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mixing bass
 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2023-08-24 00:50 [#02630022]
Points: 25264 Status: Regular



with your toes. do you ever do that? ...with the way it
feels through your toes? moves around the room?

...because, while i can't hear ~15hz, but i can feel
it my toes. or my ass, if i sit on the floor [for really
tough mixes].



1) someone must. like, adrian utley at least [utleyeste?]
because listen to "strangers" [off of portishead - dummy].
it just crawls all over the floorboards. if you take a
decade to make an album, i suppose that's what you spend it
on

...i just fart around and get it sounding nice as i compose.
i'm not very scientific about how it gets there [but am
keenly aware of it in an arrangement sense]


2) LUKE VIBERT ~ the first "The Ace of Clubs" track ~ wow.
this isn't terribly organic/feely [like me 'n' the 'heads]
but it is fucking surgical. there's a whole mix down
there -- and it's a brutal stalinist regime where a swift
death awaits any frequencies outside of the ranges allotted
From Above. i'm not inclined to go this way myself, but it's
[darth vader] Impressive

i mean, sure, i'll research it myself. but this is my stupid
thred for today

so... anyone have any thots?


 

offline ijonspeches from 109P/Swift-Tuttle on 2023-08-24 08:10 [#02630023]
Points: 7811 Status: Regular | Show recordbag



im thinking i knew a girl who bet she could finish someone
off with her feet alone

that being said, bass is a science.
how can you possibly get it right on all systems?
i mean i have a sub with tewakable frequency and vol, set
just right.
but its not like that anywhere you go.
every set of earphones is different etc..


 

offline belb from mmmmmmhhhhzzzz!!! on 2023-08-24 12:17 [#02630025]
Points: 6379 Status: Regular | Followup to EpicMegatrax: #02630022



well, to be hearing or feeling ~15hz it'd have to be from a
natural / analogue source like the ww2-era hand-cranked
sinewave generator andrew mackenzie used to use. modern
speakers / headphones aren't designed to be putting out
anything below ~20hz and that'll be next to inaudible for
most ppl

could you be feeling resonances with certain areas or
objects? is it only on certain tracks or in certain areas?
because if the speakers aren't making that frequency in the
first place, well...


 

offline belb from mmmmmmhhhhzzzz!!! on 2023-08-24 14:48 [#02630026]
Points: 6379 Status: Regular



thinking about it, is it possible yr hearing 30hz on yr
system? 15hz would be an octave lower so harmonics may be
tricking you into hearing something that's not there


 

offline ijonspeches from 109P/Swift-Tuttle on 2023-08-24 15:47 [#02630027]
Points: 7811 Status: Regular | Show recordbag



would a glass of water work


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2023-08-25 01:25 [#02630030]
Points: 25264 Status: Regular | Followup to ijonspeches: #02630027



jurassic park, the glass of water. they loved that in stereo
stores as a demo, like they did the pink floyd song with
clocks.

the first time i ever saw jurassic park was in the tweeter
demo room as my parents went around and shopped for a new TV
+ stereo. that was p. great

once someone asked, "can i finish myself off while sucking
your toes?" "uhh sure but i'm very ticklish there" and then
"should i stop" because i'm laughing and squirming all over
"no you're fine"


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2023-08-25 01:33 [#02630031]
Points: 25264 Status: Regular | Followup to belb: #02630026



thinking about it, is it possible yr hearing 30hz on yr
system? 15hz would be an octave lower so harmonics may be
tricking you into hearing something that's not there


again -- not hearing, feeling it. even if it does have an
audible component

15hz probably wrong tho, yeah. i'm mostly talking about the
parts i can feel move around the room, and that i don't get
without a proper sub. 30hz, you're probably on it. wouldn't
surprise me if that's where the upstairs sub bottoms out
anyways

and you see my point with this thread, yes?
- "what's going on here"
- "i'm conscious of this when i write music but i'm flying
by touch"
- "portishead does this like some organic thing generated by
nature while vibert is laser-cut down to microns"

and a low shelf covers a range of frequencies, so then i'm
mixing by ear too. and since finding cassettes bottom out at
50hz i've been paying a bit more attention to it last couple
weeks


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2023-08-25 01:36 [#02630032]
Points: 25264 Status: Regular



subjectively: i close my eyes and just focus on the
vibrations moving around and within a few seconds i can pick
out things like "it's running down that board along the
wall" and "that moves through the floorboards in a very
interesting..." pattern? cloud? i don't even have words

and just trying to nail it all down a bit


 

offline belb from mmmmmmhhhhzzzz!!! on 2023-08-25 02:57 [#02630033]
Points: 6379 Status: Regular



fun fact u mae kno, elephants communicate with sub-audible
bass frequencies, can travel miles through the ground


 

offline belb from mmmmmmhhhhzzzz!!! on 2023-08-25 03:01 [#02630034]
Points: 6379 Status: Regular



i love bass music with a deep and throbbing passion.
reminiscing about loefah bringing plaster down from the
ceiling at leeds west indian centre


 

offline ijonspeches from 109P/Swift-Tuttle on 2023-08-25 07:37 [#02630035]
Points: 7811 Status: Regular | Followup to belb: #02630033 | Show recordbag



yes, thru their feet also, they say on tv.
its amazing..

i want a sub for my other room,
a tiny one would do, but the only way i can think of to use
in combination with the old stereo would be an active one,
which i would know where to fit in.

we need to talk to a bass mekanik LAZY_TITLE


 

offline ijonspeches from 109P/Swift-Tuttle on 2023-08-25 07:40 [#02630036]
Points: 7811 Status: Regular | Show recordbag



LOOOL


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2023-08-26 03:06 [#02630040]
Points: 25264 Status: Regular | Followup to belb: #02630033



sub-audible bass frequencies, can travel miles through
the ground


this i knew: bass travels better [treble travels terrible].
sound moves better through sold mediums than air. switching
mediums repeatedly (i.e. brick, air, wood, air [room with
room]) is a good way to kill the acoustic energy.

fun fact u mae kno, elephants communicate with
sub-audible bass frequencies


THIS I DID NOT KNOW and it's great. do you have a reference?
[for now, i'll go with the obvious assumption that they
stomp their foot to make a sub-audible bass]

this is actually the most helpful thing so far. providing a
biological / evolutionary explanation: if you know the thuds
a bear makes, you can use that to avoid running into one. so
of course we are hardwired to attempt to make sense of bassy
sounds moving about

the olipfantoot... olipfituut? -- oliphant hoof toot. they
live in wide open flat places without much to stop the bass
from traveling. they're big giant beasts that can stomp
properly. they have large ears [for large wavelengths]. i
wager they always have at least one foot on the ground too.
not big jumpers

it'd make sense they'd have some way of talking with each
other. perhaps even recognize the stomps of particular
oliphants, the way wolves can identify individual howls.

it would delight me to go too far and post for ages about
[the sahara turf is like an IRC server hosting many
different chat channels at once via FDM (each #species
channel uses a different <frequency, timing> and maybe
it's more like CDMA?)]

but let's just go back to my point: i'm listening to the
first portished album, and it's like plaudite omnes!
because the bass is just crawling all around the room like
it's alive. vibert is more like very precise on/off DMX
controlled lighting

and i do fine enough getting more towards the portished end
just by ear. but i would like to understand it more.
particularly for mix

can anyone compare their approaches?


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2023-08-26 03:15 [#02630041]
Points: 25264 Status: Regular



everyone has their bass ritual, where exactly they roll it
off and how, and i would rate myself as "oh, fine enough"
there. like, okay, i think i can avoid killing anything good
i've done on the mastering floor. i'm happy to hear about
that tho

what i'm really interested in, however, is how some songs
will make all the widgets on someone's mantle buzz in
patterns while others don't seem to speak that language at
all

and how does this work? because being more deliberate about
it would be nice

i'm writing on hardware and i literally sit on the floor a
foot from a boxed-in... um, presonus eris sub8, i think. so
i'll sit there and tune the synths, the EQ, the feedback,
over an evening. find a good bit of it by chance and
snowball it through hours of bemused tinkering

but being more deliberate about it would be nice


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2023-08-26 03:21 [#02630042]
Points: 25264 Status: Regular



i looked it up and the eris sub8 bottoms out at 30hz. it
still kills me i had to sell off the adam setup that went
deeper better

so obviously i'm not sitting there glued to a spectrogram
[but i do leave one open sometimes...] and i don't know shit
about the actual frequencies (15hz lol whops)

yet, yet -- i have enough of a handle on it to pick two
stellar examples of [the thing i mean] that are polar
opposites. analog and digital


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2023-08-26 03:23 [#02630043]
Points: 25264 Status: Regular | Followup to ijonspeches: #02630035



ijon


 

offline belb from mmmmmmhhhhzzzz!!! on 2023-08-26 11:26 [#02630049]
Points: 6379 Status: Regular | Followup to EpicMegatrax: #02630040



For African elephants, calls range from 15 to 35 Hz with
sound pressure levels as high as 117 dB, allowing
communication for many kilometres, with a possible maximum
range of around 10 km (6 mi).


doesn't make clear that's through the ground tho. i think i
first heard about it on an attenborough doc


 

offline ijonspeches from 109P/Swift-Tuttle on 2023-08-26 12:05 [#02630050]
Points: 7811 Status: Regular | Show recordbag



its been some time that i heard about
elephants and low frequencies,
might not be fully explained yet.
elephants have very soft feet though.
maybe that led to this theory of picking up low rumble.
at least thats what i think they said back then


 

offline ijonspeches from 109P/Swift-Tuttle on 2023-08-26 12:12 [#02630051]
Points: 7811 Status: Regular | Show recordbag



dont know much about inaudible bass, but,
bass in a room can be weird.
it gathers in corners or walls and sometimes even floods the
whole room.
a bassline melody often makes every note appear at
different places.
puts a whole lot of fun in jungle music imo.
time to start a series of barefoot dancing experiments.
i didnt pick up much afaik but its gonna be fun
nonetheless.



 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2023-08-26 13:31 [#02630052]
Points: 25264 Status: Regular | Followup to ijonspeches: #02630051



you're precisely on it now !

"it gathers in corners or walls and sometimes even floods
the whole room."


this is type A, the Analog Feely-s. for that we want the
first portishead album

portishead - dummy â‹„ glory box, biscuit,
strangers.


⊙ strangers ~ most aggressive
floorboard-grabber on the album, and it hard cuts in and
out. as obvious as i can make it

⊙ biscuit ~ much more woven into the
songwriting; it's part of why this song just cuts right into
you

⊙ glory box ~ best all around track on the
album, so suitably: the bass puts on a good showing, but
it's competing with other elements

a bassline melody often makes every note appear at
different places.


for this we go to Luke Vibert

Classid Trax â‹„ Classid One - Classid Four

i mean, like, right in the opening. "makes every note appear
at different places" -- that's not strong enough for me

so i said, "vibert is more like very precise on/off DMX
controlled lighting" and it's like a very deliberately
programmed light show to match the music.

this is type D, for Digital Precision. since vibert does it
all in reason, he can take the time to sort it all out like
pixar sorts HDR out. then save some EQ presets and use them
forever

...but use particular ones at particular times. wouldn't
surprise me if says to himself, "well i'm in D-phyrgian for
this track so this note here should end at [precise
frequency that is not 1 single Hz off]

where as portishead is something something adrian utley's
mixing science, kind mixing desks, tape, alchemy, etc


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2023-08-26 13:36 [#02630053]
Points: 25264 Status: Regular | Followup to belb: #02630049



For African elephants, calls range from 15 to 35 Hz
with sound pressure levels as high as 117 dB, allowing
communication for many kilometres, with a possible maximum
range of around 10 km (6 mi).


doesn't make clear that's through the ground tho. i think i
first heard about it on an attenborough doc


if it's a "call" they're tooting their trunk, not stomping.
i suppose they have one of the big organ pipes for that
too(t)

then we're down around 15 to 35hz because birds can't go
that low and they use up all the bandwidth above, i dunno,
60 or 80hz up into ultrasound. the little shits


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2023-08-26 14:40 [#02630055]
Points: 25264 Status: Regular



it's also kind of hard to describe the unorthodox nightmare
my setup would probably seem to someone: "i can't here it
over here, and it sounds like crap over over there!"

then i'd be like "sit here and play with the mixer" and the
response "ohhh. huh. kind of a sweet spot" and then next,
"go sit in the $5 chair from savers" to which it'd be "oh it
works here in a better for listening way"

and after spending a few weeks in the room i can just see
the path the sounds are taking like donnie darko trails, and
that's clear enough that it annoys the shit out of me until
i get creative with geometry and furniture. the budget
allowed isolation pads for the sub and monitors, i direly
need one (1) of those corner sticky things because the bass
gets stuck there

so the sub is isolated. boxed in. i've left a little slit
open, i've cut all the bass from the monitors, and you sit
in the spot where you can reach all the gear at once and it
all balances out

if you're gunning for Bob Katz Master of Mix shit, it'll be
terrible for that. a particular frequency or two will still
be all over and you can't use this to do really great
mastering

if i weren't renting and i had a spare $30k it is actually
FUCKING IDEAL for a proper room within a room

i'll settle for having my spaceship cockpit of bass that
doesn't need to get so loud the neighbors care at 3am

in any case. i am deeply impressed by both dummy and classid
trax. and remember how snares said he loves listening to 4/4
music, he simply has trouble getting himself to write it? i
love classid trax, but i can't see myself building a
frequency empire like that


 


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