Bass FXs for Guitar solos

[fretmeister]

 

 

 

 

 

Just saying....

[uk_lefty]

9 hours ago, TimR said:

We kind of have. And the bottom falls out of the songs in the solos and the songs lose momentum. 

A psychologist would say this is a result of me being the youngest of three boys growing up but... I blame the drummer. Seriously, if momentum is dropping its the drummer. My first band was probably my best musically, the drummer was the best musician I've ever known, during solos he and I would improv, but him being far more experienced and seasoned than I was he was throwing in fills and dropping out for odd beats and so on. I just used to slide up past the 12th every now and then! Its not just down to you to fill out the solo, if the drummer can get involved in thickening out the sound too and the pair of you can work well together then you can jam through them and keep some depth and texture to the sound. 

[Dan Dare]

Sometimes, a 3 piece just doesn't cut it. It depends on the material, of course, but if you are attempting to cover heavily arranged numbers, bass, drums and a guitar playing single note solos, especially at the dusty end of the neck, will be thin sounding, no matter what you do. The obvious and easiest way to fatten the sound is to add keyboards, but then you are adding another person to the payroll. Your choice, really.

[King Tut]

I use an Akai Unibass to good effect also. I think they're getting fairly rare these days. Has anyone had any joy recreating one on a Zoom B3n? If so I could move my Unibass on and reduce my footprint considerably!

[TimR]

6 hours ago, uk_lefty said:

Seriously, if momentum is dropping its the drummer.

I think it’s partly because often you come out of a big chorus into a verse for the solo and that’s usually when a song scales back anyway. 

I think the way forward is to record the song and see if it actually is losing drive and thickness or whether it’s my imagination. 

I’d then be able to play around in my own time and see what works. 

[tauzero]

A few bands ago, in a trio-plus-vocalist, I was teamed with a very good drummer who was also very inventive. We did "Sultans of Swing" - the original, of course, has keys and a second guitar as well as the lead guitar. After we'd rehearsed it a few times, rather than upping things when the first solo came round, the drummer dropped back. I realised what he was doing and followed him, so we were really underplaying below the first solo which suddenly didn't sound empty. The second solo got full tilt boogie which worked well, but probably wouldn't have without that alternative dynamic on the first one. It wouldn't work on a guitar solo using searing distortion, but fitted nicely with the slightly overdriven Knofler tone.