Let's make me a good bassist... tips?

Cool. Already testing stuff with different tracks. Just gotta dive into the mechanics of the program a bit, but seems more simple than I remembered. Soon I'll be composing if stuff works. :D On paper it's harder cos you can't feel the timings etc.
 
You can always go back if you don't save it. Ctrl + Z is IIRC the default shortcut or going back (It's certainly what I have, I just can't remember whether or not it's like that by default). Ctrl + X is for going back forward.
 
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Got my first proper song ready, it's black metal and I'm pretty proud of it. Took me 8 hours straight. Duration 3:30, it's got basically three sections I'm playing with. There's even orchestral hits and some choir. Just one riff progression I might try to improve.
 
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Got my first proper song ready, it's black metal and I'm pretty proud of it. Took me 8 hours straight. Duration 3:30, it's got basically three sections I'm playing with. There's even orchestral hits and some choir. Just one riff progression I might try to improve.
Upload it to some where :)
 
I'd like to hear the song too. Ionce made a song based on your vision of a perfect song, but to hear one made by the visionist himself? Would be nice :D I'm not surprised at all that you have orchestra hits in it either. I used to put them all over the place in all my songs because I knew you'd approve if you ever heard them, but I've kinda grown out of it. :D
 
I've finished another song. Really learned a lot. Nice flow with all instruments and song sections. The bass was easy to lay out last as I knew exactly what to do with it. The style is pretty much mixing black and doom and melodic death, in C# harmonic minor. I'll be discovering my musical style in time I guess. Maybe I should try make individually a song for each genre. Now I've been making what comes naturally. I have to learn more about making interesting guitar over fast blastbeats. And also how to keep guitar sounding cold while having it sound powerful. Usually powerful riffs become warm.
 
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Tuning to C# or D?

I'm trying to decide. I think I'm gonna make stuff with guitar in one of these tunings. With D it's somehow more clear since the open notes would not contain # or b and the key notes in D harmonic minor scale contain only one sharp, A# (yep I got used to seeing sharps instead of flats.)

Then there's the choice of intonation, a heavier lower flavor or a sharper more sinister flavor?

Suggestions?

Well, it seems I can transpose tracks easily on tux guitar, so gonna try both... but I'm gonna keep my current bass in BEAD however since it's set up that way with the thick strings and all, let's see if I can transpose those notes on tux without changing tuning...

Still, it's much more about nature of your writing and the tone of your sound and playing, than simple tuning, that determines how evil songs sound like... I just learned Dimmu use standard E tuning... BUT, in my mind musical ideas are sometimes tied to a very specific pitch, so moving it all a notch left or right can change the nature of the whole thing??? Associated with that is of course the problem with having to have accidental notes sometimes, outside the chosen scale... I'm not sure how limiting a scale should be.
 
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Tuning to C# or D?

I'm trying to decide. I think I'm gonna make stuff with guitar in one of these tunings. With D it's somehow more clear since the open notes would not contain # or b and the key notes in D harmonic minor scale contain only one sharp, A# (yep I got used to seeing sharps instead of flats.)

Then there's the choice of intonation, a heavier lower flavor or a sharper more sinister flavor?

Suggestions?

Well, it seems I can transpose tracks easily on tux guitar, so gonna try both... but I'm gonna keep my current bass in BEAD however since it's set up that way with the thick strings and all, let's see if I can transpose those notes on tux without changing tuning...

Still, it's much more about nature of your writing and the tone of your sound and playing, than simple tuning, that determines how evil songs sound like... I just learned Dimmu use standard E tuning... BUT, in my mind musical ideas are sometimes tied to a very specific pitch, so moving it all a notch left or right can change the nature of the whole thing??? Associated with that is of course the problem with having to have accidental notes sometimes, outside the chosen scale... I'm not sure how limiting a scale should be.

Mors Principium Est use E standard also. IMO tuning doesn't really matter. A low tuning gives a heavier and muddier tone, so if you want to play djent you probably want to tune down quite a bit, but otherwise it's quite irrelevant. I'm also used to using # instead of b when naming the black keys of a piano.

For intonation always just try to get it to be as accurate as possible. Having the intonation be off will make the entire string sound out of tune. Most people won't notice it, but those who do will hate you for being lazy while tuning.

Seeing as your bass is in BEAD it would be best if you had your guitars in B standard. If it were a 5 string bass E standard would be perfectly valid too. Having a different tuning on the guitar and bass will make some stuff impossible to play on one or the other. For example, try playing Master of Puppets in D# which is where they play it live nowadays I believe (Original is in E standard). It's absolutely impossible unless you are tuned to D# standard.

Personally, with modern instruments, I see it as superstition to claim that a melody played in E sounds different than the same melody played in D :D The pitch is different yeah, but the mood of the melody remains the same with modern instruments and their equal temperament intonation (Every pitch is exactly the same distance from each other). The idea that a melody's mood is different in different keys is from somewhere around 1600-1800 when pianos were intonated according to the true temperament system. A piano intonated with a true temperament system for the key of C would sound absolutely "pure" (Little to no dissonance at all in chords) when playing from C major, but would sound slightly out of tune (VERY slightly. 99+ percent of people wouldn't be able to hear it) when playing stuff in, say, E major, because the intonation would have been optimized for C major, not E major. Nowadays instruments are intonated according to the equal temperament system where it's equally good for all keys. A modern piano won't sound as good for C major as one from 1700 would've, but it'll sound far better for all other keys than the one from 1700.

I personally was VERY much a slave to scales for the first years of composing. I've since begun to get over my obsession with always remaining withing a scale (Switching scales in a song was fine), but I'd say that it's good to remain within a single scale with a single melody most of the time. Chromatic stuff is far harder to make sound good than modal stuff. Sometimes it might work to have a note outside of whatever scale you're using, but it should always be because it sounds better that way, not because "I wanted to experiment and be cool", which is how I did it a first (And then realized it was stupid and proceeded to always remain within a scale for the next 5 years).

If you want to practice having multiple scales in a single melody, this video is a good place to start. It's also good for a quick start in creating certain atmospheres into your songs. Anyway, there's the example of "Fantastical" which in E would go E major to C major and back. You could try starting the melody in E major and then go into E major with a b6 for the C major chord. It'll most likely sound pretty good yet be outside of scale (The entire chord is out of the E major scale).


Another example is adding F to E minor. Metallica does this a LOT. Half of Enter Sandman is based on that added F note for example. A# is also something that you can add to E minor and make it sound a bit more evil.
 
I've been thinking thru this... and my sense says it's no problem as long as the bass tuning starts lower than guitar. Because when playing a succession of notes on guitar going downwards in pitch, I can't run out of lower notes on bass and jump to a higher octave of the next note, IYKWIM? Or you mean it makes the composion work more painful on the eyes if the fretboards aren't symmetrical?

Well, I tuned and set up my bass to B because of Type O Negative, and the fact it's like the lowest four of the 5-string bass. But now I'm thinking should I tune up my bass to match the desired guitar tuning...
 
I've been thinking thru this... and my sense says it's no problem as long as the bass tuning starts lower than guitar. Because when playing a succession of notes on guitar going downwards in pitch, I can't run out of lower notes on bass and jump to a higher octave of the next note, IYKWIM? Or you mean it makes the composion work more painful on the eyes if the fretboards aren't symmetrical?

Well, I tuned and set up my bass to B because of Type O Negative, and the fact it's like the lowest four of the 5-string bass. But now I'm thinking should I tune up my bass to match the desired guitar tuning...
It's easier reading the notes when the tunings are the same, but what I mean is that if you have a song that goes in, say, D tuning, and has tabs like this...

--7----7----7----7--
0---0----0----0----

...then playing that in any tuning but D is going to be really hard. In B tuning, to match the notes that the guitar plays in D, you would have to play this...

--10---10---10---10--
3----3----3----3----

...on the bass and I think you see where the problem is with that. No one has a hand big enough to be able to stretch from the 3rd fret to the 10th fret on a bass.
 
Or more simply put, certain riffs are impossible to play without the use of open strings (Shovel Knockout verse for example), and if your guitar and bass have different tunings and thus different notes on the open strings, you'll run into some serious problems. The verse to SK is really hard to play even in the right tuning but with a different tuning it becomes absolutely impossible.
 
I would play that

--5---5---5
-------------
3---3---3--

:D But I get what you mean.

If I have to choose guitar tuning between D and C#... I think it's gonna be D just because in D minor or harmonic minor there's less sharps... easier to think... Anything else I'm missing?I really don't want guitar in B... depends what kinda music I wanna do of course, but B is quite muddy...

My bass is set to B, not sure if my massive strings would sound good if I tuned them up to D now... and can't undo the filing of the nut... They already sound 'glassy' a bit, I think they could be slightly narrower gauge... Then of course I would not be able to access the lowest C#, C and B, which would be kinda devastating...

It's a hard decision.
 
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For the example, yeah, that's how you should play it but for some stuff, such as the SK verse, doing that is pretty much impossible.

As for tuning, you might go for A standard on the bass and pretend it's a 5 string bass without the 1st string. You'd have the same open string, access to the low notes, and you wouldn't need to tune up at all.
 
I may have to figure the style of my music first and then decide what tunings to use, because the vocals matter when it comes to tuning, and I can't decide what vocals would go with the music before I decide the vocals... My current bass strings seem natural only with B tuning... with A they got too bendy, and with C# it sounds so glassy.
 
Tempo VS note lengths...

I need to understand when I'm doing a blastbeat for a song and I want a certain speed for it, should I increase the tempo of the bars or increase the note number within the bars (shorter notes)? I mean if I use 4/4 time signature (don't even understand the others really yet), it means 4 beats or one full note per bar... how do I even approach this? Like if I want a really fast blastbeat, do I set tempo up to 400 bpm and use quarter notes, or do I set tempo to 120 bpm and use 32th notes?? With drums it doesn't matter but with guitars etc it does?

It's hard to format this question to google.
 
Tempo VS note lengths...

I need to understand when I'm doing a blastbeat for a song and I want a certain speed for it, should I increase the tempo of the bars or increase the note number within the bars (shorter notes)? I mean if I use 4/4 time signature (don't even understand the others really yet), it means 4 beats or one full note per bar... how do I even approach this? Like if I want a really fast blastbeat, do I set tempo up to 400 bpm and use quarter notes, or do I set tempo to 120 bpm and use 32th notes?? With drums it doesn't matter but with guitars etc it does?

It's hard to format this question to google.

120bpm, shouldn’t have to put it to something crazy like 400
 
Yeah cos I was using 120 bpm and having 32th notes set for drums and everything seemed alright with guitars too...

But how do you tell the tempo of a song by hearing it, when you don't know if they're using rapid notes or swift tempo...? What makes the difference?