it through your bass amp or over headphones. Does it sound musical? Can you even hear much at all?

30-40Hz can certainly add a lot of weight to a bass instrument, but it doesn't add much to the 'musicality' of it. If you play that low 31Hz B-string then it sounds fat because the lowest fundamental is helping to underpin the overall sound, but much of what you're hearing is the harmonics above that. And you can roll of a lot of that 31Hz fundamental without affecting the overall tone or 'fatness'.

We have a difference of opinion as to what the human ear can hear.

First point - the human hearing range is commonly agreed to be 20Hz to 20kHz but we all lose the ability to hear the higher frequencies with age (men more so than women).

20 Hz is actually the octave below the low E string (which, as an aside, has relevance for those of using octave down).

The point we have been discussing is can we hear a note as low as the low B string fundamental (30.9 Hz) or are we mostly just hearing the harmonics? Well, for me, there is a very easy 'real life' test that we can all do. Go to any decent in-tune piano and play the low B (second note on the keyboard) and then the B an octave above. Can you hear any difference? If we can't hear the fundamental note on the low B and we are mostly only hearing the harmonics above it, the two notes should sound very similar. But actually they don't - the low B fundamental is very discernible (and musical). 

So I can clearly hear the fundamental low B on another 'stringed' instrument - the piano, and there's a  good reason why these low notes have been on the piano keyboard for a couple of hundred years; they're not just there for show.

There is then a separate and valid point (which is maybe what you are getting at?) as to whether the speakers we are using can actually produce the low notes well, or musically,  from an electric bass and this is where we are likely to run into constraints as most quality bass cabs are voiced to deal with 40Hz (or 45Hz) and higher.

I would be interested to know if any folk have bass cabs that go lower (down to 30Hz) or are augmenting their bass cab with a sub woofer to deal with the 20Hz to 40Hz range and, if so, how they have got their rigs set up and what sub woofers they are using?

(And please note in no way am I disagreeing with any of the comments that in order to cut through the mix as a bass player it is all about the mids! I'm just keen to understand the 'bass' range and the low B string in particular in a  bit more detail).

[Skol303]

50 minutes ago, Al Krow said:

The point we have been discussing is can we hear a note as low as the low B string fundamental (30.9 Hz) or are we mostly just hearing the harmonics? Well, for me, there is a very easy 'real life' test that we can all do. Go to any decent in-tune piano and play the low B (second note on the keyboard) and then the B an octave above. Can you hear any difference? If we can't hear the fundamental note on the low B and we are mostly only hearing the harmonics above it, the two notes should sound very similar. But actually they don't - the low B fundamental is very discernible (and musical). 

 

16 hours ago, Jus Lukin said:

This isn't to say that such low frequency content is always unpleasant, but if present it is usually at very low levels and carefully controlled. And certainly, as bass guitarists, we aren't kicking out anything like as much of it as the specs might suggest on paper.

@Al Krow... nobody is saying that low frequencies aren't important. What's being said is:

1. Very low frequencies don't offer much 'musical content' on their own; they rely heavily on combining with upper harmonics to be both audible and musical. This is something that can be used to one's advantage when EQ'ing.
2. If you choose to boost very low frequencies when playing bass in the majority of small venues, it will sound like utter crap*.

Hope that clears things up for you.

*Longer explanation: This is largely because it will excite all sorts of low end ‘room modes’ (standing waves), which cause massive peaks/nulls in the sound and very long decay times, sometimes even several seconds. This leads to what is know as the ‘one note bass’ problem, whereby low frequencies take so long to decay that they begin masking each other, resulting in all low end notes sounding as though they are the same pitch.

I’ve experienced this myself at a friend’s rehearsal session in a small room - bassist dialled up the low end and the singer complained that he was playing some notes out of tune; yet when the singer walked over to where the bassist was stood, it sounded fine.

You don’t want your audience to suffer that same problem at your gigs.

Edited May 17, 2018 by Skol303

[dannybuoy]

Al, you've spent the last 6 months raving about high pass filters, now you want to evacuate everyone's bowels by reproducing notes at 20Hz. Get a grip man!

Psycho-acoustics is a complex field, your piano test doesn't quite take all factors into account. You could roll off everything under 100Hz and still be able to tell the difference between the low E on your bass and 7th fret on the A string. Your brain knows what a bass guitar or piano sound like and the typical ratios between the various harmonics that give it it's unique timbre, so it's very good at detecting the difference between two notes an octave apart when the fundamental is chopped off. However where it gets interesting though is that musician's brains are better at this than the general population - with enough low end rolled off, some people might perceive a step from 7th fret on the A string to 1st fret on the E string as a step up in pitch rather than a step down. The Wikipedia link posted earlier goes into this.

[EBS_freak]

Sometimes it's a wonder that we ever get to play at all with all this to worry about!

[Al Krow]

1 hour ago, dannybuoy said:

Al, you've spent the last 6 months raving about high pass filters, now you want to evacuate everyone's bowels by reproducing notes at 20Hz. Get a grip man!

DB - mate I'm only using HPFs to eliminate the crud BELOW 20Hz i.e. sub audio range. That leaves plenty of room for the low B string (30Hz to 40 Hz).

Try playing the two low B notes an octave apart on a piano? They sound VERY different and distinct. Certainly me and Mrs Krow can very easily tell them apart and so would Joe Public. It's a really easy test to do - do it with your eyes closed and someone else playing the notes in different orders randomly. Guess what - you'll be able to tell the difference 100 time out of 100. (Try the same thing with a compressor switched on and off in band mix and I warrant it will be much less clear cut! Ooops I just mentioned the "C" word...)

1 hour ago, Skol303 said:

... nobody is saying that low frequencies aren't important. What's being said is:

1. Very low frequencies don't offer much 'musical content' on their own; they rely heavily on combining with upper harmonics to be both audible and musical. This is something that can be used to one's advantage when EQ'ing.
2. If you choose to boost very low frequencies when playing bass in the majority of small venues, it will sound like utter crap*.

I agree with all the above.

No one is talking about boosting very low frequencies in small venues (well certainly not me).

This discussion started with the clear assertion that we should be cutting frequencies below 100Hz because we can't hear them and they have no musical content or value.  That is the only point a couple of us are pushing back on.  I would suggest that a lot of us leave the bass on our amps set at "zero" / 12 o'clock (and may even give a little boost to fatten the bass up on our bass EQ if we have active basses) and it sounds just fine.

Edited May 17, 2018 by Al Krow

[SubsonicSimpleton]

7 minutes ago, Al Krow said:

Try playing the two low B notes an octave apart on a piano? They sound VERY different and distinct. Certainly me and Mrs Krow can very easily tell them apart and so would Joe Public. It's a really easy test to do - do it with your eyes closed and someone else playing the notes in different orders randomly. Guess what - you'll be able to tell the difference 100 time out of 100. (Try the same thing with a compressor switched on and off in band mix and I warrant it will be much less clear cut! Ooops I just mentioned the "C" word...)

Each note on a piano has its own dedicated strings - even if you detuned the note an octave above so both notes sounded at exactly the same pitch the notes would sound very different, because they are being made by different length strings with different diameters.

If you really wanted to put this theory to a proper test, you would need to use a synthesiser or tone generator producing a pure sine wave with no harmonic content, then repeat the test with synthesised tones of increasing harmonic complexity to guaruntee that the harmonic content of the test tones isn't being influenced by factors like inharmonicity of physical strings (which is the reson why fretting a low B at the fifth fret doesn't sound the same as the open E even though they are the same pitch).

[Al Krow]

17 minutes ago, SubsonicSimpleton said:

Each note on a piano has its own dedicated strings - even if you detuned the note an octave above so both notes sounded at exactly the same pitch the notes would sound very different, because they are being made by different length strings with different diameters.

If you really wanted to put this theory to a proper test, you would need to use a synthesiser or tone generator producing a pure sine wave with no harmonic content, then repeat the test with synthesised tones of increasing harmonic complexity to guaruntee that the harmonic content of the test tones isn't being influenced by factors like inharmonicity of physical strings (which is the reson why fretting a low B at the fifth fret doesn't sound the same as the open E even though they are the same pitch).

You're correct, of course. But I trust you'll agree that an E note on a low B bass string sounds much much closer sounding to an open E string, than two B notes an octave apart?

And you'll certainly be able to hear the difference between a pure B0  and a B₁ (with no harmonics) on a synthesizer provided your speaker can handle 30Hz.

[EliasMooseblaster]

20 minutes ago, SubsonicSimpleton said:

If you really wanted to put this theory to a proper test, you would need to use a synthesiser or tone generator producing a pure sine wave with no harmonic content...

I've some more worms here, where's my tin opener?

Years ago, I built a very crude theremin as an undergraduate project. (Good fun it was, too.) One day, I brought my chromatic tuner into the lab to see if I could determine the (narrow) range of pitches it was producing.

It couldn't work out which pitches I was playing. One explanation I was offered was that it was only producing the fundamental (which made sense given the way theremins work), and the tuner, having been designed for guitars, basses, etc, was expecting a much more harmonically rich signal...dare I extrapolate further from this and speculate as to whether the tuner would use the balance of harmonic content to help it work out which octave the pitch sat in?

[Osiris]

59 minutes ago, Al Krow said:

DB - mate I'm only using HPFs to eliminate the crud BELOW 20Hz i.e. sub audio range. That leaves plenty of room for the low B string (30Hz to 40 Hz).

Didn't you say that you have a Vanderkley 210LNT cab? According to the specs on their website, it only goes down as low as 40 Hz. So how do you hear any notes lower than an E flat ???

And what exactly do you think you are gaining from allowing the frequencies between 20 and 40 Hz through to your cab by not HPF'ing them, when the cab itself is incapable of reproducing them? 

I'm a bit confused.

Edited May 17, 2018 by Osiris

[dannybuoy]

1 hour ago, Al Krow said:

Try playing the two low B notes an octave apart on a piano? They sound VERY different and distinct. Certainly me and Mrs Krow can very easily tell them apart and so would Joe Public. It's a really easy test to do - do it with your eyes closed and someone else playing the notes in different orders randomly. Guess what - you'll be able to tell the difference 100 time out of 100. (Try the same thing with a compressor switched on and off in band mix and I warrant it will be much less clear cut! Ooops I just mentioned the "C" word...)

 

28 minutes ago, Al Krow said:

You're correct, of course. But I trust you'll agree that an E note on a low B bass string sounds much much closer sounding to an open E string, than two B notes an octave apart?

And you'll certainly be able to hear the difference between a pure B0  and a B₁ (with no harmonics) on a synthesizer provided your speaker can handle 30Hz.

Nobody is arguing against you there, sounds like you have got the wrong end of a very pointy stick that is tightly wedged up your bum!

The argument being made was that with a complex sound like a bass or piano, or don't need the fundamental to be able to judge the pitch, in fact if you have a decent enough brain it will fill in the low fundamental so that you will hear it when it isn't there. Which is why you can still pick out a bassline from a tune being played back on a mobile phone speaker.

 

7 minutes ago, Osiris said:

Didn't you say that you have a Vanderkley 210LNT cab? According to the specs on their website, it only goes down as low as 40 Hz. So how do you hear any notes lower than an E flat ???

And what exactly do you think you are gaining from allowing the frequencies between 20 and 40 Hz through to your cab by not HPF'ing them, when the cab itself is incapable of reproducing them? 

Not only that but many amps will chop off that content too - the M900 has a HPF built in for example, although I don't know what it's specs are!

[SubsonicSimpleton]

12 minutes ago, Al Krow said:

You're correct, of course. But I trust you'll agree that an E note on a low B bass string sounds much much closer sounding to an open E string, than two B notes an octave apart?

And you'll certainly be able to hear the difference between a pure B0  and a B₁ (with no harmonics) on a synthesizer provided your speaker can handle 30Hz.

From a pure science viewpoint, you would need to also completely eliminate any effect of the listening environment to ensure that room modes were not making either pitch louder or softer, and also the speaker would need to be able to reproduce the tone without introducing distortion from either the speaker cone or enclosure - of course this wouldn't happen in the real world so it's rather a moot point.

I think that the best way to really understand what is and isn't important is to record a loop of your bass with a DI, then play back into your efx return on the amp head from your DAW with an EQ plugin on the track, and then experiment with moving the high pass point progressively until you can perceive a change - it will vary from rig to rig(some speakers are rubbish at reproducing true LF content, but still sound good for bass guitar), and it might be quite suprising how high you can move the filter without compromising the sound coming out of the speaker. I have access to a couple of rack mount parametric EQ units with variable high pass filter, and IME you can set the frequency much higher than you might expect at war volume running the unit in the amp efx loop without compromising "heft".

[Akio Dāku]

😂 This is like watching ants death spiral now. "Hz, Hz, fundamental, assert dominance, mild passive aggression..." I love bass players, we truly overthink our craft. 😋

[Al Krow]

19 minutes ago, Osiris said:

Didn't you say that you have a Vanderkley 210LNT cab? According to the specs on their website, it only goes down as low as 40 Hz. So how do you hear any notes lower than an E flat ???

And what exactly do you think you are gaining from allowing the frequencies between 20 and 40 Hz through to your cab by not HPF'ing them, when the cab itself is incapable of reproducing them? 

I'm a bit confused.

Spot on.  Hence my earlier post:

"There is then a separate and valid point (which is maybe what you are getting at?) as to whether the speakers we are using can actually produce the low notes well, or musically,  from an electric bass and this is where we are likely to run into constraints as most quality bass cabs are voiced to deal with 40Hz (or 45Hz) and higher.

I would be interested to know if any folk have bass cabs that go lower (down to 30Hz) or are augmenting their bass cab with a sub woofer to deal with the 20Hz to 40Hz range and, if so, how they have got their rigs set up and what sub woofers they are using?"

6 minutes ago, Akio Dāku said:

😂 This is like watching ants death spiral now. "Hz, Hz, fundamental, assert dominance, mild passive aggression..." I love bass players, we truly overthink our craft. 😋

It's ok, I suspect we all enjoy learning new things about our craft (and I will be first to admit I'm not always right) It certainly doesn't take away from playing in two busy gigging bands none of whose members are remotely interested in technical bass issues, apart from whether the bass has 5 or 4 strings (and even that only sometimes )

[Al Krow]

28 minutes ago, dannybuoy said:

The argument being made was that with a complex sound like a bass or piano, or don't need the fundamental to be able to judge the pitch, in fact if you have a decent enough brain it will fill in the low fundamental so that you will hear it when it isn't there. Which is why you can still pick out a bassline from a tune being played back on a mobile phone speaker.

That's all very interesting, dunno about you but I tend not to gig through mobile phone speakers...

[Guest MoJo]

P-bass or P-J on the neck pick-up

At home: everything flat

Live: Bass -1, Lo Mid +2, Hi Mid +1, Treble flat

[Jus Lukin]

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Edited February 27, 2022 by Jus Lukin

[Jus Lukin]

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Edited February 27, 2022 by Jus Lukin

[Al Krow]

9 minutes ago, Jus Lukin said:

But that's what we're here for! 

Seriously though, don't read too much chest-beating into this. Most of us here are regular contributors to such nerdiness- it's great to dig into the whys and wherefores, and is a good mental workout for us all!

Think of us as mates chatting down the pub, without the beer. Or the pub. Or faces. But you know, similar.

+30.9^^ 

[Akio Dāku]

34 minutes ago, Jus Lukin said:

But that's what we're here for! 

Seriously though, don't read too much chest-beating into this. Most of us here are regular contributors to such nerdiness- it's great to dig into the whys and wherefores, and is a good mental workout for us all!

Think of us as mates chatting down the pub, without the beer. Or the pub. Or faces. But you know, similar.

🙌 I totally understand, I just find it funny. I still do the same thing though, get totally sucked into the subtle nuances that only a bassist can perceive. 😅 That's why I like communities like this, we're all just nerds being super anal about subjective qualities that are mostly psychoacoustic. It's truly beautiful to me. I think at the ground of things all crafts are somewhat of an Ouroboros but that's the point right? Trying to solve the infinite problem, if it had an answer there would be an end to the process and that's no fun at all. My apologies if I came off as crass. 🙏

Edited May 17, 2018 by Akio Dāku
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