Bass - technique from YouTube

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Armistice
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Bass - technique from YouTube

Post by Armistice »

I haven't done this and I'm not going to try - but as Greg was talking about people picking things up from YouTube in one of the other Rebel threads I thought I'd chuck it out there...

When I went over to help my mate out with some recording basics, he'd picked up some "interesting" habits and ideas from watching YouTube videos.

He was, at the time, dicking around with a bass track which he'd split roughly into three frequency bands (ie. he had three copies of the track and had LPF'd and HPF'd them into frequency bands - low / mid / high) and was applying different EQ and other treatments to the individual tracks - the aim being to produce this kickarse bass sound. I don't recall what he was doing exactly, but there was some distortion on the middle, and something else on the high etc.

Now he had so many other issues that I didn't waste any time on the bass track - "just don't!" - while I sorted out some of his technical problems, but I did wonder about it.

It sounded like a shit load of work for very little return and you could probably do it all on one track anyway via sends etc, but I did wonder where the hell the idea came from and whether it was just something some know nothing YouTube recorder invented to try to be "cool" or whether it was an actual worthwhile technique that had been tried and tested.

Ever heard of it?
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Re: Bass - technique from YouTube

Post by WhiskeyJack »

Kind of.

I had a friend do this with vocals and i thought it was a lot of work for no other reason than to say that he did it. It wasn't bass though, it was a vocal track.

He made two copies of of his vocal tracks, one that he treated "a normal" track and processed it as such. but then for some reason unknown to me he had the second processed to filter out the good stuff and enhanced the stuff we would normally de-ess and then sent that to it's own reverb / delay and buried it in the mix. :confused: :confused: :confused: :cuckoo:

I have no idea where he got this idea from? Could have been from anywhere really? dreamed it up on his own or if this is some standard thing "the pro's" do but i just told him it seemed like a whole lot of work for little to no real difference. I do sort of think it came from youtube because he sort of went through a phase at that time of sending my youtube links just about daily for "tips" most of which i either didn't watch or lost interest in in the first minute.

I think the home DIY recording thing is no different than anything else on the internet. you really need to consider the source of where information comes from before employing it.
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Re: Bass - technique from YouTube

Post by Greg_L »

IMO most of this weird trickery comes from the old days when they had to route things in weird and different ways to try new things and push new boundaries. Gear limitations required some outside-of-the-box thinking.

Fast forward to now and people do weird shit in the DAW just because they can. Routing is virtually limitless. You can send and process anything you want however you want all in the box. Probably 95% of it is unnecessary DAW masturbation.

No one's bass tone is so great or all-important that it needs that kind of DAW dumbfuckery - especially since damn near everyone just DIs bass anyway.
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Re: Bass - technique from YouTube

Post by Greg_L »

Oh, and monkey see monkey do. That's a big problem these days.
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Re: Bass - technique from YouTube

Post by rayc »

The Motown Exciter used two tracks - usually vocals - one as normal & the 2nd had a heap of top end and compression added and was used to add "excitement" to the main vocal but adding "just enough" of it in a blend with the main.
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Armistice
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Re: Bass - technique from YouTube

Post by Armistice »

Yeah, my initial thought was "it's a DI-d bass into an interface!" - so that's always going to need some/lots of work - might be worth getting a better sound to start with and spend less time on YouTube trying to "fix" it. Bass was the least of his problems, but I was just intrigued.
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Re: Bass - technique from YouTube

Post by JD01 »

This is a video discussing (and dismissing) the YouTubers approach to bass tone
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X30BSDWja8g&t=

Glenn Fricker actually got back to him after watching this and generally agreed with him.
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Re: Bass - technique from YouTube

Post by rayc »

Who was the dweeb on HR who "published" his how to make brilliant bass strategies?
Voxengo Boogex - is AWFUL - it was one of the 1st plug I scored and i pull it up every now & then to discover that it's still YUCK.
That bloke's wrong about Lemmy who's signature Murder One, is based on what Lemmy used: a Superbass with some mods then he turns down Bass & Treble PLUS plays chords on his Rickenbacker.
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Re: Bass - technique from YouTube

Post by Greg_L »

I stood mere feet from Lemmy's rig and heard it all by itself during a sound check. It sounds like a guitar amp. There's nothing "bass" about it.
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Re: Bass - technique from YouTube

Post by JD01 »

I don't know if he's right about Lemmy's rig - I've seen them live but I wasn't that into recording at the time.

I'm pretty sure he's right about the technique that a lot of YouTubers push and it being "fatiguing" to listen to.

Judging by his accent he sounds like he's from near me too.
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Re: Bass - technique from YouTube

Post by Greg_L »

I've recorded my bass through guitar amps for several years now. Is my bass fantastic? I don't know. It's okay to me. It's just bass. I'm certainly not duplicating tracks and adding digital distortion and high/low pass filters all over the fucking place. I record it like a guitar and move on to something else.
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Re: Bass - technique from YouTube

Post by WhiskeyJack »

never seen that circle of tone guy before til today. I appreciate his approach what he tried to tackle. He seems pretty down to earth and i didn't disagree with anything he said in that video. I think i will subscribe to his channel to watch more later. Good dhare JD.
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JD01
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Re: Bass - technique from YouTube

Post by JD01 »

WhiskeyJack wrote: Wed Jan 03, 2018 1:27 pm never seen that circle of tone guy before til today. I appreciate his approach what he tried to tackle. He seems pretty down to earth and i didn't disagree with anything he said in that video. I think i will subscribe to his channel to watch more later. Good dhare JD.
I think what I like about it is that he's just explaining what he does and how he feels about other stuff.
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Re: Bass - technique from YouTube

Post by Roman »

Greg_L wrote: Tue Jan 02, 2018 4:41 pm Oh, and monkey see monkey do. That's a big problem these days.
These days??? Lol :D The term is as old as dirt. I'd say the action has been around for some time. :D
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Re: Bass - technique from YouTube

Post by Greg_L »

Roman wrote: Wed Jan 03, 2018 8:52 pm

These days??? Lol :D The term is as old as dirt. I'd say the action has been around for some time. :D
Ha true but in the digital recording world where it's very easy to get going and very few people actually know anything about anything, monkey see monkey do especially prominent.
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Re: Bass - technique from YouTube

Post by Roman »

Greg_L wrote: Wed Jan 03, 2018 9:07 pm
Roman wrote: Wed Jan 03, 2018 8:52 pm

These days??? Lol :D The term is as old as dirt. I'd say the action has been around for some time. :D
Ha true but in the digital recording world where it's very easy to get going and very few people actually know anything about anything, monkey see monkey do especially prominent.
Lets just hope the 'founding monkeys' know what they're doing. A novice following an idiot monkey doesn't have a chance :D
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Re: Bass - technique from YouTube

Post by Greg_L »

Roman wrote: Thu Jan 04, 2018 12:44 am

Lets just hope the 'founding monkeys' know what they're doing. A novice following an idiot monkey doesn't have a chance :D
Some of the founding monkeys have given us great things.
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Re: Bass - technique from YouTube

Post by rayc »

I've watched a few of that bloke's vid before - he didn't hold my interest for long - same with the long haired metal head. Mind you the metal head is far too genre specific and worried about the way his hair falls to hold my attention for 5 mins.
I'm also becoming fed up with youtube vid makes using the Torpedo cab sim stuff. I know it's easier, more manageable etc but it tells me that what I'm hear filtered through youtube production wasn't entirely real to begin with.
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Re: Bass - technique from YouTube

Post by Greg_L »

rayc wrote: Thu Jan 04, 2018 1:27 am I've watched a few of that bloke's vid before - he didn't hold my interest for long - same with the long haired metal head. Mind you the metal head is far too genre specific and worried about the way his hair falls to hold my attention for 5 mins.
I'm also becoming fed up with youtube vid makes using the Torpedo cab sim stuff. I know it's easier, more manageable etc but it tells me that what I'm hear filtered through youtube production wasn't entirely real to begin with.
I totally agree with all of that.
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Re: Bass - technique from YouTube

Post by Farview »

I've done this before. But mostly used it as an attempt to fix something so completely screwed up that it really couldn't be done any other way. It was basically a poor man's multi-band compressor with distortion. If I recall, it was a slap and pop bass part, with old dead strings...Muddy slap bass.

I think I remember doing something like this, so that I could pan the mids and highs, to get a little width on a bass that had to carry the song, while also distorting the lows to keep the dynamics consistent.

It was always an answer to a problem that should have never existed in the first place.
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