50 Bass Programming Tips

Decide before you start if you want your bass part to sound like a bass player or a machine - or maybe you're actually going to play the bass! It all depends on the music you are making, but often one style will require you to take diametrically opposite steps to another.

If you are looking for a player's 'feel' from a MIDI track, don't over quantise - if possible, don't quantise at all. A tight drum track will hide a multitude of sins, and slightly loose bass parts will take away the mechanical feel of the drums too.

For a machine-like dance track, quantising could be everything. There are many intelligent quantises in sequencers. Cubase 'Iterative' moves notes a little, and then a little more if you do it again. Don't go too far. Always experiment to see which sits best in the track. Strictly in time is not always the best option.

When you have a part you are happy with, whether programmed or played, experiment with moving it a little backwards or forwards in the track. With audio, try increments of two or three milliseconds - or use MIDI delay. With the bass a little behind, the drums will sound more urgent; with the bass ahead they will be more laid back.

If you are programming your parts with a MIDI keyboard, experiment with the pitch and modulation wheels to add little slides and a touch of gentle vibrato. Too much will sound wrong... unless it's for deliberate effect.

For bass players not keen on using keyboards there are various MIDI basses and MIDI add-on pick-ups for basses available. Getting a good clean sound, however, requires a very precise technique, and the best ones are quite expensive (eg, Yamaha's B1D at £700).

It is rare for a bassline not to constitute part of a rhythm section - sometimes just bass and drums, sometimes with percussion as well. You can't think about the bass part rhythmically in isolation. Sometimes bass parts copy rhythms in the drum parts, particularly the bass drum, but sometimes they are complimentary.

While the tempo of a song has usually been decided by the time you get to the bass, you may find the track needs to speed up or slow down a little once you start adding the bass - particularly if you come up with a nice part that needs to be slower or faster.

Generally, bass parts shouldn't meander through a song. The luxury of programming into a sequencer, however, is that you can meander as much as you like and then edit it. The important thing here is to be ruthless - find and keep the very best bits only.

This is as true for a played part as for a programmed one. You might chance upon a phrase that you played without thinking too hard and it could turn into a great loop for a song. This 'chancing' upon parts is often going to throw up better results than sitting for hours thinking, "I must come up with a brilliant two-bar phrase... I must come up with a brilliant two-bar phrase", etc.

It doesn't always work simply to transpose a looped part. A loop played with a G chord may fit okay if transposed to fit with a C chord, but not with a B chord, for instance (though it might). Listen carefully to what you have and maybe only minor adjustments will be necessary. You can always pitch shift the odd note of an audio track...

If you are going to pitch shift bass audio parts, it usually works better with short notes than long ones; and the less far you have to shift it the better. If you need a different note in the middle of a phrase, try taking the note you need from somewhere else in the song and editing it in instead.

If you have a very hooky bass part or riff, try not transposing it to fit the chords of the song, but leaving it where it is and moving the chords around over the top. This will give a more trance-like quality to the music.

Leaving spaces in your bass parts is as important as the notes you play. Some of the best bits of the greatest bass parts are the holes; it sets up a feeling of tension which you can resolve satisfyingly a moment later. If you have a nice bass part, experiment with leaving bits of it out.

Try leaving bass out of whole sections of your music, long or short. The sense of relief when you finally bring it back in to plug the aural space is huge.

If you don't want to leave the bass out, try having a high bass part instead of a low one. Playing uncomplicated parts around the 12th fret of the bass, or programming them an octave higher than usual, leaves you the satisfaction of dropping down an octave - perhaps in the chorus or after a dramatic middle section.

Another way to create a feeling of space in a track is to vary the length of the notes. Fast complicated patterns might be best with a 'clipped' feel, where slow sections may be be better with long, sustained notes. With MIDI, the sound may change the longer the note is held, and this can create interest in the part without you having to change the notes so often.

Don't make your bass parts too complicated. There are probably a lot of things yet to be played or recorded that need some space to move around. If you find that later overdubs aren't working, it may not be their fault. Don't be afraid to go back and re-examine the bass to see if it can't be simplified.

If a bass part is rhythmically interesting - particularly if it is a fast rhythm - you can probably keep the notes quite static until the chord changes. You don't want too many things going on at once. Simplify one element of a part at a time rather than changing the whole part.

On the other hand, you might have a great idea for a complicated bass part that works really well. In that case, be very sparing with what you put on top of it. A good way to create more interest in a track that has a busy bass part, is to add percussion rather than lots of layered keyboards. Above all, the parts need room to breathe.

Or you might come up with a great guitar or piano part and decide that the bass should be doubling it. Even if you are very attached to your bass part, don't throw away a better guitar part because of it. Save the part out as a MIDI file and use it in another song.

Bass parts often need to be very repetitive in the same way as drum parts. Using the same repeated pattern throughout the verse or chorus of a song can work as well with bass as with drums.

Don't forget that repetitive parts need to be broken up with a few fills and changes. Try not to do this at the same time as the other instruments. You don't want your groove chugging along nicely for seven bars and then becoming a train wreck in bar eight!

When you have a part finished, or you have a section of the song to loop in your sequencer, try changing the MIDI sound to see if another sound fits the part better. If the sequencer is playing the part for you, it allows you to concentrate on what it sounds like.

Another cool way to make your sounds different is doubling the part. Copy your MIDI part onto another track and experiment with different combinations of sounds. Or play the same part on your keyboard as you played on your bass; it needs to be very accurate!

Using an existing rhythmic part to 'trigger' bass sounds can create very interesting parts. Try copying a hi-hat part to a bass track and changing the pitch of the notes to fit the chords while leaving the rhythm alone. This can also be done with audio using a noise gate to open and close on a long, sustained note.

Bass sounds don't often change radically in the middle of a song, but sometimes this can work very well, whether the part is MIDI or audio. Adding an effect for specific parts of the song can help to emphasise different sections. (See later for more on effects.)

If you are using sampled notes, particularly if you are making your own samples, you will probably want to have different sets of samples to suit different songs. If your song requires a very staccato part, use a set of staccato samples, for example.

You can also experiment with the way you produce the note when sampling. If you normally play with a pick, try using your fingers, or vice-versa. Or try damping the strings a little with the side of your hand. You only have to play one note at a time, so new techniques shouldn't be a problem!

Or try being really radical. Hitting a string with a teaspoon near the bridge can give you a very bright sound similar to, but more forceful than, slapping the strings. Slipping a bit of foam under the strings near the bridge can produce a very dead sound which, when played with a pick, is slightly less dead. Have some fun with your old odds and ends.

Using sampled bass parts is a lot less common than using sampled drum parts. This is because bass parts are very song specific. If you do fancy someone else's bass riff, don't forget it's probably copyright protected.

Compression is a very important part of any bass sound. An 'even' sound will sit better with a mix, but you don't want to compress all the feel out of a track. Try some gentle compression of a few db at 2.5:1 when you record. You can always apply some more compression in the mix using a plug-in.

The style of music you play will to a certain extent dictate what sort of sound you are going to use, and so will what bassline you play. At the same time, what you play will to some extent be dictated to you by the sound you pick. Often, picking a different sound to the one you were looking for will give you the inspiration you need.

Good combinations of sounds might be doubling a slow sustained bass part with a low organ sound, or perhaps doubling a very melodic, fluid part with cellos. Or doubling a mean riff with a guitar part. No rules apply.

Bass parts don't always need to be the root note of a chord. If you are moving from a G chord to a C chord, some powerful effects can be created by playing a B under your G chord - or even an F - and an E under your C chord afterwards. Not playing the root, like leaving spaces, creates a tension that's always very satisfying to resolve. Always remember that in music there are no wrong notes - just right notes in the wrong places.

While bass sounds need to be bassy, they also need to have a wide frequency spectrum with some higher overtones as well. If you are recording your own bass or bass samples, get a bright, clear sound. You can always EQ away unwanted treble frequencies; you can't conjure them up if they weren't recorded in the first place. This 'top end' on bass sounds is what makes them cut through a mix. Often the top will disappear into the other instruments, leaving the impression of a bassy sound.

Very bassy sounds often work best when they are played higher. This allows the notes to poke through the mix even if the sound doesn't.

Another approach, which can also bring life to a 'generic' sounding MIDI sound, is to edit the part until you are very happy with it, not worrying too much about the velocities, and then record it through an amp, compressing it as you record. Obviously, you are still able to edit the audio once you've recorded.

Recording MIDI parts as audio is a great way to make them sound warmer and more real - this is also true for other sounds (electric piano, for one). Even a 'real' bass part can be helped like this. Perhaps you recorded with DI and now it sounds too clean - run it back through an amp.

Warming up' a sound may well save you the problem of difficult EQ-ing, as it will tend to bring out the sort of frequencies you need to boost to help a sound cut through. If you find you are having to use a lot of EQ, it is best to try and do something with the source sound instead. The best sounds should need very little EQ.

Another way to make your sounds more interesting is to use effects. Unless the bass is going to be extremely prominent in the mix, however, you have to be careful. A very full and busy track is not going to benefit from a bass part with a long decaying reverb, making soup out of the bottom end of the mix.

Try chorusing or flanging to give a sound some movement. Or distortion. Or one of our favourites, the good old fashioned fuzz box! These kinds of effects lend some interest to the sound without losing any of the definition.

Delays can sometimes work well on bass and are readily available as plug-ins. Short delays are usually better than long ones, and the less feedback the better to help keep your mix clear. It is also a good idea if the delay is in time with the track. If you don't have a programme or chart to look up the correct times in, use a calculator to divide 60 by the tempo and use multiples of the answer. (For example: tempo 122. 60/122=0.4918, so a fast delay at that speed would be half or a quarter of that - 245ms or 123ms).

When you have found the effect you like, it's very easy to get excited by it. A good tip in the mix is to set the level where you think it sounds good, and then back it off a little.

The bass is usually one of the three most important sounds in your mix, along with the drums and the vocal. Don't neglect it in any way in the early stages of your sequencing - it will come back to haunt you in the mix.

When you are mixing, be very sparing with your EQ. Too much heavy bottom will smother the punch of your bass drum, too much low middle will interfere with the body of sound of pianos and guitars. A little boost around 100Hz will add a touch of warmth, 200Hz will add a little more audible 'note' and around 5kHz will add zing to the top end. Pulling a little out around 400Hz will help to separate the 'bottom' from the 'top'.

Usually the bass needs to be in the centre of a mix. But you don't have to put it there. Particularly if you are using doubled bass sounds, you can try panning them left and right. Or you can try double-tracking your bass part and panning it.

The best tip is to listen. Listen to what you've done and be very critical. Listen to lots of music, particularly the things you don't normally listen to. They will often give you great ideas to add to your own music. And if you like something you've heard, take the time to work out how it's done. Musical techniques can always be applied to styles they weren't invented for.

You can achieve good consistency of sound with programmed parts by evening out the velocities. Like everything else, though, don't make the part lifeless by overdoing it. A good approach is to change any notes that stick out or aren't loud enough individually. Using the command 'set all velocities to x' rarely sounds good whatever sort of music you are making. You need to have a little emphasis on the first beat of the bar or the first beat of a phrase for instance.

If you don't have the luxury of a real amp, there are several excellent amp and valve sound simulation plug-ins that do the trick. The ones we favour have a variety of presets for different instruments. Never be afraid to experiment with using the 'wrong' one. This can lead to far more individual sounds.

source: www.computermusic.co.uk