Putting down that bass , take 1

[charles]

I wrote an article on my blog about how to achieve an acceptable bass sound. Actually , a pretty damm good one I think. Of course, there are many ways of skinning this cat and obviously different sounds are applicable to different tunes/genres. I played my Kawaii bass which is actually a pretty decent bass even though not a well known brand for basses. It has active pickups i.e. EMGs and does have an ebony neck which I prefer.

The article can be found here:

http://monteirofusion.blogspot.com/2007/03/putting-down-that-bass-1.html

On the article I have a link to an MP3 I mastered for this. The MP3 also demonstrates the use of the virtual drum kit instrument BFD.

Let me know what you all think and also pls share other setups, tips etc on how any of you may have achieved specific bass "sounds".

thanks

[charles]

well, no takers so far on eval for this mix   .

Anyhow, based on some suggestions from the Reaper forum i.e. my current main recording/mix/ prototyping tool , I went ahead and reduced the reverb on the toms and added some compression on the top and bottom mic tracks for the snare as well as kicked up their levels a tad.

Didn't do anything else. Well, actually I also panned the bass dead center made it less wet as well.

You can check it out here:

http://www.monteirosfusion.com/music/snippets/bfdLatinGroove.html

its the second track on the media player.

Also here's a shot of the mastered mix, not overly compressed.

[gianni cassone]

The second take sounds more natural, but the EQ is rough on the drums. The bass sounds OK. I am not using real electric bass so I can't be much of help here. I record everything with the synth guitar / VG-88 on Garageband/Logic, and when I play with a real bass, it has to be an acoustic one.

If I may I would like to use this thread to have your opinion on a different approach I am developing before getting down to work on my next project: Most of it is now focused on integrating different instrumental approaches to simulate the band I wish to form in a couple of months. It seems to me that a band vocabulary partly depends on the instrumentation, so I have put together some tests tracks here to check out how compositional concepts I have developed in jazz fusion experiences could apply to the kind of music I am more acquainted to:

http://homepage.mac.com/giannicassone/page8/page1/files/Blue%20Tango.mp3

Everything is played on the synth guitar.

[charles]

Gianni,

what you should do is simply start a new thread. The title of the thread I started does not seem to make for a very good title for what you are trying to show us. So just come up with a good title and create a new thread

As far as to my bass recording experiment, I need the fatter strings to get into that bass mode , but I can't wait for my VG-99 though

I will gladly give you my feedback once you get your thread going.

[gianni cassone]

I agree with the bass strings tension! Will create another thread, I am not sure if it makes sense as a general topic though.