Hello and welcome to Bass Tone, Bass Effects Part 2 with me, Nick Long, brought to you by easyeartraining.com.
Last time on Bass Tone, we looked at how you can use EQ, compressors, limiters and overdrive effects to craft your perfect tone.
There’s a whole wild world of audio effects beyond these though.
Traditionally, reserved for guitarists, the effects we’ll be looking at this week can now be part of any bassist’s arsenal,
as manufacturers produce bass-specific versions of their famous effects.
Modulate to Innovate.
Modulation effects mix the original signal with the process copy, which varies over time.
The type of processing done determines the type of modulation effect produced.
The change in the effect over time is controlled by what’s called a low-frequency oscillator,
and the dials on the front of a modulation pedal are changing the way that that low-frequency oscillator operates.
The two main controls you’re going to see on the front of modulation pedals are
Depth, which controls how far the oscillator moves backwards and forwards,
and Rate, which determines how fast it moves.
Modulation effects tend to be less popular on the bass than on guitar or keyboard.
The main reason for this is that the bass line is so central to the mix of a rock record
that producers often want to avoid the washiness and lack of punch that excessive modulation can cause.
The additional clarity in the high frequencies that the modern bass amplifier provides,
coupled with the range of extremely high-quality specialist bass effects on the market,
means that this just isn’t a problem anymore.
Let’s delve into some bass modulation effects now.
The pedal I’ve got in front of me is the EBS Unichorus pedal,
and despite the name, it offers three different modulation effects,
chorus, flanger, and pitch modulation.
I’m going to play a nice mellow riff for you,
first clean, and then with each one of the modulation effects available on the Unichorus.
I’m going to play the riff again using the chorus effect.
When the chorus effect’s engaged, listen out for the characteristic detuned shimmer.
Now I’m going to use the pitch modulation effect.
Listen for the note wavering up and down, like a vocalist’s vibrato.
Finally, we’re going to use the flanger.
This is the most extreme effect of them all.
It’s variously been described as the sound of listening down a length of tube,
or, alternatively, the sound of a jet plane taking off.
Let’s talk about chorus.
Chorus is probably the most popular modulation effect available on the bass.
It can be used to add a shimmer to bass tone, and it really brings out harmonics.
It’s especially popular with fretless bass players because of its use by Jaco Pistorius.
The chorus effect was designed to simulate multiple instruments playing in unison.
It works by blending in a delayed, and sometimes pitch-shifted version of the original signal.
The amount of delay and pitch shift slowly change, adding the characteristic shimmer to the sound.
Bass players tend to avoid excessive modulation effects, as they can cause the bass to disappear in the mix.
If you do decide to use a chorus, a high-quality analogue unit is more likely to enhance your tone without washing it out.
First of all, let’s hear the riff clean.
Now, let’s use a chorus pedal to add some shimmer.
Now, let’s hear some bass harmonics, first without chorus, and then with.
Flanging and phasing.
Flanger adds a jet-plane swoosh for those all-important psychedelic moments.
The flanger works by mixing a signal with a very short delay back into the original.
The length of the delay varies slowly and smoothly, creating a swooshing effect.
A phaser is a similar sounding effect, which, as its name suggests, uses a sweeping phase shifter.
As the flanger sweeps, it changes the prominence of different frequencies in the sound.
This is why a flanger sound is exaggerated when combined with a fuzz pedal or distortion.
I’m going to turn on the effect now in flange mode, and just play for you.
Now, you can hear the effect there quite strongly.
The flange is quite an unsubtle effect, and I’ve got both of the controls currently set to halfway, which is quite a strong effect.
Now, you’ll be able to hear a sweeping up and down of the effect as I play.
Here, a repetitive riff is enhanced with the addition of some flange, set to a low rate, to add some interest.
First, let’s hear the riff clean.
Now, let’s hear that riff again with some flanger.
Wah Wah
Wah Wah is one of the most popular effects in bass, probably because of the outrageously dirty P-funk of Bootsy Collins,
who shaped the sound of the 1970s, with nothing but 6-inch platforms, a star-shaped bass, and a red-hot Wah Wah.
Much of the Wah Wah’s appeal comes from its well-known ability to emulate the human voice.
But what is this magic little circuit that does this?
Rather than delving into electronics, let’s see what happens inside your mouth when you speak.
Now, I’m going to do something slightly strange now, but please play along, because your bass tone education depends on it.
Now, I’d like you to all repeat after me,
Wow, wow, wow, wow.
Now, there’s no need to feel silly, and I’m sorry if everyone’s looking at you on the bus,
but what did I say about listening to it on earbuds on your iPod?
Think about what happened in your mouth while you made that sound.
The spoken word, wow, consists of the ooh and the wah sounds.
People interested in phonetics call them voiced sounds, meaning that your vocal cords vibrate when you say them.
If you don’t believe me, just touch your hand to your neck while you say them.
Compare that to the sound,
which doesn’t produce any vibration in your neck.
As you repeat the wow sound, nothing really changes in your vocal cords.
They keep on vibrating in the same way.
What does change is the shape of your mouth and lips.
Specifically, as you change from the ooh to the wah sound, your mouth opens.
Your mouth shapes the sound as it passes through in the same way that a guitar’s body and sound hole shape the sound of the strings as they vibrate.
As your mouth changes shape, the sound waves that are the same size of your mouth resonate.
Or you could say that your mouth reinforces the sound waves that are the same size as the inside of your mouth.
This is what’s called a resonant peak, and as it moves up and down, it makes the word wow sound the way it does.
A wah-wah circuit does much the same as your mouth, by taking a particular frequency in the sound and boosting it so that it jumps out.
And that’s why a wah-wah makes you stand out in a mix.
As the frequency moves up and down, your brain hears the distinctive sound of the word wow.
You can control a wah-wah effect in two ways.
The first uses a pedal to manually sweep the filter as you tilt your foot, and the second uses a so-called envelope filter or touch-wah.
The pedal I have with me today is an electroharmonic’s baseballs pedal, which is the triggered type rather than the pedal kind.
I’m going to play some examples for you now in a funk style.
And as I do, I’m going to change the response control on the baseballs.
As I change the response control, it’s going to move around the frequency that gets boosted.
When it’s lower, you’re going to hear lower frequencies boosted, and when it’s up the top of its travel, you’re going to hear higher frequencies boosted.
See what effect you think that has on the vocal qualities of the sound.
First of all, without the baseballs effect.
Now with the baseballs with low response.
Boosting the response a little bit.
Now nearly all the way up.
Filter effects work very well with distortion and fud.
So let’s try that riff, first with the big muff.
And then with the big muff and the baseballs.
Now the geeks out there are probably saying,
OK, so filter pedals work really well with fuzz pedals, but why is that?
Well here comes the science bit.
As you can hear for yourselves, when I kick on the fuzz pedal, it creates a huge fat wall of sound.
And this means it’s taking up a lot of space in the frequency spectrum.
Lots of energy spread right away across the spectrum gives the filter lots of raw material to work with, and that’s why the effect is more pronounced.
If you want to take the wah-wah concept to the next level, try the unusual talkbox effects pedal.
It uses a plastic tube to blast sound into your mouth, where you can shape it and direct it into a microphone.
This effect was most famously used by Bon Jovi in the song Living on a Prayer, where guitarist Richie Sambora shapes the distinctive riff by mouthing,
ooh-ee, ooh-ee, ooh-ooh-ooh-ee, as I’m sure you will remember.
Pitch Shifting
Many of the guitar-focused pitch-shifting effects tend to be harmoniser effects, but bass lines don’t tend to lend themselves to being harmonised in thirds or fifths,
so the most typical effects add either an octave up or an octave down.
The popular bass gear manufacturer Ashdown considers the sub-octave effects so essential they incorporate it directly into several of their amplifiers.
Octave pedals double or halve the frequency of the incoming bass signal and blend it back into the original bass sound.
The octave down or sub-octave effect is the most common, adding fatness and allowing bass players to reach lower notes without needing a fifth string.
Octave up effects can simulate an eight-string bass, an instrument with double octave strings, analogous to a 12-string guitar, or fill in where the guitar player takes a solo.
I’m going to play a pitch shifter example for you using two variants of an octave effect.
The octave I’m going to be using is a digital effect.
You’ll notice it’s a very clean, hi-fi kind of a pitch shift, unlike the kind of squelchy synth-like analog pedals.
First of all, here’s the riff clean.
Here’s the same riff played again with an octave up effect.
And finally, the same riff with an octave down effect.
Other effects.
There are a number of other effects that can be used on bass, but they’re far less common.
Examples include tremolo, which is a kind of modulation where the volume goes up and down.
Reverb, which is a simulation of a reverberant room.
And delay, where one or more repeats of the signal feed back after a short time.
For more information on audio effects, check out the hearing effects series on easyeartraining.com.
I hope you’ve enjoyed listening to all the crazy sounds you can make with a bass and a bunch of effects pedals as much as I’ve enjoyed playing them for you.
If you’ve been inspired by these podcasts to make up some crazy sounds with your effects pedals, I’d love to hear from you.
Drop into www.easyeartraining.com slash forums, where you can post your freaky effects concoctions.
Well, that wraps it up for the Bass Tone Series.
If you have any questions, feedback or bright ideas, we’d love to hear from you.
You can get in contact via the website www.easyeartraining.com
or log on to our forums and join in the conversation at www.easyeartraining.com slash forums.
Well, all that it remains for me to say is may your bottom end be fat, your mids punchy and your high end sparkling.
I’ve been Nick Long for easyeartraining.com.
Thanks for listening.
