Isolating percussive sound in bass track?

Be Loveless

Be Loveless

New member
Ok, Here is your "Mr. Anthony Challenge". There is this really cool clip clop sound on the bass track of a new tune that Im working on. Its sort of a happy anomoly from my bass players technique ( the string hitting the body of the bass) and its in perfect time.. We are a duo of guitar and bass NO drums. I would like to isolate that sound, record it as a seperate track and use that as the percussion. Keep in mind I'm on cassette 8 track, I have a 4 band parametric eq and a behri multi effects unit. I came close using a vocoder (randomly tweaking it until it sounded al most right) in combination w/the eq (trying to notch out the actual "bass" sound.) but not close enough. any suggestions?
 
might i suggest actually micing the strings of the bass (I'm assuming it's an electric bass?). and then blend that in with the bass track at a higher than normal volume later. I've heard of people doing that with good results, but not really to be used on it's own as the percusive end, just to hear much more string/pluck sound.
 
Maybe use a compressor with the attack set to just let the click part through and clamp down before the sustained tone takes over.

That works for bringing out the slap/click from a bass drum beater and the stick-on-skin attack on toms. Could work here too.
 
I knew you all were thinkin. And robert I appreciate your suggestion but Im tying to work with what was already recorded. Thanks folks keep em comin.
 
Nothing really helpful ..but interesting..Tack bass had a similar thing going on..Think early Elvis,Buddy Holly ect..Maybe try compessing and EQ..If you have a couple of open tracks..try keeping one uneffected and one clobbered...Blend and Bounce the two to a open track ..check your phase on the final track before you commit to anything...just a idea..good luck :)
 
well then, between compression and EQ, without rerecording, i'm not aware of a lot you can do. Based on some of those EQ charts you can amplify the string/pluck sound by boosting around 3k. check this link for a cool little EQ chart... http://www.recordingeq.com/EQ/req0900/primer.htm

If you REALLY wanted it, the best thing to do would be to over dub another take of micing the bass players fingers, but if you can't, that's about all I can suggest.

good luck!
 
well then, between compression and EQ, without rerecording, i'm not aware of a lot you can do. Based on some of those EQ charts you can amplify the string/pluck sound by boosting around 3k. check this link for a cool little EQ chart... http://www.recordingeq.com/EQ/req0900/primer.htm

If you REALLY wanted it, the best thing to do would be to over dub another take of micing the bass players fingers, but if you can't, that's about all I can suggest.

good luck!
 
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