"Creating Atmosphere"
This month's topic is creating atmosphere! Music is a universal language where words should not be needed to portray a certain mood. In order to portray a certain mood, you have to create the right kind of atmosphere to get it across! For example, if you wanted a melancholy, dark mood in your song, you'd never want to use bright happy tones to do it, and you might not want to use too much angst either. Start here!
What does your song feel like? More importantly, what DOESN'T it feel like? From here, you'll want to choose the right TONE. Creating atmosphere is all about choosing the best tone to get the job done! For slow songs, the songs where mood is the biggest challenge, you'd never want a hard, aggressive punch of a sound. Instead, take the trebley punch down a notch and go for more of a mid to low tone. For heavier material, you definitely want a hard punch to it! Add a little more treble than bass in there, but use enough bass to have serious POWER!! Use the mid to balance it out.
What if your song is mellow and you want powerful emotion to it? This type of song is PERFECT for using a fretless bass! Again, more low tones with no punch at all, and just enough treble so that it doesnt sound boomy will do the job nicely. A heavy chorus effect seems to always be amazing in this situation too! If you want to play it clean, use the smoothest possible fretting you possibly can, make it sing. Slide between the notes! Hold them that extra millisecond longer! Use bended notes! You can still use this style with a fretted bass too. But a fretless will sing for you even more.
Want a funky sound? Of course the classic funk slapping willnever fail, but it doesnt have to be done. You may want the same trebley punched sound you'd use for a heavy song and the same power! The difference will be in the groove. This will come with practicing grooving, and any good bassist will be able to groove, if you cant groove, youre missing a huge part of what it is to be a bassist. Funk bass is about POWER and GROOVE. Its a heavy sound but you want to dance to it. Wahs are nice at times too! But make your wah very boomy when you use it.
Want that classic old school swing jazz/fretless sound? Turn the bass up all the way and the treble almost all the way down and mid pretty low, maybe at 2 or 3. If you have a wah, turn the treble mid way and open it! It will sound low and incredibly boomy, just like an upright bass! You dont have to spend 2000 dollars on a real upright, just get a wah pedal and open it but leave the pedal up and keep playing!
Do you use distortion? Well its best to over flod it, use as much power as your distortion will allow you to have but use the same tones as for any rock/metal song, a little more treble than bass for a trebley punch, but turn the treble up a little more so you don't sound like mud when you use the distortion. And use the mid to balance them out.
Mid is very important for balance and filling out your sound. Without it you sound empty. Usually, rule of thumb says to put your mid range right in between where your treble and bass are set, or turn it up high if your treble and bass settings are mid or low. You almost never want to turn it all the way down. Bass is a power instrument and should be a full sound all on its on, after all!
Hope this helps! A song without mood is less than half a song, or it may just be empty noise. Mood can be portrayed with words, but rue atmosphere MUST come from the music. Atmospere can never be effectively be portrayed JUST in words, the singer has to create atmospere too, but its the music that has to do it first!
Keep Playing!,
Mark McAnaney, Solo Bassist
This month's topic is creating atmosphere! Music is a universal language where words should not be needed to portray a certain mood. In order to portray a certain mood, you have to create the right kind of atmosphere to get it across! For example, if you wanted a melancholy, dark mood in your song, you'd never want to use bright happy tones to do it, and you might not want to use too much angst either. Start here!
What does your song feel like? More importantly, what DOESN'T it feel like? From here, you'll want to choose the right TONE. Creating atmosphere is all about choosing the best tone to get the job done! For slow songs, the songs where mood is the biggest challenge, you'd never want a hard, aggressive punch of a sound. Instead, take the trebley punch down a notch and go for more of a mid to low tone. For heavier material, you definitely want a hard punch to it! Add a little more treble than bass in there, but use enough bass to have serious POWER!! Use the mid to balance it out.
What if your song is mellow and you want powerful emotion to it? This type of song is PERFECT for using a fretless bass! Again, more low tones with no punch at all, and just enough treble so that it doesnt sound boomy will do the job nicely. A heavy chorus effect seems to always be amazing in this situation too! If you want to play it clean, use the smoothest possible fretting you possibly can, make it sing. Slide between the notes! Hold them that extra millisecond longer! Use bended notes! You can still use this style with a fretted bass too. But a fretless will sing for you even more.
Want a funky sound? Of course the classic funk slapping willnever fail, but it doesnt have to be done. You may want the same trebley punched sound you'd use for a heavy song and the same power! The difference will be in the groove. This will come with practicing grooving, and any good bassist will be able to groove, if you cant groove, youre missing a huge part of what it is to be a bassist. Funk bass is about POWER and GROOVE. Its a heavy sound but you want to dance to it. Wahs are nice at times too! But make your wah very boomy when you use it.
Want that classic old school swing jazz/fretless sound? Turn the bass up all the way and the treble almost all the way down and mid pretty low, maybe at 2 or 3. If you have a wah, turn the treble mid way and open it! It will sound low and incredibly boomy, just like an upright bass! You dont have to spend 2000 dollars on a real upright, just get a wah pedal and open it but leave the pedal up and keep playing!
Do you use distortion? Well its best to over flod it, use as much power as your distortion will allow you to have but use the same tones as for any rock/metal song, a little more treble than bass for a trebley punch, but turn the treble up a little more so you don't sound like mud when you use the distortion. And use the mid to balance them out.
Mid is very important for balance and filling out your sound. Without it you sound empty. Usually, rule of thumb says to put your mid range right in between where your treble and bass are set, or turn it up high if your treble and bass settings are mid or low. You almost never want to turn it all the way down. Bass is a power instrument and should be a full sound all on its on, after all!
Hope this helps! A song without mood is less than half a song, or it may just be empty noise. Mood can be portrayed with words, but rue atmosphere MUST come from the music. Atmospere can never be effectively be portrayed JUST in words, the singer has to create atmospere too, but its the music that has to do it first!
Keep Playing!,
Mark McAnaney, Solo Bassist
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