Bass Drops?

[Jason Cribbs]

I'll make this brief. I play in a band who plays alot of koRn covers and
other bands who use bass drops in there music. How do I go about getting
these drops?
Can anyone tell me what kind of equipment and how much it'll cost me?
Thank you in advance.

[Tom Betka]

>On 7 Apr 1997 03:16:30 GMT, cri...@usaor.net (Jason Cribbs) wrote:

> I'll make this brief. I play in a band who plays alot of koRn covers and

>other bands who use bass drops in there music... <SNIP>

I give up--what the hell is a "bass drop??" Maybe I'm just getting too
damn old!!!!

Tom

[Dana Pellerin]

I don't know what a "bass drop" is either! Other than tuning the guitars
down (waaaaaay down..) I don't think korn does anything really special to
get their sound. Then again I may be wrong....

Dana

Tom Betka <tcb...@students.wisc.edu> wrote in article
<33486f37....@news.doit.wisc.edu>...

[Dave Klem]

Actually, the "bass drop" that the original poster is referring to is an
electronically generated bass note. Usually it is pretty low (around
30-40 Hz, maybe even lower.) This sound can be found in a few styles of
music but mostly rap. (Others are KoRn, and in a couple Obituary
songs...just to name a few off the top of my head).

Anyway...to get to the answer of the original posters question, the "bass
drop" can be generated by a few of the Drum Modules out there. Alesis and
Roland I know for sure. In fact, Korn's drummer uses a Roland TD-7 and a
trigger pad placed to the left of the hi-hat. The sound on the Alesis DM5
is called "Rap Wave" and I found it sounds better if you tune it down
lower. To give you an idea of the cost, here's one way you could go:

Alesis DM5 (Cheaper than Roland) ~$325
Small Dauz pad and cable ~$50

You will also need a pretty good Keyboard amp or a good PA.
I believe you might be able to get it with a cheaper drum machine, but I'm
not sure.

Good Luck,
Dave

[John DeMayo]

korn plays alot of songs in drop D, guitars, with the bassists lowest
string being a low E. Different strings, different tuning...alot of
their sound from the bass is actually the string striking the fretboard
simply because it's so loose. They doa great job with this sound, but
it's distinctively theirs. We played some korn covers, tuned normal,
but just kind of transposed the parts down an octave or so. Sounded
different , but good. Otherwise, you'd need 2 gitars and 2 base to
switch between korn and any other music.

john

[tom]

In article <Pine.ULT.3.93.970407...@coeds.eng.miami.edu>,
dk...@coeds.eng.miami.edu says...
>

>You will also need a pretty good Keyboard amp or a good PA.
>I believe you might be able to get it with a cheaper drum machine, but I'm
>not sure.
>

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

This response is more about PA than drumming, but here goes.

Yep, good idea to check the capacity of a PA if the intent is to use the
technique live. No need to go to a lot of work to get something into the
music if an audience isn't going to hear it.

A lot of PA equipment bass cabinets "cut off" around 40 cycles. For front
loaded cabinets, a cut off doesn't mean that you get no sound below the cut
off. However, the equipment may not deliver "useful" sound throughout the
audience below the cut off. A stated cut off for horn loaded bass cabinets
may be the point at which the horn "unloads," in which case there isn't much
sound generated below the cut off.

The problem with bass frequencies is that they tend to radiate from the
cabinet in all directions equally. Higher frequencies in most PA cabinets are
somewhat directional and the sound is projected towards an audience. To
project bass frequencies, you generally need large cabinets. The reason for
stacking a bunch of bass cabinets together for a concert is not so much much
to get more power, but that the separate cabinets "couple" and make the loweer
frequencies more directional.

Anyway, if you use lower frequencies than the capacity of a PA you get a large
bass wash on stage from the house cabs. The bass wash on stage creates
feedback problems and also bounces around back into the audience and generally
messes up the house sound. That's why most graphic EQ's have high pass
filters which should be set at the PA's low freq cut off.

PA problems aren't the same in a small room where you don't need to, more or
less, project equal levels of the whole audio spectrum down the lenth of a
hall or auditorium. A good keyboard amp, preferrably sat on the stage floow
and against a hard wall probably will do a good enough job of projecting the
bass. Placing a speaker on the floor and against a wall uses these surfaces
to help project the bass.

Hope this PA stuff is interesting to some drummers. Anyway, the bass problem
isn't unique to drummers. Most piano players arn't aware that their first
octave is pretty well useless in most PA's. The low note on a piano is about
28 cycles.

Tom

[Ron Banta]

Jason Cribbs wrote:
>
> I'll make this brief. I play in a band who plays alot of koRn covers and

> other bands who use bass drops in there music. How do I go about getting
> these drops?
> Can anyone tell me what kind of equipment and how much it'll cost me?
> Thank you in advance.

I actually think that Korn's Bass player is using a
sub-harmonic processor. It takes the note that is played on the bass
and drops it an octave or two. I haven't seen one of these units
lately, but then again I haven't been looking either. I have seen them
from mail order companies like Interstate Musicians supply.

Better buy some good speakers Peavy's won't cut it hear folks!
--
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Ron Banta 000
Saint Gizmo 0
sntg...@avicom.net 0
P.O. Box 8181 00
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