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That loud bass note

Say you have a bass pattern hitting different notes but when it hits one partcular note, it becomes very loud and sounds incredibly siney and boomy. I suppose I could compress the bass to even out the loudness throughout but when it hits the problem note, I can't even hear the texture of the bass. All I can hear is a sinewave booming at me.

How do I solve this?

This is called a standing wave, and it has everything to do with acoustics of your room, not with the generated sound.
I presume you have a synth for the bass, not a sample (which can cause a problem like this on some occasions).
Listen to it with some good headphones and you probably won't tell the difference...

make a note of what frequency it is, so you dont try to compensate for it in your mix

You could try using a different bass patch. Certain patches will simply be much louder at certain frequencies, while some will be nice and consistent throughout the range. If the patch has delay or room verb applied to it, this can cause some inconsistencies.

If the whole texture of the patch goes to heck on that note, that's really all I can suggest. Otherwise I'd personally just notch eq the problem frequency.

(And yes, check if your listening enviroment has a particular problem at that frequency. I'd assume not, if you just noticed it now, with only one particular bass. Try a few different bass patches playing the same notes and you'll be able to tell if it's the sound or your listening environment)

Another possibility is that the loud note is around the cutoff frequency of the filter and there is high resonance on the filter... Cue sine like sound at one frequency..

If the instrument allows filter tracking for the filter tweak that and the filter settings to get the filter to track evenly up and down the keyboard. Or sample a "Good" sounding note and play samples of the bass part, or give up and try another sound...

i red somewhere that if u use sampled basslines and pitch them up and down u wont get extreme freq changes....

trilogy would be an example...

quote:

Originally posted by jey i red somewhere that if u use sampled basslines and pitch them up and down u wont get extreme freq changes.... trilogy would be an example...

it only helps when the whole sound path is sampled. trilogy adds his own filter so it wouldn't help with those problems.
but if use something like kontakt and don't add anything you would be fine with this.

to the OP i would check your room acoustics. generate a slowly sweeping sine from ~40 hz to 20 kHz. now play it back and if you hear a jump in the loudness you've found a frequency where your room isn't perfect. a "perfect" room would sweep very linear. it would fade in slowly and fade out slowly too.

Isnt this a very general problem ?

Isnt it better to just find a basspatch/sample, that fits on the notes you are going to use ?

Re: That loud bass note

quote:

Originally posted by G-Con Say you have a bass pattern hitting different notes but when it hits one partcular note, it becomes very loud and sounds incredibly siney and boomy. I suppose I could compress the bass to even out the loudness throughout but when it hits the problem note, I can't even hear the texture of the bass. All I can hear is a sinewave booming at me. How do I solve this?

You mean the bass is doing this by itself? I usually only get that kind of thing when the bass and kick are playing at the same time, and are around the same frequency.

Sometimes if a bass uses 2 voices, slightly detuned from one another, and the oscillation hits it's peak, it's get too loud. I usually mute one of the voices, but that really changes the sound of the synth of course. Compression can help sometimes, but not all. Sampling does seem a possible way to go, but it never sounds right to me for bass. Try making multiple recordings of just one bar of the bass, and use the one that doesn't have the loud bass note in it. Odds are, it's only reaching it's peak every 4 bars or so.

Also to clarify, is it just that patch that does this (even with the bass soloed) or is is ANY bass wit that note?

If it's any bass then you have an accoustics problem (Time for that search function for lots of discusison about that ;-).

If it's just that patch, and it does it even when isolated with nothing else playing then dollars to donuts it's the filter cut-off frequency with too much resonance and no/incorrectly set filter tracking (Also known as Key tracking).

Thanks for the tips. Plenty for me to try out. I havent got access to my home pc at the moment but when I do, I'll try what you've all suggested. It happens even when the bass is solo'd only on the one note.

I havent tried different patches yet. I think I spent time with the filter/resonance but I'll have another look and tweak the key tracking as well.

Pretty sure with all your suggestions, I'll be able to crack the problem...

Thanks Again

Greg

yep this is why people resample bass.

u stole my avatar

wait a second......what?

im so confused...

Oh shit was that me or was that you.... WHATS GOING ON. OHHHH SHI-

This is quite a common problem and there are a few ways to solve it.

1) Use a notch filter around the problem frequency, not the best solution as it may alter the sound to your dislike for the notes which aren't overly resonant, but an option non the less.

2) Use a Dynamic EQ to perform the above so that the notch only kicks in when the level in that band reaches a certain level.

3) Compression can sometimes help.

4) Change the key of the track, so the notes fall into a different frequency range.

5) Possibly the easiest solution and the one that usually works for me (because it's usually one single note that resonates like this) is to go into you note editor, select the offending note and lower it's velocity very slighty (assuming velocity is linked to amplitude). I find that with a very slight adjustment the note falls into place without adversly affecting the level of the bassline, bearing in mind it gets fed into a compressor anyway.

i think everyone forgot the simplest answer, instead of doing such drastic changes as changing the entire note of ur track, just automate the level to duck at the high point to the desired level

I pulled this from an online article called 'EQ by octave' it's not necessarily the solution but combined with other tips it might point you in the right direction.

quote:

Covering about 1.5 octaves, from 80 Hz to 250 Hz, this range of frequencies determines the "fatness" and "fullness" of the instrument's sound. Equalization is usually applied centered around two frequencies, 100 Hz and 200 Hz. For guitars and bass, the 100 Hz range tends to add body and fullness. Excessive energy in this range tends to make these instruments sound "boomy.," This range of frequencies is still greatly affected by the Fletcher-Muson Effect; this means you will need to listen to the mix and instrument both loud and soft. Similar to how the 50 Hz range affects the bass and foot, the guitars should sound fatter when played loud, not boomy. Reducing the 100 Hz energy on the guitar will usually cause distinction between the bass and guitar parts. The lowest fundamental frequency on a guitar is around 80 Hz. For vocals the 200 Hz range determines the fullness of the vocal. This range can often be reduced to increase distinction on the vocal. If, however, boosting in higher frequencies on the vocal makes the sound "thin" or "small" a boost of 200 Hz. will restore fullness. When 100 Hz is reduced on a guitar or bass to reduce "boom," at small boost at 200 Hz can be helpful to keep the instrument from sounding "lumpy" (certain notes hard to hear and others standing out). The guitar and bass have almost equal energy at their fundamental and 2nd harmonic frequencies. Thus if a range of notes becomes hard to hear because of a at lot of 100 Hz, reducing energy at 100Hz and adding energy at 200 Hz will help the notes be heard again.

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