Hi there guys, this is Ben Jones from the Institute for the Bass Expo for Music Radar.
We've had a look at the amplifier and how to get a decent sound of it but now we're
actually going to be talking about genre specific bass sounds. How to get a really authentic
bass sound using just simple EQ-ing on any amp that you may come into contact with. So
let's start at everyone's favourite genre; rock, well most people's favourite genre.
Rock is a really specific genre, it's all about attitude, it's all about big sounds, really brash
sounds and from a bass playing perspective we have a particular role to fulfil and that
role is to have a lot of low ends, but also we need to be able to cut through the mix
sometimes, to play with the guitar, with unison figures, things like that. Now the easiest
way to achieve that is to boost up the bass slightly and boost up the treble. But what
we do like to do in rock is pull back the mid slightly what we call a mid scoop. What
that allows for if you imagine the spectrum before when we were talking about the amp,
when there a gap in the middle of the middle frequency, that's where the guitars can fit
in and that's how you get a nice full sound in the rehearsal studio and not playing over
each other and everyones getting louder and louder. So we scoop the mids out, little bit
of bass little bit of treble, now you can hear that warmth really come in. Just give it a little more
gain. There we go. But still at the top, you're not losing that high note, it's still in there
with the low note, so with a rocky sort of line.
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You get a lot of high but also you get that nice fat warmth underneath it and for rock, especially when playing with
the pick or plectrum that is going to cut through nicely. Let's get on the completely
the other side of the spectrum and talk about reggae obviously is nothing like rock, it's
completely different style of music, it's a lot of a different feel as a bass player.
Now the sound for reggae is actually very very easy to achieve. It's a lot of bass, so I would
actually put the bass nearly all the way to full, maybe just up to 3 o'clock, 3 or 4 o'clock.
Pull the treble right out, again maybe just a touch, just so we don't lose that signal
completely, let's put that to 9 o'clock or just under 9 o'clock. And then the mids are
going to come down as well, we're going to have just a little bit, again maybe the same
place we put the treble, it's basically a massive bass boost, when we do that. Suddenly
all that top end zing has gone and what we're left with is a nice big fat warm sound. We're
going to pull the gain up, now because we've taken 2 of the main frequencies out, haven't
we? We've cut the trebles and the mids, we've actually lost a lot of signal to amp, so we
need to compensate for that by boosting the gain slightly, and there we go, the volume 0:03:21.540,0:03:37.760, is now back to where it was. So if you think of a reggae type line. There's so much bass from that,
that that's all we really need. The definition doesn't really come through in reggae that
much. Now look at another genre, funk. Funk actually spans a lot of different sub-genres
as well but the main idea of funk is a nice punchy bass sound that cuts through the mix,
a lot of bass lines in funk are very very difficult and intricate and there's lots to
be listening to. So because of that we need to hear the bass in a really strong way so
what i'm going to do is 1st of all, I'm going to boost my mids slightly, my bass and treble
are back to 12. So already you hear that growl, soon as I turn the mids up, it comes in.
Now when I start playing more funky sort of line, you're going to hear the definition of those
notes a lot clearer.
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Now although we've boosted the mids, there's still, it's a bit agressive for funk it's
got a little bit of a zing to it, we want to warm that up, remember for warmth we want
to add a little bit of bass, I'm going to boost the treble slightly just because
I pulled the bass in and hopefully now we're going to have a bit of a warmer tone but still
all that definition.
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Now on the subject of funk as I'm sure many of you are probably asking, slap tones. Slap
tones obviously are some bass players favourite thing to play, but to get a good slap tone
we have to make sure we're not getting too loud. So with slap, what you want to do is,
is it's a balance between the thumb and the pops. Now if you have too much you're going
to lose all the definition up there and that's obviously a really big part of it. So what
I'm going to do is boost the bass up a little bit, just a touch just so you get that warmth
in, I'm going to give my treble a fair bit, I'm going to put that up to about 2 o'clock.
Bass just pass 12, literally just a tiny bit of boost. So now the thumb strokes come out
really strong but up the top, you can hear, that there they could be a little bit more,
so I'm going to boost my mids ever so slightly, just to get that little bit more definition.
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