alexclaber

Step 2 - First attempt at bass & drums: About a week later I took my bass and rack along to Bill's, plugged into my cab, DI'd into the multitracker, checked the levels and we were ready to go. We'd planned on trying tracking with headphones to avoid bleed from the bass causing snare rattles but we had a logistical problem (leads too short!) so we went without. Checked how badly the snare was rattling and then realised that it was all the other snare drums in surrounding cupboards! Got them damped, then got the metronome out (we spent the previous band practice arguing about tempos) so we'd have an agreed starting tempo, though we weren't going to record to a click. Of all the songs I've written that we have learnt as a band we'd selected our favourite four for an initial EP, so we started on those first. Did one take of Single Mother (an eccentric reggae-ish tune) which went fairly well considering Bill and I have hardly played together without the rest of the band. I sang along a bit to help us not get lost. Listened back and it sounded ok, no glaring mistakes and the right kind of feel. We decided to then try another song, Lend Us A Fiver (a faster shuffle). Blagged our way through that - a little messy but it shouldn't sound pristine, wouldn't suit it. Bill hit the overheads when he got carried away! Next song, Time Will Tell (a more conventional rock song, quite fast with a motown beat on the intro). We blasted through this pretty well - my endurance started flagging at one point, due to having my amp quiet to avoid bleed and thus plucking harder in response. Both of us were doubting we'd nail the ending as we changed it quite recently but fortunately we were on the ball. Then we tried Funeral Song (which is really two songs in one, a funk number followed by a 12/8 blues). We decided to split it into the two parts due to the strange tempo/feel change in the segué. We started Pt.1 and crashed in the first verse when I got confused! First full take went pretty well, apart from the ending which was a mess (it ends on a weird syncopation). So we practised the ending a bit and then tried Pt.2 which went down in one go. Revisited Pt.1 and got the ending right. So, that's four (or five depending on your perspective) songs down in about ninety minutes. As it sounded pretty good to be going on with, I decided to take the multitracker home to add scratch vocals and send on to the guitarist for his parts. When we're tracking the rest of the album we'll have another go at these songs to see if we do them better. To be continued... Alex

Doh! We have a recording sub-forum... Alex

be)--> QUOTE(Lenny be @ Jun 12 2007, 10:48 PM) [snapback]16578[/snapback] And some really useful legal articles too! [/quote] I gather they're running a series on self-publicity too! Alex

BGM seems to be steadily improving - a lot of fairly wide-ranging and well written content. It knocks the defunct Bassist magazine into a cocked hat... Alex

I recently started the challenge of recording our first album and thought I might as well try to keep a blog of our trials and tribulations - even if no-one else is curious I can at least make sure I don't make the same mistakes next time! A bit of background: Having pretty much learnt to play in my band at Uni and done some co-writing, I then spend the ensuing years attempting to put various bands together and learning how to write songs on my own, then gave up on finding vocalists and starting trying to sing myself, found this guitarist, found a drummer and keyboardist, did one gig then they headed off to Uni, then found a new drummer and saxophonist, did a few gigs, kept writing material, and here we are. After debating various technological solutions I settled on a Tascam 2488 for tracking and hopefully all the mixing. I won't be surprised if I have to master on the computer, just to get a competitively loud mix without squishing all the life out of it. The original plan was to take the 2488 down to the rehearsal studio, stick mics in the relevant places, DI the bass and lay everything down as a band - we're a groove oriented outfit and we're all part of the rhythm section so it would be nice to get all that interaction onto tape. However, this proved futile as although we could load in, get set up and ready to roll quickly enough, all the sound engineering completely took me out of my groove-space. Not good. So, onto Plan be: My drummer practises in his loft and he thought there'd be space in there for me too, so we decided to try laying down the bass and drums together and then overdub the rest. Step 1 - Set-Up: Lots of rearranging of things to get the drum kit in a decent spot. Hoiked one of my Acmes up there to live in the corner for bass monitoring, tilted up slightly on Auralex PlatFoam. Bill has an excess of drums - we've gone for his trusty old Pearl Export which has fairly small shells - 4 piece - and is tuned quite low, along with a fairly shallow high tuned snare. On the cymbal front a nice dark ride, and a couple of crashes, both quite dry, one higher pitched, the other halfway between that and the ride. Quite dry hihats too - Bill prefers cheaper cymbals generally because they're less loud and have less sustain. I only recently started doing stereo drum miking (never had the track count in the past) and one thing that I've failed to achieve so far is a coherent mix once the overheads are panned. Previously I've used spaced overheads so this time we decided to use X-Y crossed overheads (some cheapish small diaphragm condensers), a dynamic mic on the snare (from a Shure drum mic set), and the trusty D112 on the kick (about a foot away from the resonant head - which had a big hole in the centre anyway). I took my monitors along too and stuck them on top of his hifi speakers. Set the levels, did a test record. Played back. Sounded great! Panned the overheads - still great. A miracle! To be continued... Alex P.S. Something is messing with my post - it should not say 'Plan be' above, it should say the obvious. Is there some evil (and dimwitted) spell checker interfering? Aaarghhh...

That wikipedia link is pretty damn good! There are three different sorts of tweeter I've come across in bass cabs. The cheapest and usually worst sounding is the piezo tweeter - ironically an array of piezo tweeters as in the BFM horn cabs can sound great but as used on its lonesome in a 2-way bass cab they're pretty hopeless - too little power handling, too little sensitivity. But they are very cheap and don't require (or even benefit from) a crossover as they're a capacitive load and are thus naturally highpassed. The most common tweeter found in bass cabs is the horn tweeter, using a compression driver on a small horn. This can sound amazing or terrible depending on the implementation. The reason most horn drivers sound bad is because the crossover does not have a steep enough slope so too much bottom hits them which makes them distort. The other reason is that when used in a 2-way bass cab (woofer plus tweeter, no midrange speaker) the off-axis response of the woofer is long gone before the tweeter kicks in, so unless the speaker is pointing directly at you there will be a large gap in the upper midrange making the treble seem harsh and disconnected. A select few companies like Bergantino and Euphonic Audio do a great job with these horn tweeters by using a large enough horn crossed over sufficiently low and even woofers whose off-axis midrange response is extended by flexure. This costs money though, as do high order crossovers. The final tweeter found in bass cabs is the dome tweeter. Nice and smooth sounding, lower distortion but not terribly loud or great at handling power. This approach only works well when you have a midrange speaker to fill the gap between woofer and tweeter but then it works great! This approach was pioneered by Acme and further popularised by AccuGroove (identical model of tweeter but the Acme uses a more complex crossover instead of two tweeters to get sufficient power handling). If you hate tweeters you probably haven't heard a good one. And they're not just for slappers, they can really improve the whole definition of your sound in a rather hard to perceive way - a bit like the way a good kick drum sound has a surprising amount of treble to define the attack. Alex

[quote name='Rumble' post='16362' date='Jun 12 2007, 05:29 PM']Thanks Alex, I'll try doing what you suggest. I just have a fear that if I continue to push the amp so hard it's going to bum out on me one day, which would not be good given that I don't have a backup![/quote] Actually you're more likely to knacker the amp clipping it constantly at 4 ohms than at 8 ohms. But either way you should be fine if you're sensible. Eden amps are pretty well designed on the durability front. I just wish they (and SWR) would name the 'enhance' knob more suitably - like 'lose all your headroom' or 'get lost in the mix' or 'all your punch gone'... Nice bass btw - I tried OBBM's JO5 and was very impressed - and not something that needs its tone messing with at all! Alex

I really thought Bill Fitzmaurice had lost it when he kept saying "horse and cart"... Nice to know he's still sane! Alex

If I were you I'd turn the enhancer off and leave the EQ flat. I tend to use both pickups mixed equally when I deliberately want to sit further back in the mix due to reduced midrange, the rest of the time I solo one pickup or the other. Try to only tweak your EQ in the context of the band - and before tweaking your EQ see if changing how/where you're plucking or the pickup blend will get you the sound you need. Also, if you're just using one cab remember to either raise it a couple of feet from the ground (not too far or you'll lose boundary reinforcement) and/or tilt it upwards towards your ears (but not so upwards that it's firing at the ceiling - you need the rest of the band to hear it too). This is because bass speakers get very directional once you get into the high mids and treble - the sound comes out as a narrow beam, so if it's not pointed at you you won't hear it! Alex P.S. And definitely take both cabs to gigs!

[quote name='Rumble' post='16094' date='Jun 12 2007, 10:55 AM']They're all flat to begin with. If anything I might knock a little of the treble off. The enhancer's around the 1 o'clock position.[/quote] There's your problem, you're scooping a whole load of critical low mids and placing more demands on the lows and highs where the cabinet performs least well. So called 'enhance' knobs are best kept for playing solo - a dash of them (up to 9 or 10 o'clock) can work in a band if you have a bass with strong mids but more than that and you will get lost unless you have an amp with huge power in the lows. Alex

[quote name='Rumble' post='16082' date='Jun 12 2007, 10:32 AM']However, there's no way I'm taking both to practices and, like last night, my head seems to struggle for juice when we start to pump it out a bit (and I'm not talking crazy volumes). I keep having to knock off the lower frequencies on the EQ so the output clipping light doesn't keep winking at me.[/quote] What are your EQ (and particularly the enhancer) settings? Alex

Groovy! Now this is where indecision strikes... Alex

[quote name='JJTee' post='15248' date='Jun 10 2007, 08:20 PM']Incredible. Any guesses as to how much the whole lot is worth?[/quote] I started counting the items and gave up halfway through. I'd say somewhere in excess of $200,000. Gosh! Alex

[quote name='dood' post='15234' date='Jun 10 2007, 08:00 PM']However, something I found interesting too, is that I found (on two different occasions) markbass heads 'missing' top end clarity. a sort of roll off from just under1 Khz up toward what would be around 10K.[/quote] dood, I know exactly what you mean. However, now that I've seen a load of plots of frequency response I've found that the majority of bass amps have a built-in treble boost, consequently the few that don't sound like they have the opposite. Alex

[quote name='thumbo' post='15094' date='Jun 10 2007, 02:55 PM']Oh my! He's got more bass gear than the average bass shop.[/quote] He's got more bass amplification than a very good bass shop! I remember the days when he only had a few basses - an Thunderbird and a cheapish five, plus an upright - but a ton of EA cabs and a few Bergantino cabs. Then he got out of control! He did thin out the collection a while back but like any well timed pruning it grew again, and faster. So which of his basses and rigs would you use if you could only have one? I think I'd have his chambered MTD 5, the Millennia preamp and the Bergantino IP153 cabs. And that would be enough - any more than one bass and rig and I get indecisive! Alex

I'm unconvinced by tuna on pizzas but I do like it raw and unsullied and will never refuse a rare tuna steak on the barbeque. Alex

[quote name='warwickhunt' post='15075' date='Jun 10 2007, 02:22 PM']...bi-amping didn't produce an improvement in tone, it may have been more efficient etc...[/quote] Biamping with cabs that are not specifically designed to be used with either an active or passive crossover is neither efficient nor a good idea. That's what I keeping trying but apparently failing to say. Alex

[quote name='PaulMartin' post='14971' date='Jun 10 2007, 10:41 AM']Very interesting. So that's why they sound louder than other amps?[/quote] Exactly! Alex

A larger than lifesize photo: Alex

Check out this website, there is a lot of good reading here: [url="http://sound.westhost.com/articles.htm"]http://sound.westhost.com/articles.htm[/url] --------- My personal bugbear is the habit I repeatedly encounter of people trying something, hearing a qualitative result and thus deciding that X always equals Y without ever questioning why that might be. It is repeated all over the place in such quotes as: "You can't slap on a P-bass" "Fifteen inch speakers sound slow" "The bigger the speaker the lower it goes" "Rear ported cabs don't work properly without a wall behind them" "You have to play behind the beat on reggae" "Less is always more" "You have to cut your mids when slapping" "Picks are for guitarists only" "Deep lows cause boom problems" "Slap equals funk" etc, etc... WH, instead of saying you see no point to biamping because it didn't work for you in the past, consider what the frequency response plot of your rig would have been when run fullrange and run biamped. Also consider how the power handling changed when biamping. If the rig was the typical 10" for the top and 15" or 18" for the bottom, you biamping would cause the loss of a midrange hump where both cabs are working together (which gets you heard and sounds fat) and also reduce the power handling and max LF SPL as the 10"s are no longer contributing to the bottom. Bad idea. MoJ, I'm not attacking you I'm just asking you to consider this less simplistically. Sound reproduction, like music, is not a tidy affair - you cannot just say fullrange is good, biamping is bad, just as you cannot say diatonic harmony is good, dissonance is bad. There is a ton of information out there - when you want to know something google it, use wikipedia, ask questions on forums, but more importantly make an effort to understand WHY. And FWIW, I do not biamp and never have. I am intending to biamp with my next rig but only because that is what will work best for those particular speakers. Each case is different. Alex

[quote name='MoJ' post='14752' date='Jun 9 2007, 07:19 PM']Thats what Im thinking with regards to the O15/O10.5 + T39 debate. At least there is flexibility with the two seperate cabs, and should I find after a while that I dont like the bi-amping sound...[/quote] Just one thing, quickly. THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS THE BIAMPING SOUND. Alex

[quote name='warwickhunt' post='14710' date='Jun 9 2007, 05:42 PM']My view on bi-amping is as relevant as anyone else who has run an amp that has bi-amp capability and cabs that are readily available on the market today.[/quote] In which case it remains irrelevant as we're not talking about readily available cabs! [quote name='warwickhunt' post='14710' date='Jun 9 2007, 05:42 PM']I do fully accept your point that it [b]will[/b] be different with a custom pre/power dedicated cab(s) set-up.[/quote] Well that's a start. [quote name='warwickhunt' post='14710' date='Jun 9 2007, 05:42 PM']I still however have reservations about the benefits of such a rig for the majority of gigging bassists![/quote] This is a specific question for a specific requirement, not something that has to be all things to all people. [quote name='warwickhunt' post='14710' date='Jun 9 2007, 05:42 PM']If you are using decent PA support then you need to feed a full range signal to that and then it is dependent upon the PA as to how good the bi/tri-amp facility is.[/quote] I'm sorry but what are you wittering on about? [quote name='warwickhunt' post='14710' date='Jun 9 2007, 05:42 PM']So you are left with your rig acting as a monitor in which case best hope that the stage or area you set-up on is of sufficient area to get the benefit.[/quote] And does this not hold true for any powerful rig? The rig I'm suggesting is of similar size and power to your Tech 610. Whether it is biamped or not is immaterial. [quote name='warwickhunt' post='14710' date='Jun 9 2007, 05:42 PM']If the bi-amp rig you run is to be the FOH sound that is to be heard by the public then I hope the rest of the bands equipment is up to the standard that yours is![/quote] Since when did one member of the band having good equipment mean that everyone else's less nice equipment sounds bad?! What has this to do with biamping anyway? [quote name='warwickhunt' post='14710' date='Jun 9 2007, 05:42 PM']I'm not trying to argue anyone out of trying bi-amping just because it didn't do it for me, far from it. I'm simply pointing out that a full range signal into one or 2 way cabs is absolutely fine for many of us;[/quote] I'd have thought many of your previous rigs would have been fine for many of us - why did you change? [quote name='warwickhunt' post='14710' date='Jun 9 2007, 05:42 PM']there may well be newbie bassists who read this thread and think that they have to start worrying about the benefits and pitfalls of bi-amping, when really they should be spending more time studying song craft or their instruments potential.[/quote] Or there maybe newbie bassists thinking they need really expensive gear and wasting time researching that... [quote name='warwickhunt' post='14710' date='Jun 9 2007, 05:42 PM']For a sector of the bass playing fraternity the issue of sound reinforcement is a valid and important issue and I 'know' that manufacturers are giving us short shrift with equipment, so long may we discuss how to achieve the holy grail of tone, maybe then good practise will creep into the equipment that we buy off the shop floor.[/quote] I totally agree. Alex

[quote name='velvetkevorkian' post='14803' date='Jun 9 2007, 09:20 PM']By "helpful EQ" do you mean the EQ section or the preamp's inherent colouration?[/quote] Little Mark 250 with EQ set flat: The preamp's inbuilt roll-off on the lows reduces both the demand on the power amp and on the speakers - which is a good idea as most cabs are hopeless in the true lows below 80Hz. On the other hand it may not be what you want when recording or feeding a PA system. Or if you use cabs that do go low. Alex

QSC PLX2 -04 models weigh 13lbs and put out up to 1800W. -02 models weigh 21lbs and put out up to 3600W. There isn't much market for super lightweight lower powered amps because once you've got them in a rack and you're carting PA speakers around you might as well take a bit more weight and power. I wonder how the Markbass amps would perform under heavy loads without the helpful EQ built into the preamps? Very clever engineering though, to find the balance of cost, weight and tone - certainly a step ahead of the rest of the market. Alex

[quote name='warwickhunt' post='14556' date='Jun 9 2007, 11:16 AM']I alluded to this earlier on in the thread. I've tried it and didn't like but that is my opinion... fine. However, more importantly you are effectively going down the route that Dood has studied which is a PA system for bass! Does your present or near future requirements necessitate this kind of set-up? If not, for the kind of money you will end up spending you could build some of BFM's cabs (for a modular rig) and get a top quality full range head.[/quote] I don't think your opinion on biamping is actually very relevant because although you've tried it a number of times you've never tried it with cabs that are designed for it! Furthermore I don't think Dood has really studied the PA system for bass thing - he's thought about it and gone with standard bass cabs again... I think the idea of an Omni 10.5 and Titan 39 is an excellent one. For quieter rehearsals or gigs with full PA support the Omni 10.5 should be loud enough as a fullrange cab, whilst you can add the Titan 39 and run the rig biamped with a ~150Hz crossover point for louder situations or where you're providing all the bottom. Do this with a rack preamp, crossover and power amp, and buy used and you should be able to assemble an awesome rig for very little money. I gather Thumper (who now resides on finnbass) has a similar rig in progress. Although I can understand people thinking that a 'top quality full range bass head' will give a better sound, both live and recorded, they really are designed down to a price and weight and both rack preamps and power amps tend to perform significantly better on noise, distortion, clarity and real world power. The really great thing about biamping, particularly when you have a low crossover point (as in an Omni 15 or even more so an Omni 10.5 plus Titan 39) is that you maintain a constant crossover point and slope regardless of power compression (which changes the voice coil impedance and thus the crossover characteristics with a passive crossover) AND when you run out of power in the lows (which always happens first) you just get compression and distortion on them (which to most ears sound likes punchier bass) and the midrange and treble remains clean and clear. Alex