Want a GREAT bass TONE? 5 *PRO* Tips

so what happened okay I'm on stage with the band feeling Invincible giant sound right that sounded so good in the bedroom bright active bass Piezo Bridge yes just cutting through everything yeah and then I heard a board tape of it back and I sounded like listen a really great bass tone can actually be a little trickier than you might think so in this video we are going to be giving you five top tips to super power your base tone if you are brand new to SBR I really recommend that you go and grab our free base toolkit I will put the URL on this screen for you to go and get it or you can just click the link in the description below now what is tip number one Ian it's understanding that great bass tone is totally subjective it's about references it's about your taste I have a jazz base here with fresh round wound strings I was using both pickups and I'm playing this flea Baseline [Music] okay and I've got this Fender P Bass with Flats on and if I play that foreign [Music] like it kind of sounds cool but in your mind if you were thinking oh this is the base Tone If you're thinking that's the bass down I'm hearing in my head and you hear this you'll be like oh and I can actually remember doing that it is really subjective now the other example you gave right was and it was really hard for me to just do that with this sound and not try to amend my pickups and my hands to do this but if I just play this wide open [Music] too hard now like there could be a treatment of that tune that's Ain't No Mountain High Enough right there could be a treatment of that classic Jamerson bass line with a Punchy sound like that but that's not the vibe of the original certainly whereas if you played it on this base [Music] [Laughter] it's perfect isn't it yes it really is a punk rock thing with a pick right so you always think P Bass with a pick but here's a Jazz Bass neck pickup round one strings you get this foreign [Music] by the way just so different and I don't think this is bad but it's not the vibe it's not the vibe right how about Bruno Mars right this thing [Music] versus this that's the vibe [Music] right oh so hip your hands can have a huge effect over the tone it gives a different a few different examples of you know how your hands might affect the tone I mean here just with a pick right if I'm digging in close to the neck such a different sound than a palm muted sound then the classic Carol k right yeah so what Ian's doing there play that again yeah so he's muting with his right hand here and he's playing with a pick obviously so there's two specific things you're doing to alter that tone if you want to get that that mute there I always call it the karate chop you go and then you just kind of like rotate your arm hand round and then play with that picture what else what else let's talk about like deadly Leaf yes if we get rid of the pick right his sound is really about his right hand so right I would probably play but Getty is playing [Music] completely different tone same bass same EQ same everything right sounds completely different and imagine if I went back here and played that you know like Jocko foreign [Music] versus in front really hitting the base and I almost never play that way but when you're trying to emulate certain players or certain sounds it's undeniably a sound versus yeah so different yeah 100 for me there's three places yes predominantly right one is over the bridge pickup yep you know next is over the neck pickup right which is just it's got a bit more rounder sound and then over the over the neck as well yeah oh I actually love that oh it sounds awesome yeah let's jump onto tip number three and it's all about these things okay so here I've got the P race back again and you can hear oh you can see that it's got It's got flat wounds on it and Ian's got a p bass and that has got tape ions on it both of these strings are going to give you more of an old school tone and sound [Music] yeah similar kind of vibe these are kind of a bit brighter I guess yeah you know and this was a huge surprise to me when I bought a set of black nylon tapes I thought they were going to be the darkest thuddiest sounding string but they're almost more like a nylon string acoustic guitar sound there's a really nice top end to them [Music] they're really lovely sounding strings but they're not quite as like fuddy as a broken in flat Mount I have taught a bunch of students that have like really been like down on their tone and they're like oh I don't like my toe and stuff like that and I'm like hey give me your bass I play and I'm like dude when's the last time you changed your strength sure and they're like um six months ago it really really makes a difference so we're gonna a b these so you can hear the difference between dead rounds and newish around are they newish yeah they're newish yeah yeah if you play something sure I'll play it back I'll try and play it back [Music] foreign [Music] so this is where you're going to hear a real difference with the strings here was he [Music] can you hear what body that's got it's just got like it's like the low end it's the and that's what kind of goes when your strings are old like this the low end goes and the high end goes it just goes it's so true that's right it sort of compresses into the middle yeah yeah there are certain things if you've got an active bass like this there are certain things that you can do to kind of Rectify it so for instance I can boost the bass a bit yeah and this sounds like it has more bottom than this now this to me sounds a little nasally should I get the and I haven't put the treble on either so let me put a bit of treble on there as well let me yes let's jump into actually the pickups if you've got a base like this for instance right which is a p bass well it's only got one pickup so you can't select different pickups uh you can roll off the tone you know various degrees of that but that's really it and I I and that's not a bad thing I love it it is like the ultimate Workhorse for me I think they're freaking awesome bases and they do what they do really well but they're not super versatile okay whereas something like what Ian's playing here which is jazz bass is different you've got two different pickups there is a pickup under that garbage there and you've got to pick up here and you've got a volume a volume a volume for each pickup and you've also got a tone so you can play the neck pickup on its own yep which is going to give you a different tone you can pay the bridge pickup on its own which is going to give you a different tone and you can roll the tone off on as well as you're playing it and you can also play it which is how I'll start with both pickups on four both pickups right and that's a completely different sound as well so should I do the the Paul Turner yeah yeah Paul Turner impression here Chase ball cheers so that's both pickups wide open now let's just hear what that sounds like with the neck pickup on oh [Music] now I could start rolling off the tone as well to see what that does let's check it out oh it's a bit [Music] okay all the way back on for everything so now we're just going to go to bridge pickup soloed here we go Bridge pickup tight now we can't forget EQ we need to talk about EQ right when I bought my first guitar it was like I got an amp and it had like bass middle and treble and I no freaking clue what any of the men or what to do right what I didn't know what to do I just wanted somebody to come along they were like you know what there's a few different things you can do but here's a great starting point that's and that's what we're going to give you right when I plug into any bass amp I've got always got like a standard that I go to a kind of sort of like a home base have you oh for sure yeah what's yours mine is all knobs at noon yeah yeah yeah and then maybe there's like a comfort bump of bass yeah so I've normally got everything at 12 o'clock okay so base middle treble at 12 o'clock I boost the bass a little bit to like one or two o'clock for that Comfort boost and then me specifically I sometimes dial back that treble Just a Touch like just a touch and I very rarely do anything other than that it's normally just that like you know maybe I'll play a gig and it's like a booby stage and I might turn down the bass a little bit I might you know bring up the treble a tiny bit but in general it's like pretty much all at 12 o'clock and if you're wondering if other bass players are like you know doing that as well or the pros like 99.9 of produce do exactly the same thing there's so many people have you know had that conversation with them like yeah they're just you know all 12 o'clock just leave it that's it okay now before we go any further just wanted to give you a quick shout and remind you of that free base toolkit that you can download and get for free I'll put the URL on the screen here there's lessons about how to understand the modes if you you know if bass Theory kind of like on music theory confuses you it's going to really fix you up there we also talk about more tone stuff we talk about what to look out for when you're buying a base as well you know there's a bunch of suit cool stuff I'll put the link in the description go grab that and then with that said thanks so much for watching today I've been Scott Divine this has been Ian Martin Allison and we will see you next time take it easy [Music] I didn't even say that these are not the droids oh cool so cool did you know that Venus is the only of all the planets in our solar system the only planet that spins clockwise okay but which way does the earth spin though anti-clockwise yeah doing

Channel: Scott's Bass Lessons

Views: 105,983

Keywords: scott devine, bass lessons, bass guitar, beginner, beginners, scottsbasslessons, scotts bass lessons, sbl, electric bass, bass lesson, beginner bass lesson, beginner bass lessons, bass tone tips, bass tone, bass lessons for beginners, bass tone tutorial, bass guitar lessons, how to play bass, better bass tone, bass sound, bass guitar tone, bass guitar lesson, bass guitar technique, online bass lessons, bass tone comparison, bass tone sound effect, bass tone settings

Id: 5bJgKjH0W-E

Length: 12min 52sec (772 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 29 2023