Bass "brumming"?

M

MusicBernd

New member
Hi everyone!

Just got a new song recorded (piano, violins / violas, flute, acoustic guitar and drums) and i was looking for some bass sound that fits in.

So I recorded an electric bass and found that it sounds really nice on some notes but some others are just brummy. I was looking for a nice, sustained, deep bass sound that gives a "not so much moving" basis for the other instruments that are moving quite a lot.

The tune is in Amajor, the bass moves from A down to Ab, then up to D and then down to E. Especially the D sounds VERY brummy (my subwoofer is vibrating a lot on it).

How would you solve this problem? Find the "noisy" frequency and EQ it out? Any other suggestions?

Thanks a lot,
Bernd
 
You might have to define the word brummy...never heard of it.

maybe check out a stand up bass with or without a bow or find the freq's that are bothering you on the e.b. and cut them and add some compression.


TW
 
MusicBernd said:
Hi everyone!

Just got a new song recorded (piano, violins / violas, flute, acoustic guitar and drums) and i was looking for some bass sound that fits in.

So I recorded an electric bass and found that it sounds really nice on some notes but some others are just brummy. I was looking for a nice, sustained, deep bass sound that gives a "not so much moving" basis for the other instruments that are moving quite a lot.

The tune is in Amajor, the bass moves from A down to Ab, then up to D and then down to E. Especially the D sounds VERY brummy (my subwoofer is vibrating a lot on it).

How would you solve this problem? Find the "noisy" frequency and EQ it out? Any other suggestions?

Thanks a lot,
Bernd
Click to expand...

There are a couple of possibilities:

1 An intonation problem on the bass, or some aspect of the guitar that is producing an unpleasant note. Does it sound bad when soloed?

2 Interference between bass note and kick drum. That's if the note sounds bad in the context of the mix. This might require some EQ srugery to give each a bit of room.

Possibly it is just an evenness in playing (or the guitar) that accentuates the note. If nothing else, you can try eqing out around the 160hz mark and see if that cleans up the problem.
 
Before you start EQ'ing frequencies which seem to stand out, make sure it isn't a problem with your listening setup. It may be something to do with the frequency response of the sub or acoustics of your room causing the spike, and not the actual recording.

I don't have the greatest of mix positions and find I have a few spikes around the bottom end. When I can't trust my ears, I usually fire up a frequency analyser plugin to see what's going on... quite often this will show that the amplitude of the bass notes stays constant, despite me perceiving a large peak. On a few occasions a peak has shown and I can EQ accordingly.

Not the prettiest of methods, but works better than putting all your trust in your monitors :)

If your room is completely untreated, have a quick search around for some info on room acoustics. Nasty reflections can cause huge changes in the sound you perceive.
 
mattr said:
Before you start EQ'ing frequencies which seem to stand out, make sure it isn't a problem with your listening setup. It may be something to do with the frequency response of the sub or acoustics of your room causing the spike, and not the actual recording.
Click to expand...

Came here to say that, u beat me to it.. I think what you're hearing is definately resonance frequencies. Room dimensions in any typical sized room are the length of low bass notes. A 15' room resonates around 75Hz, etc.. It's all about sound reflections of specific frequencies cancelling and adding to themselves.

If D0 is a problem note, is your room a multiple of 6.25 feet? ie 6.25, 12.5, 18.75, or 25?
 
MusicBernd said:
The tune is in Amajor, the bass moves from A down to Ab, then up to D and then down to E. Especially the D sounds VERY brummy (my subwoofer is vibrating a lot on it).
Click to expand...
I agree with all that's been said already, but I'd like to address another possibility.

Some bass guitars are known for uneven amplitude on certain notes or strings, requiring the player to adjust his playing to account for that. This can often be especially true (though not necessarily) on the open D or open E or on fingered versions of those same notes (assuming standard tuning.)

If this is what's happening, the ultimate solution would be to try to adjust for it in the playing by playing those notes a bit softer. But this can also usually be largely addressed by some simple moderate compression to bring the amplitude of the whole line in order.

G.
 
Last edited:
Hi!

Thanks for your help.

Guess I know what was going on (I'll get the chance to test that in a few days) but it seems that the frequency of the D0 made my cable modem (that's placed close to the subwoofer) dancing and that was the frequency I was hearing under the table. Oh well... :).

But there comes another question (not related to bass). I wanted to record the vocals today (and did so) but found it (for the first time) very hard to place them in the mix. I have a Garriton Personal Orchestra (Violins and Violas) playing, a piano (self-recorded), acoustic guitar (self-recorded) and drums. This combination sounds perfect! But I can't get the vocals to fit in.

They simply sound "different" and I tried a wide variety (reverb, no reverb, singing closer to the mic, then about 1 foot away) but whatever I do they sound too loud / not loud enough, too near, too far (with reverb). Annoying, 'cos the rest sounds fantastic (for a cheap home studio like mine)... argh.

Bernd
 
On a similar note - my friend asked me to go round to his to help him find a problem with his setup. He has a cheap set of powered behringer monitors that are a couple years old. Everytime this 1 note was played on the bass, the right monitor would hum like crap. Never happened with anything else.

Turned out one of the screws holding the back plate onto the monitor was loose and oscilated at the same frequency as the bass guitar. Thats crap monitors for you :)
 
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