To understand tones and effects… I’ve spent hours and hours looking at Youtube videos… literally trying to understand the tones and the sounds. I am not good at it… but it did improve my skill a bit. Also helped in growing tired of certain more twang sounds that are prevalent in newer metal bands.
I’ve also done a talking bass course that helped me a bit with his Bassic Fundamentals course.
I am now trying to learn on how to improve fretless tone, closer to Alain Caron… but not there… not even close. Trying to understand why without getting frustrated… and fiddling with effects takes a toll.
Reading, watching youtube videos about which effects do what, buying some pedals and tinkering is mostly how I learned about them. As far as youtube, a good place to start would be looking up how do I get “this” (whatever sound you’re looking for) sound for bass. There’s most likely a video out there for it, and they’ll show you what settings to use on whatever pedal.
From there, you kind of learn what different effects sound like and you start to hear them in different songs. A good article explaining different effects and explanations of how to organize them that I keep bookmarked is:
One other thought here, take all the advice in and play around. Do the things people tell you not to or that will sound horrible. Sometimes you find some cool sounds, sometimes it sounds like shit and you learn why people say not to arrange things certain ways.
Personally, I tend to start with the basics…. Always start with the onboard and amp tuners first since that step cost’s absolutely nothing.
Once I find an adjustment that works best, I go for strings…. I’ve found that I can get the most tonal bang for the buck by just using the right strings…. Flats, rounds, tapewounds, nylons, etc all have different tonal qualities. Since I don’t use pedals, I do have a few different bass’s strung with different strings which helps a lot…. Only thing is that there have been times where I’ve had to lug around 3 or 4 different bass’s to jams or gigs…
As for pedals,…. I look at them as more of an effects tool more than a tonal thing however I do use a compressor, and rely mostly on my plucking style and fretboard fingering in order to refine the tones I’m focused on…
I would start with YouTube University. How do they play the song? Are there any interviews? It’s how I know Ale of the Warning only has an Aquilar Tone Hammer as her single pedal. What do they use for a rig? What is there technique? There’s a harmonic that Eugene of Jinjer makes that is all technique and doesn’t use an effect, and I don’t know how he does it. But I know from watching.
For me it was a lot of experimentation, in the past with effects in synths, more recently with a Zoom multieffects box for bass, then pedals for about a year, and then later moving to all software int he DAW for both bass and synths.
Of all of these, actual pedals were the least convenient and easy to learn with, and frankly didn’t sound the best, either.
Disclaimer: I don’t know what I’m doing.
That being said, after choosing a song to play, I play a few bars of the song with each of the basses I have, and then I choose the bass that I think will give me the closest tone I’m striving for. Then I start turning knobs and making patches for my Zoom B1 Four plugged into the Ampeg V3 or Rumble 100.
That’s basically my method.
If you like structured learning I would recommend looking at a few music production courses (either paid of free) and finding the effects module…they will usually have good effects modules (nice explanations and sound examples) as this is the bread and butter of production
If you like learning by doing buying an entry level multi fx box and going through the effects is a great way to experiment with fx (before buying anything major $)
Articles, interviews, equipboard or the blogs/youtube (and maybe live footage for basic stuff like what kind of bass, are they fingerstyle or pick)
Or alternatively, grab something like the Kilohearts Essentials free plugin bundle and do it all in the DAW for free. Just select a region of a bass track and loop it, and play with the effects while it loops. This is probably the cheapest and most convenient way to learn (plus sounds great as those plugins are excellent).
Careful though or you’ll get addicted to my workflow too
MeldaProduction also has a great free plugin bundle.
In general, I usually need to find 3 tones from each bass. One at idle, every knob in the center. Then the 2 extreme all the way off or all the way up. That should give me a good point of reference to start my tone chase.
That said, it’s been a few years now that I’ve been playing almost 100% neutral on all my basses, not only I know intimately what each of my bass sounds like but trying to tone match to a song is much much easier to me because I could detect what’s lacking on my tone and just add.
I just don’t have enough data on how my (each) bass would sound “in the mix” I swear that my MusicMan Sabre bass is so dated and would not sound good, but to my surprised it sounds so good in most genres. My Tobias Renegade has such satisfying tone a la carte, but it has the opposite effect in the mix as it just got drown.
I know most of you hate their guts, but this is very educational, and even though it is centered around the HX stomp, it can be done with other multi-effect boards or individual pedals etc.
In the video, Ian Martin Allison is trying to re-create ten iconic rock bass sounds (yes, OK, let’s just ignore the marketing lingo here) under pressure and he does a great job. More importantly, though, it gives insight into what effects and amp sims could be used (the importance of EQ alone) and how they’d influence the tone (especially in combination with bass model, pickups, strings, plucking technique, …).
Great topic, I don’t feel that I’m far enough in my journey to start worrying too much about my sound, I’m still very far from where I want to be from a technical point, so all my effort goes into that. That also severely reduced my GAS.
I discovered I prefer a more old school warm sound and my Orange cab is delivering that. Most positions are at 12, depending on the song, I dial it in on my bass.
I also have a cheap fuzz pedal for stoner, and my zoom b14. I’m very sonically limited.
