Thanks @MikeC it was a joke, lol. She won almost every Grammy on her first album almost even won the best male vocal, lol.
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Just saw this, I’ll give it a listen in a bit!
edit:
Ok. I heard what @terb means there. You notice how the body of the sound is full, rich and loud there, but the “edges” of the notes sound really muted in comparison? It sounds like you’re getting a whole lot of makeup gain there and compressing the peaks of the notes, the transients from the plucking.
This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, and I liked the effect there. I think it actually works well with this style. There’s other things that can cause this effect as well - transient shaping (which I doubt you are doing), potentially a lot of EQ rolling off the highs, etc. You might even be able to accentuate this with soft plucking.
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it’s not that, in my opinion. more a heavy compression on the peaks. but I may be wrong. but … not sure 
yeah, that.
That’s interesting. Actually I did not like that but, yeah, if it’s a choice, it’s totally fine to me 
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Yeah, agree, that’s what it sounds like to me too. Add in the overall warmth of the tone and the fact that he’s using classic compressors known for their warm tubey character too.
I actually think it fits well with this song but it stood out to me too.
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Actually, yes, it sounds very warm (in a “very compressed” way).
Well again if it’s a choice it’s fine. Still a very interesting analysis, I’m glad to have your opinion there @howard . Thank you. In my opinion it’s where we can speak about “too much” production, or too much a good sound. Whatever it means Still just my opinion.
I must precise that I’m really searching for the little details there. Hopefully helping to make better music. The cover is still a great one. I take this one as a scolar study, somewhat.
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Absolutely. This can happen very easily. A great example is that as bass players we naturally obsess over low end tone, when in reality it is usually terrible for a mix and the best way to avoid mud and preserve the kick is usually to selectively EQ or filter off the bass track below about 40-50Hz. This would drive most bass tone fanatics crazy but it’s simply true, it dramatically improves the mix.
But it totally defeats any obsessive EQ setting on the part of the bass player 
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Yeah, sure. What you say is exactly why I mix “for the song” rather than “for the bass”. I always try to do an album-ready mix. It’s bass heavy sometimes, but when it is, it’s on purpose
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Alright let’s keep the resolution of posting the covers.
I’ll follow Mr New York with another song played in New York unless the Beacon Theater is not in New York I didn’t googled.
You’ve go a friend live at the Beacon Theater by James Taylor
MusicMan 35th Anniversary’s StingRay
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It is indeed. Been there many times.
Really really great tone on this one.
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Not this (see below).
I was actually trying through the bass preamp and bridge pickup and EQ to accentuate certain highs/high mids.
OK, here is the ‘big reveal’.
Remember, I barely have any idea what I am doing but when I get to a tone I like I stop.
This one took a lot longer than usual because:
- I am not slapping or popping and trying to emulate it
- The ‘popped’ notes are plucked super agressively to, well, basically pop the string anyway. This causes them to be very loud compared to some of the other notes
- This bass has some pretty low frets (relatively speaking), not worn, just the style, so if I played as agressively on the lower notes, there was a lot of buzz. Since this tune is detuned 1/2 step, this was even more pronounced, I even had to raise the action of the E just a hair to compensate a bit.
In the Waves CLA-76, there is a default under “Blackey” for bass, which I don’t use often, because, well, I just don’t dig the tone with it but it does work for well for picked things (used it on Long and Winding Road). It seemed to work here with some input tweaking to get the balance of volume and overall feel of what I was looking for, and to not make the lower bass notes be too quiet.
As I said earlier, to ‘fatten’ the tone, I double tracked the recording.
Track 5 is the first one, and here are the settings I ended up with:
Track 6 is the second bass track, and I ended up turning off the EQ on that one. Compressors are set a bit different, for no other reason than I probably screwed up and thought I was adjusting Track 5 
In a normal situation, I look to get around a -3 to -4ish max peak reduction on both meters, splitting the load.
In this situation, They were both pulling down closer to -5 (or even -7) on the really loud notes.
Here is an example of a more ‘normal’ compressor setup I use from “On a Clear Day”, which starts as what the plugins call ‘Start Me Up’ and then I tweak input and output usually.
If I am undertanding how compressors work, I don’t think the attack and relase have as much to do as the input/output, or amount of compression/amount of regain. But I could be wrong.
@JoshFossgreen - is there a way to break off this convo into a new topic titled "Mixing Deep Dive & questions or something? As I would really think it would be useful to start that etc. Might be cool to get some advice from experts on how to mix/compress better etc.
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you’re right : those settings are more about the timing and progression of the compression
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And it shows! This is fantastic - I sat here applauding in my apartment when the video ended. 
If Geddy Lee can play Roundabout without a pick, you can play About Damn Time without slapping, I think. That’s a fair comparison, yes?
LOLOLOOOOOOooooolol. Oooh, it’s dusty here down on the floor.
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Thank you @John_E it could be a placebo effect but it sounds tighter than my EBMM Sterling 5H and Sterling Ray35s.
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