If you're a beginner,
you might not even know
that your bass tone totally sucks.
["Sunshine Of Your Ouch"]
I'm Josh with BassBuzz.
I'm gonna give you 6
foolproof bass tone fixes,
so by the end of this video,
you sound like a real bass player.
Let's rock.
[BassBuzz Theme]
So what is tone?
Tone is how your bass sounds and feels,
and the same notes can
sound really different
depending on the tone.
So here's the same bass
line over and over again,
with a bunch of different tones,
so you can hear what I'm talking about.
Good tone comes from a mix of your gear
and your hands technique,
so let's get started at the beginning,
with fix number
zero?
Okay, this isn't exactly a tone fix,
but your bass definitely won't sound good
if you don't do it.
Here's two recordings
of the same bass line.
You tell me which one sounds worse.
[Josh fake crying, come on Oscar nom...]
All right, which one sounded worse?
It was the second one, right?
That's because my bass
was really out of tune.
And a lot of beginners don't
tune their basses often enough.
I recommend you tune your bass every day.
At least until you get an ear for
whether your bass is in tune or not.
And if you need help getting in tune,
you can head over to BassBuzz.com
and check out my free Bass Basics series,
where I'll take you through that.
Our first real bass tone
fix is to pluck properly.
This is the most
important of all the fixes
I'm gonna talk about.
Which is why I talk about
it in so many lessons.
To get consistently good sounding plucks,
you need to pull across, and not up.
So listen to the difference,
I'm just gonna pluck an open A string.
Here's if I'm pulling up
and away from the bass.
And here's if I pull across
towards the E string.
Let me show you that at another angle,
so here's up and away.
And here's across.
It sounds better, right?
It's fuller and it's rounder.
Okay, now you do that with me.
Make sure you got this.
So open A string, plucking,
let's try pulling up and
away from the bass first,
like a naughty beginner who
hasn't been told what to do.
Okay, hear how that sounds?
Now start pulling it across,
so your fingers actually
run into the E string
after every
single
pluck.
Sounds different, right?
It sounds a lot fuller and rounder,
and like you really
know what you're doing.
We're about to move on to
fix number two, but first,
you should click subscribe
and then click the bell,
so that you actually get notified
when new lessons come out.
Okay, ready?
Ready?
Did you do it?
Did you do it?
Okay.
Listening time again.
Here's two versions of the same bass line,
you tell me which one sounds worse.
So which one sounded worse?
It was the second one again, right?
And that's because, my fingernail
was grabbing the string
on some of my plucks.
So fix number two is to cut your nails.
The hardness of your nails
makes a harsher plucking sound,
that's not good for a lot of styles.
And it can make your sound inconsistent,
if your nails are grabbing
the string some of the time,
but not all of the time,
like in the second example.
And if you let them grow out too far,
it'll be hard to play bass at all.
[metal scraping]
[bad bass music]
Our third tone fix is
to learn string basics.
There are like a million
different brands of strings,
but they're only two things
you need to worry about
for most bass playing.
First, is whether you want
flatwound or roundwound strings.
Flatwounds get their
name from the flat wire
that the string is wrapped with,
this makes them smoother on your fingers
and gives them a darker
more vintage-y sound.
Roundwounds are wound with round wire
and they tend to sound
brighter and more zingy.
Let me demonstrate.
Here are my two Made in Japan
Fender Precision basses, '62 reissue.
And they're basically
the same bass, except for
the paint job and the fingerboard wood.
But this one has flatwounds
and this one has roundwounds.
Let's hear how they sound.
The second thing you need to think about,
is how often to change your strings.
Older strings start to sound darker
and duller and more vintage-y.
And new strings tend to
sound more bright and zingy.
Check it out, here's my Squier
vintage modified jazz bass,
with old D'Addario roundwounds,
that I've had on it since
our beginning bass reviews,
like three years ago.
Now, I'm gonna put on a fresh
set of the exact same strings
and let's see how it sounds.
♪ It's the final countdown ♪
♪ We're leaving together ♪
Okay, are we still recording?
So what should you use?
Flatwounds, roundwounds,
new strings, old strings?
It really depends on what you're playing,
and what sound you want.
If you tend to just play
in one style of music,
you should just look up what
your favorite bass players do
in that style and copy
whatever strings they're using.
If you like to play a
bunch of different styles,
I recommend that you use roundwounds,
because it's easy to get roundwounds
to sound like flatwounds
by doing tricks with
your knobs and your EQ,
which I'll talk about in a bit.
But it's hard to get flatwounds
to sound bright and zingy,
like roundwounds.
The thing is, that unless
you're a session musician,
exact string choice doesn't
really matter all that much.
Because live sound at
an actual gig is a mess.
There's people talking at
the bar, and spilling drinks,
and shattering glasses,
and the sound guy's
taking a cigarette break
during the bass solo.
Fix number four, is to learn your pickups.
Most basses either have
one of two pickups.
If you have just one pickup,
like this Fender Precision
split pickup setup,
then there's nothing for
you to really do here
with learning your pickups,
your bass is just gonna
sound the way that it sounds.
But your bass might have two pickups.
Like this Fender Jazz Bass.
This one's called the neck pickup,
because it's closer to the neck.
And this one's called the bridge pickup,
'cause it's closer to the bridge.
So neck pickups tend to
sound more growly and bass-y.
And bridge pickups tend to sound
more mid-range-y and treble-y.
The bridge pickup by
itself tends to be too thin
and treble-y for a lot of bass playing,
so if you're a beginner,
I recommend you either
use your neck pickup
or blend both pickups together,
which will work for 99% of bass lines.
Fix number five, is to learn your knobs.
If you have knobs on your bass
and you don't know what they do,
you are in the danger zone.
♪ DANGER ZONE ♪
Different basses have different
electronics and knob setups,
so you need to look up your
specific instrument online.
But I'll walk you through a
few really common knob setups.
First, the classic two knob setup
on a Fender Precision bass,
this knob controls the volume of the bass,
and this knob controls the tone.
So the volume knob, if I
roll it counter clockwise,
I get no volume.
If I roll it clockwise,
I get all the volume.
And the tone knob, you can
thing of as a vintage switch.
So if I roll counter clockwise,
I get less tone,
which sounds duller and darker.
And if I roll it clockwise,
then I get more tone which is
a little clearer and brighter.
Okay, the Fender Jazz three knob setup.
This is just like the P bass,
except now we have a volume
knob for each pickup.
So if I kill the volume on
both of those, I get nothing.
If I roll up the neck
pickup volume clockwise,
then I get neck pickup.
If I turn that off and I roll
the bridge pickup clockwise,
then I get bridge pickup.
If I roll them both up, then I get 50/50,
half of each pickup.
And the tone knob, same thing.
If I roll it clockwise, like I have it,
I get a brighter more modern sound.
If I roll it counter clockwise,
I get a darker more vintage sound.
Last, I'll show you my Peavey Cirrus,
which has five knobs.
There's master volume, pickup blend,
and then, bass, mid, and treble EQ,
which we're gonna talk about in a minute.
So again, master volume,
counter clockwise is none,
clockwise is all of it.
Pickup blend gives me neck
pickup if I go clockwise.
Counter clockwise gives me bridge pickup.
In the middle, I get 50/50
of each pickup signal.
And then bass, mid, and treble knobs,
what I generally do, and
what I recommend you do
if you're a beginner, with
an active EQ like this,
just leave everything in the middle
and worry about EQ when
you get to the amp,
to keep things simple.
Our final tone fix,
fix number six, is nail the EQ.
Amp EQ is a really powerful tool,
which means that you can make a huge mess,
if you don't know what you're doing.
[laser buzzes]
[Josh screams]
Your amp probably has
at least three EQ knobs.
Bass, or low,
mid,
and treble, or high.
This amp has four EQ knobs,
'cause the mids are
split, but as a beginner,
I recommend that you just focus on
dialing in your bass and treble first.
So let's do that together.
Get your amp ready, get plugged in,
and set all of your EQ to
noon, right in the middle.
Let's pluck our open E strings,
so that we can turns knobs
with our fretting hand,
starting with the bass knob,
which will balance you
between boom-y and thin.
So first, let's make it sound really thin,
by going counter clockwise
as far you can go.
Which sounds terrible, right?
Where did the bass go?
Thin is no good.
So now, slowly roll that up.
And hear the bass start sounding fuller,
and bigger, and rounder,
and then keep going
until it's too much, it feels boom-y
like there's an earthquake in your house.
Apologize to your neighbors.
Okay, so now just roll it back down,
until it feels good,
which is usually gonna be
somewhere around the middle,
maybe a little bit
more, a little bit less,
depending on your gear, and also,
what room you're playing in.
So you've got your bass knobs
somewhere that feels good to you,
now we're gonna move to the treble,
or high knob, which
will balance you between
being bright and being muffled.
So let's play our open D string now,
it'll be easier to hear the
effect of the treble knob,
then if we're playing the open E.
So again, let's start by cutting it
all the way counter clockwise.
Which will make your bass
sound kind of muffled and dull.
You can play some notes on the
D string to really hear that.
Okay, just play some notes,
hear how muffled that sounds?
Now, pluck your D string
and turn the treble knob up,
hear it's kind of like lifting
a blanket off of the bass,
and then just keep going,
'til it starts sounding all nasty
and overly bright and zingy.
Okay, play some notes on your D string
Okay, so let's roll that back down,
until it stops sounding
so nasty and zingy.
Okay, again, somewhere in the middle is
probably gonna be fine,
you might be a little bit
more or a little bit less,
depending on your gear and
what room you're playing in.
So just remember, that your bass knob
will balance you between boom-y and thin,
and your treble knob will balance you
between bright and muffled,
and we haven't dealt with the mids,
and that's because as a
beginner, I really recommend
that you just focus on
the bass and treble.
There are a lot of right
answers in the area of mids,
and different amps have
different mid knobs
that do different things.
So if you just set your mid knobs at noon
and worry about the bass and treble,
you're gonna be well within
the safe zone for bass tone.
Please, click like if
this video helped you
and subscribe for more.
Now you don't have to
worry about your bass
sounding like crap,
because you're in tune,
you're plucking properly by
pulling across and not up,
you cut your nails, and you
know the basics of strings,
pickups, knobs and amp EQ.
Let me know which tone fix helped you
the most in the comments,
and I'll see you soon.
[out of tune crap]
[Josh laughs]
****, that sounds bad.
Woo.
Roundwounds are wound with round...
Roundwounds are ro...
[Josh laughs]
Wound with round wire.
