That bass sound that rattles your insides

J

JC Lives

New member
I was wondering if there are any Chris Spheeris or David Arkenstone fans out there. Their music has so much dynamics that it really amazes me. Chis Spheeris - Mystic Traveler has some realy deep bass sounds that it shakes my insides. Some of it could be synth, some could be percussion.

My question is (if you know what I'm talking about), how do they do that???

I would realy like to be able to do it too. SOME FOR ME. I know that I probably do not have the equipment to do it, but want to know so that I can start the dreaming process.
 
Been there, done that. On my vs880, it adds a little to much low midrange mud.

It is more that just adding bass. there are sounds that are not just bass guitar or base drum.

I Guess what I'm looking for is what are they using to make those sounds. I can kind of figure that in the mixing process, I would need a para eq to get just the right frequencies.
 
Don’t know if this has anything to do with how these guys get their sound, but here is something interesting and useful to consider:

Besides moving lots of air at the lowest frequency, the impression of deep bass is reinforced by a rich linear harmonic structure. For example, part of the reason why the same notes on a grand piano sound deeper than those on a baby grand (besides it having a larger soundboard) is because the strings are longer. Longer strings produce louder harmonics and the harmonics are more linear. By more linear, I mean that the grand produces overtones which are almost exactly 2,3,4,5,.. times the fundamental frequency, while the baby grand’s might look something like 2.05, 3.09, 4.11, 5.15,...

This enhanced deepness is due to a psychoacoustic effect know as the Missing Fundamental. In fact, the fundamental frequency can be missing altogether and your brain will fill in the blank if the just harmonics are there!
 
I've experimented a little with bass sounds, and a couple things worked pretty well for me.

The first one was recording with my band. The bass player had a bigass Ampeg cabinet with a 15" speaker in the bottom and four 10" speakers on top. I used a bass drum mic on the 15" (I can't remember what mic exactly) and a SM57 on one of the 10". I used some EQ to even further emphasize the deep bass recorded from the 15" and the mix between the two sounded pretty good, with the 10" track providing some definition to the tone. It kind of stepped all over the guitar in the mix so I had to do some more EQ'ing, but it turned out good.

The really good one was when I borrowed an old bass from that same guy to record my own stuff and I ran it directly into my board. That bass had an amazing tone, I didn't really have to do anything to it. I can always add a little distortion of something if we need a "dirtier" sound, but I'll definitely record bass that way from now on (the *good* basses anyway, some of 'em don't sound that good direct).
 
Btw, you can try this Missing Fundamental effect with a basic poly synth. First set the keyboard scaling flat and the level scaling such that the highs get progressively softer. Now set the voice to a pure sine wave and play a note and a few of it’s octaves. Can you hear the octave below the lowest note you are playing? Cool.
 
Sorry, the way I described the Missing Fundamental test is wrong.

The notes are wrong. I'll have to figure out if it can be done with a keyboard.
 
more bass

boss makes a bass eq pedal and i've found it works pretty good i just crank the last band all the way up and then adjust gain and bass on my amp. it also works good on kick drum to get a low tone.
 
Check out my tune #16 in the mp3 gallery at my website.
Does this rattle your insides? That was my plan...
 
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