The Light of Day

So you want to make an album? (part 18)
KeithHandy posted in Composing, Instruments, Playing, Producing, So You Want..., Tools on August 13th, 2007

To read the entire series, go to the “So You Want…” category.

Installment 18: All your bass

One of the nicest perks of being an independent recording artist is that your bass player has no ego. Sure, some of your own ego will come through in the bass parts you play and/or sequence, but for the most part, your allegiance is to the song, not the instrument.

I could probably rattle off another laundry list, similar to the opening of my drum slut post, only this time of “ways I’ve recorded bass parts”. But, this series is not about me anymore, it’s about you — using me as a metaphor for you, of course, since my writing snaps back into first-person if I stop consciously thinking about it for more than two seconds. Suffice to say, depending on the style of the music, you will most likely be using an electric bass guitar, or some kind of keyboard. I like the sound of a real bass guitar best, or at least I like my simulations (when necessary) to be as believable as possible. Generally, if I use a keyboard and sequencer, it’s to work out a “sketch” of a bass part, so I can experiment with changing certain notes and see what sounds best before actually learning to play it on a real bass. I always start right off with a real bass guitar on slow songs, though, because they’re easy enough.

Bass parts, oft thought of as a dull chore, can actually be very stimulating if you let yourself get just playful enough. You don’t have to keep the part totally interesting through the whole song, but you can work in little variations here and there to keep the song “alive”. There’s rarely a practical reason to record the bass first, so by the time you do so, you’re generally past the stressful stage of needing to create the song’s framework and worry about its tempo — so it’s easy to do multiple takes and punch-ins, which means you can try something a little different in bar 38 without committing to anything.

What makes it extra fun is remembering that you’re playing to the listener’s subconscious; nobody actively listens to the bass line (besides other musicians), and small changes can have a surprising impact on the song’s overall effect. Have fun with these. Try changing the rhythm just a little by syncopating/anticipating one of the notes (playing it a half beat early). Try using a different pitch on one of the “inbetween” notes (one that isn’t on the chord change). Try leaving a hole on a certain beat, so that the notes you do play are that much more defined. Try mimicking something from a bass line you heard in a jazz, disco, reggae, country, or polka song. It won’t change the whole style of your song, but it will hint at something. To most listeners, it will be subliminal; but if you drop it in stealthily enough, even your musically savvy friends may not pick it out until the tenth listen.

Sometimes people record the bass secondly, so they can be sure to lock their rhythm tightly with the drumming. But without other instrumentation there, and all that apparent “space” in the sound, you might have a tendency to overplay. If you record some of the other instruments first, you’ll know where you can just keep the bass part simple, and maybe even leave some holes in it.  Also, if you first get everything else to sound as good as possible without it, you’re more likely to end up with a final product that sounds good on smaller speakers where the bass part can’t be heard quite as well.

I generally put the bass part down after there are some guitars and keyboards already recorded, so I can hear it in context; but, then when I’m editing and polishing up the bass track, I’ll leave those other things muted so I can make sure certain bass notes line up perfectly with the drum hits, especially the kick drum. If a bass note happens to be between two drum hits, I usually nudge it to make sure it’s exactly between those hits. (Our eyes are more critical than our ears, so if it looks good in the editing software, it probably is good. Listen to be sure, of course.) Melding your bass and drums into one synergistic monster will help give your song a solid backbone, and subsequently a “professional sheen”, even if your other instruments occasionally flake out.

Idea: try recording two very different versions of the bass part. For the first version, keep it simple, minimalistic, and safe — just lock to the beat, define the chord changes, and give some semblance of “bottom” to the music. For the second version, improvise ambitiously and dangerously, at the outer edge of your skill level. You’ll flub a lot, but you might manage to get in a few “golden moments” where you sound better than you actually are. Just keep the good parts, and erase the corresponding parts of the “simple” version, to make a great composite.

If you need something precise, you need it done quickly, and it doesn’t need to “rock” in the strictest sense of the word, sequenced bass will do the trick. There are plenty of sampled basses available that will satisfy your need for a realistic tone, and synthesizers can generally do a reasonable “fretless” sound; the only thing you’ll be missing are some of the performance nuances and inflections — like the gliding of the fingers, and the natural variation in timbre from note to note. Sequenced bass will serve it’s most essential purpose, mind you, supporting the chord changes and establishing the bottom of the spectrum — it just won’t get anyone “air bassing”, so be sure your song gives the listener something else to do with their hands.

When sequencing a bass part, you will probably want to quantize it. If your drums are sequenced too, this will make locking the bass to the drums a one-step no-brainer. Also, try to avoid letting notes overlap; it will generally stick out and kill the illusion, and multiple pitches don’t blend well in the lowest register unless they’re really simple intervals, like octaves. (If your tone generator/sampler/synth can be set to monophonic, as in only one note at a time, this keeps things simple.)

Whether the bass is real or not, it usually sounds good to put some compression or limiting on it. This smooths out the volume and helps it “sit” more with the drums. EQ is useful too; by adusting the upper midrange, you can control how much it “stands out” among the guitars and keyboards, as opposed to just turning the whole instrument up and overpowering everything. Most other effects are not good for bass, in general, unless you want to be experimental. I’ve met bass players with racks of digital effects the size of refrigerators, and it’s kind of silly. Like it or not, the bass serves a musical purpose, and a wonderful one at that — and serves it best with a clear, simple tone. If you ache to transcend the degrading stereotype of “bass players playing low notes”, and you feel your time has come to shine as a musician… listen… is the thing surgically grafted onto your body? When you arrived into this world, did the doctor congratulate your mother on her bouncing baby bassist? Have you ever met a carpenter that only uses saws? Set it down and pick up a different instrument.

In closing, here’s a bass. It lists at $4,546.00, but hey, it’s worth it, because it’s all pre-banged up, and you don’t have to go to all that trouble wrecking it yourself.

Edit 8/14: in post-closing, here’s a bass track I recorded years ago and just finished editing:

This is a song I originally recorded with Episodes in a proper studio in the late 1980s. We never finished mixing it, and the original tapes are gone forever. Towards the end of the 1990s, we had a half-hearted stab at reuniting, with Garrett being the most reluctant of the four of us, and did a rudimentary session for two songs in my home studio, including a remake of Phone Booth. The drumming is by original Episodes drummer Thom DeLooze. A rough guitar part exists, played by Garrett, which I still plan to sift through and assemble the best bits of into a (hopefully) complete guitar track. The three of us played together for about three and a half takes, and this is a composite of the best bits from Thom’s and mine, carefully edited to still sound natural, but without the mistakes.

Notice that the bass by itself (or with just the drums) sounds simplistic, naked, even “dumb”. That’s fine, though, and it’s good to get comfortable with that sound, because in the context of everything else, every little inflection or variation helps carry the music along.