# 8 string players, how do YOU incorprate bass into your songs?



## teamSKDM (Jul 15, 2014)

This thread is to discuss how you PERSONALLY go about putting bass in your songs, when tuned so low.

I know animals as leaders for example, uses midi bass because a real bass Im assuming, cannot possibly go the whole octave down from already being in drop E, but I would imagine in a studio scenario, you would still need the bass in the mix somehow correct? Ive been curious about jumping into the 8 string world, and currently I dont own a bass, In my mixes, i use my axe fx to turn my guitar down an octave,run it through a bass rig, etc etc and get it to work as the bass, i figured I would do the same even On an already low 8 string.

or would It make more sense to not shift the 8 string down an octave and just run it through the bass rig? Idk. Not sure, so please enlighten on how you do it and what you think is the best way on incorprating bass when youre playing on an 8 string both live,and in the studio!


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## Rev2010 (Jul 15, 2014)

A number of threads on the topic already exist, but for me personally since I only keep my 8's in F# standard I tune my 5 string bass down to F# standard, works great and I love the sound. For me, if I were to play further down in E I would just use a 4 string and tune the bass to a regular E standard bass tuning instead of tuning my 5 string down to E - what's it called E0? I forget. 


Rev.


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## teamSKDM (Jul 15, 2014)

so you think the best thing to do is have the guitar in e-0 , and bass also in e-0 so both same octave, but obviously different frequencies?
for those curious im talking about drop e


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## GunnarJames (Jul 15, 2014)

I think it really depends on how you tune your eight string and what genre you're playing. For example, my eight is tuned up like a standard seven string a half step down plus a high G#, so my 5 string bass is tuned a half step down at A# standard. I also don't play metal, so there's that. 

Personally, I would just tune a 4 string bass in unison for metal if I were playing in drop E, or even F# standard. I think anything lower than that gets lost in the mix and just adds mud and frequencies that mostly get cut anyway when mixing. The overall tone differences between a guitar and bass are more than enough to still get a big sound. 

Again, depending on what genre you're playing, try thinking outside of the box when writing your bass lines. There are a ton of options for harmonies and grooves instead of just following the guitar note for note. For example, if you're doing a djenty thing you could do the main low groove with a dirty bass tone and have your guitar working leads (whether they be clean ambient stuff, shredding, etc.) and eliminate the second guitar altogether to let your mix breathe a bit. I find writing bass lines first THEN writing guitar parts over it help make this process a little easier. 

What I've also found that works really well for me is that if you have say, a big half time chorus part or something that's power chords, you can do big Barr chords and let the bass take the root note. I find when I'm doing like a huge Barr chord over all eight strings dirty that the lowest string or two tend to get a little over powered by the higher strings, so the bass can help emphasize that root note and bring it back in, even tuned in unison. Using a 5 string bass helps with this too, because depending on where you're playing the Barr chord on the guitar neck you can get the lower octave of B, C, and D to fatten the part up a bit. 

Also, if you're going for a dirty bass tone, I'd record the bass with a clean DI first then reamp it through a dirty tone and blend both together to taste. Drive on bass causes you to lose some low end, so with the clean blended in underneath you regain the lost low end and get more clarity than if you were just running dirty.

Hope this helps!


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## Alex Kenivel (Jul 15, 2014)

Im in unison with my bass player. We haven't recorded anything with the 8 yet, except band practices and they sound pretty good. We play multi genre experimental music, punky, metallic, funky and trippy


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## Floppystrings (Jul 16, 2014)

Meshuggah method, like Rev mentioned.


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## Kerosine (Jul 16, 2014)

I tune my 8 string 1/2 steps down from standard, while I tune my 6 string bass 1/2 steps up, except the lowest string, which I tune to 1/2 steps down.


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## Dominoes282 (Jul 16, 2014)

From a mixing perspective, hi pass the guitar around 133hz. The bass is tricky. If you're recording, set up two tracks and track both bass tracks simultaneously through a DI box. Low pass the first bass track below 133hz and then hi pass all the bass out of the second track and make it sound like a guitar (i.e. one of your cool kid AxeFx patches). Bam now you have control of the low end and you can blend the bass tone with the guitar tone. Live bass is a bit different. You can use an EQ to control the low end with various levels of success. It wont be as awesome as having split channels but most the time you can't hear anything in a live show because shitty engineers so don't worry too much just make the bass as huge as possible (try cutting 230hz and boosting 58hz or 100hz).


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## hiroprotagonist (Jul 16, 2014)

Dominoes282 said:


> From a mixing perspective, hi pass the guitar around 133hz. The bass is tricky. If you're recording, set up two tracks and track both bass tracks simultaneously through a DI box. Low pass the first bass track below 133hz and then hi pass all the bass out of the second track and make it sound like a guitar (i.e. one of your cool kid AxeFx patches). Bam now you have control of the low end and you can blend the bass tone with the guitar tone. Live bass is a bit different. You can use an EQ to control the low end with various levels of success. It wont be as awesome as having split channels but most the time you can't hear anything in a live show because shitty engineers so don't worry too much just make the bass as huge as possible (try cutting 230hz and boosting 58hz or 100hz).



Agreed. Listen to how the guitars are mixed here: . You get the full power of the guitars with plenty of room for the bass in the mix.


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## Solodini (Jul 17, 2014)

I generally use my 8 string to use the higher frets on the lowest strings, allowing me to reach a wider range with high notes, play 6th string bass lines while still higher up the neck. For me, bass guitar just fits into its normal role.


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## Nour Ayasso (Jul 17, 2014)

what's a bass?


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## Solodini (Jul 17, 2014)

It's a kind of tasty fish.


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## ixlramp (Jul 17, 2014)

There is no such thing as instrumental territory, bass and 8 string guitar 'invading each others territory' tonewise or pitchwise is NOT a problem, if it was then why do 2 identical guitar lines sound so good? Or hpw about an orchestra: dozens of instruments playing identical lines sounds amazing. I see this simplistic cliched thinking all the time here, it drives me crazy. Just think about Meshuggah and how good that sounds.
This has arisen from highly irritating cliched rock band thinking: guitar, bass, drums, vocals, and the bass is forced to play low and not invade the guitar's 'territory' (oh but somehow it's okay to have 2 guitars playing in unison). Bass does not have to play lower, there's more overlap than difference in the pitch ranges.


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## F1Filter (Jul 17, 2014)

ixlramp said:


> There is no such thing as instrumental territory, bass and 8 string guitar 'invading each others territory' tonewise or pitchwise is NOT a problem, if it was then why do 2 identical guitar lines sound so good? Or hpw about an orchestra: dozens of instruments playing identical lines sounds amazing. I see this simplistic cliched thinking all the time here, it drives me crazy. Just think about Meshuggah and how good that sounds.
> This has arisen from highly irritating cliched rock band thinking: guitar, bass, drums, vocals, and the bass is forced to play low and not invade the guitar's 'territory' (oh but somehow it's okay to have 2 guitars playing in unison). Bass does not have to play lower, there's more overlap than difference in the pitch ranges.



Bravo sir! Repped.


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## Rev2010 (Jul 17, 2014)

ixlramp said:


> There is no such thing as instrumental territory



I like your post, but you have some things wrong that need addressing:

1st, while instrumental territory might not matter nearly as much live it's pretty critical for a good recording. If you read ANY books on mixing you will see each and every one of them addresses EQ'ing (and compression) to give each instrument a degree of space and clarity. You mention orchestra's, well there's a reason why there are more violinists in an orchestra than cellists. But that aside, even classical music recordings are mixed and each section EQ'd. They don't just lay it all down then simply call it a day, that would sound like a mess.

2nd, you talk about two *unison* guitars sounding good, well yeah they will. But, Bass doesn't always play unison with the guitars. Even if it did and your guitar was very dark and bassy and the bass was as well it would sound quite bad in a recording. But here's the thing, when bass was originally incorporated into guitar driven music guitars were typically tuned to higher, more standard, pitches, and the bass used to give bottom end rather than the music sounding hollow and all bright. Today's guitarists are tuning lower and lower, hence the reason for threads like this. When we start tuning down that low then yes, the guitars do overlap some of the bass territory. But is that the end of the world and are we forced to have to tune differently? No, not really at all. Most of the issues that arise are easily resolved with some basic EQ'ing. As I said, I tune my 5-string bass down to F# standard and it sounds just fine. But there's still a limit to how far down an instrument can go until the vast majority of listeners find it unlistenable. Remember the internet meme of Rhunking? 

The other thing about your guitar comparison is both are in the more discernible hearing range of human beings while bass is down lower in a range where our hearing is less sensitive. If you were to have three basses in a band all playing together in the lowest registers tuned down to say F standard, it would probably sound pretty crappy. 

Anyhow, I see the point you're trying to make, but it's not _all_ a myth.


Rev.


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## Johnathan (Jul 17, 2014)

This will be a very nerdy reply. But this is how i incorporate bass guitars with my 8 strings (or guitars in general).

I always tune my bass guitar in the same octave as my 8 strings lowest string. Essentially I'm always trying to build my bass and guitar tracks so that they sound like one instrument. For tuning in standard F# the tonal frequency would be about 92Hz. Bass guitars will always have more bass due to the fact that their strings are much thicker and will therefore produce more tonic than harmonics. The 8 string however will produce more harmonics than tonic due to the resonance in the lighter strings. These two will therefore compliment each other very well if mixed properly.

There is no point in trying to tune the bass guitar one octave lower than your 8 string because the tonal frequencies will be too low to be useful or even perceptual sometimes, one octave down from F# gives a tonal frequency of about 46Hz, which in my opinion is too low to be useful as a tonality and only gets cut out from the mix. It just creates a huge rumble that isn't wanted. I only tune my bass guitars as low as Ab1/g#1 (tonal frequency of 51 Hz), which is when i have my guitars tuned as low as Ab2/g#2 (tonal frequency of 103 Hz). This rumble you get from the lower octave bass guitar is still (in my opinion) usable in a mix and will create depth in the mix if It's subtle.


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## shawnperolis (Jul 17, 2014)

The guitar plays a guitar part and the bass does a bassline. /end


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## TheKindred (Jul 17, 2014)

ixlramp said:


> There is no such thing as instrumental territory, bass and 8 string guitar 'invading each others territory' tonewise or pitchwise is NOT a problem, if it was then why do 2 identical guitar lines sound so good? Or hpw about an orchestra: dozens of instruments playing identical lines sounds amazing. I see this simplistic cliched thinking all the time here, it drives me crazy. Just think about Meshuggah and how good that sounds.
> This has arisen from highly irritating cliched rock band thinking: guitar, bass, drums, vocals, and the bass is forced to play low and not invade the guitar's 'territory' (oh but somehow it's okay to have 2 guitars playing in unison). Bass does not have to play lower, there's more overlap than difference in the pitch ranges.




instrumental territories:







interactive version here


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## lucasreis (Jul 17, 2014)

I tune the 5 string bass to Drop-A so whenever the guitar is hitting a low note with a low A being the limit, the bass can work as a octave. And the notes below A, I use the unison approach. 

There are a lot of approaches that can be used. 

1. Unison - Meshuggah's method - tune the bass in Unison and go with that.

2. Unison with some low notes - Deftones method - Sergio Vega uses 4 bass tunings. Drop-D, Standard D, Drop C and Drop-C# and he adapts his tunings to whatever Stef is doing in his 8 string tuned to F# or Drop-E. It works incredibly well. Listen to Diamond Eyes and Koi no Yokan and you'll notice this. Some songs, like Rosemary, are centered in a C sort of tuning... meaning that C is the dominant note that Stef and Sergio play most of the time. Stef is always playing lower notes, but since it's centered around C, sergio uses C as his lowest note (as an octave to Stef's C) and it works really, really well. These guys are really good at blending the instruments. 

3. Actually octaving the shit out of it - Mnemic's method - It sounds brutal, they go all the way down to F# with a 5 string bass and it actually sounds great because it's really well equalized and produced. It can, however, make your ears tired because it's a constant assault to them! lol. But it's really interesting.


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## Dominoes282 (Jul 17, 2014)

TheKindred said:


> instrumental territories:
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Oh yes I used to use this excessively. It really helps you understand how instruments can be configured in the mix.


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## AuroraTide (Jul 18, 2014)

I play clean Andy Summers-esque stuff on mine and use the extra strings for drone notes or I'll "pulse" on a bass note with my thumb while playing typical "guitar" stuff with the rest oft fingers


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## Konfyouzd (Jul 18, 2014)

I have a 6 string bass tuned down to E0. On its own the notes are kinda difficult to hear but it sounds better mixed w guitars.


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## teamSKDM (Jul 18, 2014)

someone give me your opinion on these 2 ideas as well. Layering the bass. as in e1 an e0 on top of each other? and also, taking an e1 standard tuned bass, and using a pitch shifter to make it go down an octave. In my head, that seems like it woul sound much much better and clearer than a heavy heavy guage string, i would imagine it have much more presence and clarity that way. but either way, opinion on either of those two methods? I dont have a bass with me currently (nor the 8 string either) so i cant try it for myself.


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## Konfyouzd (Jul 18, 2014)

Have you tried playing a bass tuned to E0? If you get a chance you really should. Like I said above... For me peronally it's difficult to hear anything below an A or G on that string and tell the difference, but you definitely notice the difference when you add guitars to the picture. If your guitar is tuned to an E1, you feel a little extra girth in the notes with the E0 bass backing it.

I personally don't know how layering an E0 and E1 over top of each other would sound, but my 6er that's tuned to E0 is tuned 

E0, B1, E1, A1, D2, G2

I think I got those octaves right.

At any rate, I'd be willing to try it out if it'd help you.


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## teamSKDM (Jul 18, 2014)

Yes please! The reason I bring up layering the basd is so I can have both the girth, and clarity.


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## boxsmiley (Jul 18, 2014)

shawnperolis said:


> The guitar plays a guitar part and the bass does a bassline. /end



This but reverse it. Oh and get les clapool to play the bass

I don't do this...but I should


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