Bass Mythbusters: Does playing quieter make your tone fatter?

In this video, we test the theory that you have more low end tone if you play quieter. This is a fun, casual, nerdy video exploring science and sound for bass players and recording musicians.
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[@gtirard]

This could be the start of a great video series: "Bass Mythbusters". Imagine how many bass related myths you could debunk… like: "Bass Mythbusters: Are tube watts louder than class D watts?". "Bass Mythbusters: Do tube preamps really sound better than modelers?" "Bass Mythbusters: Is tonewood a thing?" And so on and so forth…

[@Ibanezman03]

you mean Bass MythBASSters

[@erikklein5296]

What I've learned for my own fingers and playing is that when playing a 4 hour cover band gig, playing softer with compression means I don't get as many blisters. I've had to change to that style just to be happy as a bass player.

[@wisemandenny8]

I'd be really interested to see the different spectrograms based on plucking closer to the neck vs bridge.

[@Durkhead]

More bass at the neck more treble at the bridge

[@jerryjb]

I second that! And with a couple different basses as well. I feel like different instruments respond either more or less depending on the pickup arrangement

[@pellabandgeek]

I would have loved to see some takes that were even more aggressive. A lot of Geddy Lee's iconic tone comes from him plucking the strings insanely hard. It would be cool to see a graph on how different types of fingerstyle or pick playing (and placement) affects tone, especially the low to midrange overtones.

[@elahem6940]

Gary Willis also addressed this in his instructional video from the 90s.

[@Eric1396]

I had the same reaction when I saw the Pino Paladino interview a few weeks before you posted this video. I tested it myself, and I got to say, that this is true because you have less difference between the loudest part and le quietest part. It acts like a natural compressor, allowing you to raise the input without cliping. When used with a good preamp, it allows the sustain part to also react with the preamp thus adding the caracter of the preamp to a longer part of the note instead of only adding caracter to the attack part of the note. Great video!

[@mk-vn7xk]

man i just love your content! keep it up!!!

[@Terrible_Peril]

not just amplitude of the note as it's struck, but the "swing" of the finger, if you reel back and come in full-force through the string, vs touch-and-pull-through like seen in the initial examples. Also there's directionality at the start of a note from the finger. Again, if you swing through you're likely bouncing off the fretboard, so you get a big attack but it's immediately choked and falls off. If you use a pick you can often play harder than with fingers and end up with a different sound because you're striking mostly parallel to the fretboard and that starts the vibration of the string in an up-and-down fashion vs a more circular vibration if you strike towards the fretboard. I definitely believe in the Gary Willis approach of letting the amp do the work and playing softer and more deliberately. You get a lot more potential for dynamic (in both good and bad ways haha) control (or lack thereof) and personally I feel a lot less fatigued over time.

[@mikearnesenguitar]

Thank you for taking the time to conduct this test and highlight the actual changes in tone. Incredibly helpful to see and hear!

[@philipconradmusic]

Thanks for watching!

[@yetsumari]

I love this video, just strictly talking about the bass as a musical instrument. Purely talking about the tone color differences when playing at various dynamics. Amazing content dude. Thank you.

[@NoizExMachina]

Very interesting and well done! I'm agreeing with everything you're saying here and 4-6 is definitely the sweet spot over all.

[@crocholiday]

I'm fascinated by the amount of tone variation available. Like you show here, how hard or soft you play can affect your tone to some degree. Mix that in with finger placement, string choice, pickup configuration, etc. and the possibilities are overwhelming. The one I'm hung up on at the moment is how some basses like certain strings. Like my US Pro P sounds amazing with LaBella flats but my P with Delano PU's sounds anemic. That one sounds best with TI Jazz Flats. I have another P with Duncan QP's that only really likes round wounds and that one has the exact same passive wiring, pots, capacitors, etc. as my P with Delanos. I'm also experimenting with flats on a couple of my Stingray HH's. I have TI flats on one and really dig the tone I'm getting from it and the other has Cobalt flats which have a completely different characteristic that's equally awesome. It totally activates my nerd side lol.

[@rafbass]

Thanks for this video. Much needed. I play SUPER soft and had always been criticized for it. In my opinion, the whole thing must act like a knife. I think a chef knife is a very good analogy. The knife is the agent who cuts… If it doesn’t, it’s because it’s not sharp, you shouldn’t cut things by adding force into a knife. If no good preamps, or pedals that add too much noise floor are available, perhaps plucking stronger is a solution because you need to pull transients more, but you have a beefy Neve console, or a real transformer powered by high voltage, you should be very fine by playing it soft, which also btw allows more speed. And of course, there’s no best way.

[@gtirard]

As you said, really interesting! Thanks.

[@FrKyleSanders]

Knowing the difference and utilizing it also can inform more dynamic basslines. Being able to know when to dig in and play softer even within a line to do accents is important and fun.

[@philipconradmusic]

Well said!

[@mgr_1138]

thx for testing this

[@philipconradmusic]

Well said!

[@maddoxbruce4621]

Great video, I’ve been wondering and experimenting with this myself recently so to get some real tone science is amazing. I would love to see a similar video about horizontal finger placement, what the bass sounds like right over the pickup or right next to the bridge or down by the neck. Also, I want to say that I think the difference is actually HUGE between the tone of a 4 or a 5 and an 8 or a 9. When players that play REALLY hard and just digging in like that ALL the time, their tone is completely different from somebody that has a lighter touch. The same bass can sound like a completely different instrument solely based on how much energy they are putting into the instrument.

[@mrspolc]

I really enjoyed this vid! Definitely agree with the noticeable differences you found in your test and your preferences. I actually think the true wisdom that players - like Pino, Sean Hurley, Michael League etc - are talking about when they've discussed this idea is a recipe in reality: it's the combination of a lighter touch on the bass + how that touch interacts with the preamp. The saturation and consistency of tone that they can achieve by not digging in hard as much and having a higher gain on the pre, allowing more of the "fat", full tonal character of the amp to come through. They're also probably speaking to this idea that playing consistent "sausages" without huge transients when recording usually means less editing is needed by the engineer to achieve a consistent bass tone. It could be interesting to do another comparison comparing those different recipes involving adjusting gain in a physical preamp: i.e. softer touch/higher gain vs harder touch/lower gain. Cheers! Josh (Sydney Australia)

[@rome8180]

The angle of attack is also very important. If you pluck down and through the strings, you're generally always going to get a warm and round tone. But if you position your fingers perpendicular to the fret board and pluck across the strings, you'll get much more scrape of the fingernails and less fleshy finger padding.

[@VeitLehmann]

I tend to play softer now than I used to in the past, it gives me more room for dynamics and less fatigue. Also, to find out how hard to hit the strings, consider what techniques you use. If you tap a lot, plucking lighter makes your tapped notes much easier to fit in. But if you want to occasionally add fret snarl while plucking, then plucking a little harder by default might be the way to go. If you switch between plucking and slapping a lot, it depends on your slapping technique.

[@arikarkimo5153]

It would be interesting to see same test using same playing touch all the time but turning the volume knob on the bass. I saw someone talking about how to get a great reggae tone with Jazz bass: neck pickup, tone knob all the way down and volume not full but a little bit turned down - about 8 or something. It makes a huge difference. Works also with my other two pickup basses.

[@mostyles328]

Great video. I would love to see if different ohm speakers resistance affect the tone. (Same speaker in 4,8 and 16 ohm)

[@MG-vo7is]

I like notes 4 and 5 best. Great video!

[@philipconradmusic]

Thanks for watching!

[@mperk1896]

I like the video! It makes me wonder what the frequency shift of the clack on a metal string vs. tapewound against the frets. It would be interesting to see if what I notice is backed by data instead of subjective terms like ”smoother.”

[@luigi.zanini]

Very interesting! It could be cool to see the spectrum differences between a Jazz single coil pickup and a P split coil pickups, and / or the spectrum differences between the same bass model with the same strings but different neck woods (maple vs rosewood)

[@little-alien]

Thanks for doing this, I've always wondered about this and I play lighter now to get a "better" tone. I've never taken the time to record the different levels and then play them back level matched. I reckon if you're going into a valve amp and have the gain set to break up around a level 6 or 7 you could get a decent range of tones depending on how hard you played. Maybe this could be a good idea for a video: finding the optimal gain for the most tonal variety.

[@nathanminert3119]

Community is the whole point of music. Nice video 👍

[@ShinyShinyBlack]

Every instrument gets brighter and more "attack-y" when struck harder, whether a piano, an acoustic guitar, a drum, etc... I often get frustrated in the studio when people say they want the music to be "dark" and "warm" and think the way to achieve that is by dumping all of the treble in the mix. Dig the hat, by the way!

[@tylerlennon9955]

Dark = lowpass at 5k Job well done ^_^

[@soulstart89]

very useful info. cheers

[@soulstart89]

@@tylerlennon9955 ive not really played around with low and high filters. Around 40hz clears the muddiness right?

[@Mitsch76]

@@tylerlennon9955 More likely rolloff starting even at 500Hz ;-) . You would call a cutoff around 5k as " smooth", I guess.

[@Mitsch76]

@@soulstart89 "Muddiness" is generally called a buildup of frequencies around 200Hz. That happens a lot because you'll find many instruments and voices having their fundamental frequencies in that area. To me it is the trickiest part in mixing a song.

[@timothyshouer9377]

The difference wss a lot less than I was expecting. Great video. I would be interested how a bass with more headroom (like a stingray or something) would react to this. Also, I would be curious to see a video on how you would go about using a brighter sounding bass in a song that isn't rock or metal, because whenever I used bright instruments outside of those styles, I could never make it sound good so I'd be curious to see how you would tackle that

[@rafbass]

On a side note, I think this type of subject is very interesting from an education perspective because it covers the nuances of self-teaching, which is very common on the internet nowadays (with courses like the 4 string basics, etc.) Self-teaching’s hardest part is not having a tutor to get your hand and say “this plucking is too soft” or “too strong”. It would be interesting to add some sort of benchmark regarding the force you did in your experiment. Like, what force did you apply on #1 (i.e. enough force to lift a feather), or what force did you apply on #6 (i.e. enough force to unfold a paper clip). So we (audience) grasp better what you mean with soft and strong!😊

[@soulstart89]

Sean Hurley and Michael league said the exact same thing pino said on an interview on Scott Devine bass channel. All three play flats. The idea is that you let the amp work but increasing volume or gain. You get a consistent tone that doesn’t spike at the beginning of the hit. It would have been good if you increased the gain and volume on the clips that you played lightly. As I by default play finger style funk I have a hard attack. When I watched the pino vid and tried it, for me it made a big difference. I increase the volume and gain and played the same riff light higher volume and gain vs harder with lower gain and volume. The dynamics came through better when playing lighter. Also the amp displayed more character due to the higher gain.

[@ethanlocke3604]

Gary Willis also is a big proponent of playing lightly

[@soulstart89]

@@ethanlocke3604 thanks for this. I’ll check him out. I bet I know him by some tunes his played on but not the name or face 🙈

[@ethanlocke3604]

@@soulstart89 he’s a big fusion guy, played with tribal tech and with Allen Holdsworth. He’s got a really unique fretless sound, very good player

[@CulDorcha1]

More flesh on the string gets more bass. Side of thumb > finger pad > finger tip/nail >pick.

[@edbutler3]

Listening on some very good headphones,what I was hearing was a gradual increase in low mids and saturation as the intensity increased. In your specific context of P bass, fingerstyle, and "deader" string choices, that low mid saturation starts to sound "bad" at a certain point, as you identified. I think if you change any of those variables, things are different. A jazz with brand new rounds might be a different equation -- or some "boutique" active basses. My attack ranges from light to very hard depending on what sort of music I'm playing, and I've found that certain basses can handle a strong attack, but others just "bottom out" as I like to think of it. It seems like heavier mahogany basses respond well to aggressive picking, but I don't look know if I've played enough instruments to have a significant sample size.

[@fiscaldisco5234]

I think a better test would have been to actually compensate for level at the amp/pre amp stage. Obviously when Pino is talking about playing soft he means with a hotter signal to compensate. And I would think there you will find what he says is probably true. Because a soft touch means more headroom for a signal that has less harmonic content.

[@cheveyo2403]

ye Michael League also said it in a recent interview that he started playing softer. i like number 4 its most rounded but that could be many other things

[@NJSonye]

I find the where the string is plucked or picked is very important. If I compare the roll of the bass be it a bass guitar, upright bass, or even the Tuba where there function is the same it is about that envelope of the note. I’ve thought a bassist has to be more aware of tone & amplitude than a guitarist. We may forget the percussive aspect of string instrument. Yea, music instruments minutia…I dig it too. Why did Carol Kaye dampen the strings and use a pick to create the iconic part to “Good Vibrations.” Interesting!

[@brunocyclist]

I'd love to see an in-depth sound comparison between a single coil and split coil P-bass. Different style pick-up, different pick-up position, different sound yet they both 'sound like a P-bass'. It would be cool to quantify what that is about.

[@philipconradmusic]

That would be super cool!

[@rome8180]

I think what's happening is that when you play softly the sustain is proportionally louder compared to the initial transient. You have not much of a transient at all followed by an equally loud sustained note. But when you play loudly, you have a super loud initial attack. In order to make that work in a mix, you either have to turn the bass down or use a bunch of compression. This is going to make the sustain sound softer than if you play softly. Furthermore, the attack of a note is alway going to sound brighter than the sustain. So by playing loudly, you're creating a loud and bright initial transient that overshadows the lower, fuller sound of the sustained note.

[@maciekszczycinski563]

Exactly! The sound envelope is crucial. And by playing harder you don't get much louder from a certain point

[@philipconradmusic]

Well said!

[@BeesWaxMinder]

8:40 - are these flats on the same guitar? I am certainly hearing a progressive brightness that I couldn't really detect until the last two notes on the previous test (roundwounds?)

[@CarlosKTCosta]

To me, 8 and 9 are the ones that “sound like a bass guitar” I understand that the middle ones are useful and used in a vast amount of music but that clanking is key

[@douglasmullen7596]

You play for sound - if you like the grit of Jaco, that demands certain stylistic choices of the weight of play. Of course, the sound includes what you play through. Great video 🤘🏻

[@coveryourears3851]

Been playing through Portrait of Tracy recently, good luck getting that last harmonic to ring without plucking the crap out of it. Nice dynamic tune in general now that I think about it.

[@douglasmullen7596]

I adore Pino but he really plays soft - from early work right through to when he gigged with NIN - he & Trent recomposed some tunes to compliment his soft play

[@rickhurst9058]

I've certainly played through amps with built in compression /limiting where the bottom end seems to choke when you dig in too hard

[@Scoots1994]

I think the string rattle does actually take away some of the low end because it's not just the string vibrating but hitting something.

[@musicfromakido]

How do you EQ your bass??? Sounds good!

[@valdochez25]

It sounded like the lows would almost swell in when you dug in harder. Like the string rattled and as it started to settle in, the low end came in.

[@heikkisaarenkunnas7736]

One case where you I've noticed you can lose way more low end due to playing too hard is on a low action instrument. I've had to play gigs with borrowed basses with much lower action than my own ones a few times, and I had to use sooo much restraint to not play too hard. I feel with low strings it's really easy to just kill the fundamental tones almost completely and be left with just clanky noise. To me it seemed that the examples in this video did not yet touch the hardness of playing that actually kills the low end in bass tone.

[@ileutur6863]

I know plenty of bass players whose notes consist mostly of fret buzz and noise, but it sounds right for the music

[@benjamin6909]

I think Pino Palladino's comment might be true if the amp/ pedals are clipping as you pluck harder. Not that there is less low-end, but that the balance between lows and highs will shift as distortion introduces more harmonics. This would also be exacerbated if the bass is being compressed with a single band compressor after the point where the distortion is happening. Distortion and "clacking" in the mids and highs could trigger the compressor, and that would bring the lows down on those notes. A multiband compressor would fix this problem.

[@ileutur6863]

I like my notes 80% attack and 20% fret buzz. The fundamental doesn't even need to be there

[@JonesHess]

Cool! What was your tone control set at? Those rounds sound real dead

[@daytonlivingston5773]

As I'm sure you're aware having known him, Sean Hurley is a huge proponent of this exact thing. He recently had an interview with the SBL guys and spoke a lot to this topic. Notably, he mentioned how playing softly in this way, really comes into its own when a compressor gets ahold of the signal. Perhaps that may solve some of those noise floor issues you displayed here and serve to emphasize some of the timbre differences from plucking intensity :)

[@Matt-1d]

Nerd alert: I used to study bat echolocation behavior (I'm a biologist), so I would look at spectrograms all of the time. So this video brought fun nerd memories back in a way you never intended.

[@aljoguitar]

I had my foot on a sub and it's gradully decreasing in volume over the hits.. It's a realy noticable difference. BUT. You can kind of eq the stuff out.. my opinion.. the middle ground is the avarage for a reason :)

[@bassclefconnoisseur]

Absolutely...and action too low can do it, too. A soft touch is clear and full and you can easily have low action at the same time. My two pennies. Edit: Play softly and use the amp!

[@allenmitchell09]

I wonder if you could get up with Ian and do a drum version of this? I'm not sure how you'd go about it though.

[@BeesWaxMinder]

Just saying this now at 3:15 on the video so as I know I am not 'listening with my eyes', so to speak (!), But, to my ears, the notes are getting progressively warmer on the Spectragram, note by note, until the last 2 where they get progressively brighter!🤷‍♂️

[@allenmitchell09]

Please don't quit bass for the police academy.

[@jamesmattox7459]

😂😂😂😂😂

[@philipconradmusic]

😆

[@keziahj]

🤣🙏🤣

[@HipsterNgariman]

It's just preference and a tool in your kit, some basses react better to intention, some mixes/bands need you to have a bright attack, sometimes you're looking for a peaky stroke with low sustain, and other times you want a fat bottom with no attack, etc...All has a purpose

[@philipconradmusic]

Well said!

[@philipconradmusic]

Well said!

[@SorenJohnsonGuitar]

listening to it, there is definitely a sweet spot where the P Bass just sounded amazing, and that was definitely a good bit softer than I thought it would be. I've been watching your channel since day one, and i didn't even play bass at the time. I now have 2 basses and have taken a couple gigs on bass.

[@frans688]

My guess before I see the video it comes from my guitar background; Hard attack = more overdrive in the mids and high frequencies...

[@Mastenbro]

Sooo… Not so much of a change in the amount of low-end and (except for volume) a variable amount of highend, right?

[@phatbasstone]

If dynamics are taken into account, a (session) player uses the first 5-6 levels. The last couple imo are in most cases not usable

[@patrickquine3945]

Playing softer has a bunch of other benefits too. Dynamic range being a big one. If your band plays at intensity level 10 the entire time, that 10 is gonna become a 7 by about the 3rd song and you won’t have anywhere else to go.

[@philipconradmusic]

Exactly!

[@joannalewis5279]

As expected nice test though

[@Scoots1994]

It changes the tone ... it's not "better" or "worse". Attack, transients, other elements from the instrument, sustain, volume, etc ... all change in your fingers, and those changes might be more or less right for any individual song.

[@martyforrer9146]

Fats #4 is my favourite.

[@philipconradmusic]

Nice

[@thimblythom]

3 sounds great to me

[@thimblythom]

(for the rounds)

[@virgilrytaar9083]

Pino, proving once again that he was the wrong man for The Who. Great player but that 1st performance of My Generation!? Even Roger looks at him with the perfect WTF expression

[@learnmusic488]

Wow, this whole issue is real Geeky

[@philipconradmusic]

Yeah 😆

[@martyforrer9146]

I mean Flats #4.

[@pellabandgeek]

This is good proof of that old adage: tone is in the fingers.

[@genegleckner2732]

Look at the blue waves , the harder you played the thinner the line became

[@oliverkotalik3014]

Your tome would be fatty if you built a fenderbird bass

[@cornfilledscreamer614]

Thinner with no compression, definitely fatter with compression!

[@jazzbassjames6403]

Just look at the wave forms. The first few notes (the quiet ones) look like sausages, the louder ones look like traffic cones.