Recording Bass in higher tuning then melodyne it down!

[crillemannen]

Hi,

Any done that with good results? Shouldn't be a problem recording say in drop D then tune down to Bb-A with melodyne? Just hate the dull sound of those thick bass-strings. Most basses (all of them really) can't handle those lowtuned keys anyways so melodyne is a life-saver just keeping the bass in tune.

Can't wait to try it myself but i don't have any recording to do in the near future in low-keys but just thought about it and thought it sounded like a great idea


Thoughts?

 

[JeffTD]

Changing tuning that drastically can/will fuck up your timbre. Do a quick test with a DI you know is in E or D and drop it 4-6 semitones and you'll hear the tone change completely.

 

[ApeScaleConflict]

Haha, i know that beatles used somekinda time/pitch manipulation tricks back in the days and they did it because they liked how it affected the sound, but i think it was mainly with vocals gtrs and piano stuff etc. I personally wouldn't go for it in modern recording, but we all have our specialities...

 

[EOC]

i downtuned a bass with kempers pitch shifter, but it was just a major second. It worked pretty good ,though is not the same sound as if recorded naturally

 

[Pxz]

This worked awesome for live gigs . From E to C# and C# to A i couldn't really tell a major difference in tone. Anything more than that seems to add some weirds artifacts and other stuff. The new Whammy does the same thing with the drop tune feature.

 

[SethTheGreat]

This is guitars in drop C, Kemper pitch shifted to A, bass in drop D, Kemper pitch shifted to A.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/467382/nothing.mp3

 

[jENK]

As good as Melodyne is, it just doesn't work well doing this. Too many artifacts and you can hear the tone suffer as a result. Good idea though.

 

[born_dead]

in my opinion better use a sampled bass.

 

[Gujukal]

Bass could work if go down max 4 semitones but i would never pith shift guitars, only 1 semitone but thats an exception.

 

[guitarfishbay]

Have you tried a longer scale bass? I used to own a 35" scale 5 string and it was the only time I've been happy with the tone of a low B. At the moment I have a 34" 4 string tuned to the drop B and it isn't as snappy. Similar to regular scale vs extended scale guitars - at longer scale lengths you can use thinner strings, but you'll still need quite a thick string for Bb anyway.

 

[crillemannen]

Ok cool. Yeah the idea was to probably only go as low as pitching the bass 2 semitones. All other than that would be pushing it. But gonna try it on a session in thecfuture. Thanks for the answers!

I did buy a bass just recently but that is a fender american jazz standard. Quite short scale neck so probably only good down to drop C. Sampled bass is ok but i prefer real bass. Im not a fan of chango-sturgis copypaste core edit to hell!

 

[guy in latvia]

Oddly to my experience tuning up sounds better than tuning down in melodyne, sounds a lot more natural.

 

[FIXXXER]

a bit OT but maybe this will work better...

 

[LeSedna]

In my humble experience melodyne does fine results on bass although you cannot avoid loosing quality in the process even if you don't push it too much, it would still sound way better than using samples. What about a compromise, like tuned to C or C sharp ?

 

[Nuno Filipe]

This worked awesome for live gigs www.youtube.com/watch?v=DcDvSq1pFjA. From E to C# and C# to A i couldn't really tell a major difference in tone. Anything more than that seems to add some weirds artifacts and other stuff. The new Whammy does the same thing with the drop tune feature.

I bought one, some time ago, to use it in home. Worst mistake ever, not because wasnt good. But at home, usually I play at a low volume and the thing is, once you are playing, you are hearing the actual tuning coming from your guitar and the low tuning from the amp. The dissonance that you will hear between the 2, it's completely annoying, very frustrating and impossible to keep playing or enjoy something.

I played a few hours, sold it right away.

Anyway, I know that no one was talking about playing it in home. It´s just some advice from someone who did the mistake, of buying one to play at home.

For live situations or recording, I cant tell, because he didnt live enough with me to tell!ahah

 

[bryan_kilco]

I bought one, some time ago, to use it in home. Worst mistake ever, not because wasnt good. But at home, usually I play at a low volume and the thing is, once you are playing, you are hearing the actual tuning coming from your guitar and the low tuning from the amp. The dissonance that you will hear between the 2, it's completely annoying, very frustrating and impossible to keep playing or enjoy something.

I played a few hours, sold it right away.

Anyway, I know that no one was talking about playing it in home. It´s just some advice from someone who did the mistake, of buying one to play at home.

For live situations or recording, I cant tell, because he didnt live enough with me to tell!ahah

Why u no headphone?!?

 

[Nuno Filipe]

Why u no headphone?!?

I tried but I dont like to play with headphones.

 

[ConnorGilks]

We tried pitching down a few bass notes for my band's new EP. There are a couple parts where we need a 6 string bass but didn't have the time or money before recording, so we tuned to G and pitched it down to Eb (I don't recall which program we used for it, but I'm guessing it was Autotune since we used that for the rest of the bass tuning we did) and at first it wasn't great, but once we slapped on the amp tone and distorted it properly it was actually really tight, didn't notice a difference either. Unless you knew that's what we did, you wouldn't notice. And even then you'd probably need to hear the bass solo'd to hear.