Using white noise for bass

[steevio]

i love to see people thinking outside the box and being experimental, but in my honest opinion i dont see it working.

by bandpassing 5Hz either side of your resonant frequency, you are covering a frequency range of a few semitones either side of a fundamental, which in my book is a dischord. i cant think of anything worse than dischordant bass.

unfortunately when i listened to your example thats exactly what it sounded like to me.
i think if theres anywhere in the frequency spectrum where you want tonal clarity its the bass.

it would probably serious mess with the bass speakers in a soundsystem.

its probably why its not a known technique.

good try though.

[AK]

I heard your example earlier, just never got around to posting. You were bp filtering either side of a resonant filter? Did you lp filter it too? Why was i assuming you were just lp filtering?

Anyway, only had crappy headphones at the library so didnt hear much in the way of what steevio was hearing although what he said is in theory correct. I heard a definite tone though although id have probably liked to have heard the sound an 8ve or 2 higher as well to get a clearer idea of the sound. Its not that easy to hear the content of low frequency sounds, esp on cheap headphones and a lp filter obviously masks/removes what else is there too.

There were 2 basses, one reverse style bass and one with more attack, were both created this way? One thing though, and dont take this the wrong way please, is that with all the filtering effort and tailoring of the sound, it's not that far off what you'd have achieved with lp filtering a 'normal' bass. Actually, is that a good thing or a bad thing?

Well its surely good to have the insight to be experimenting, im not quite sure how you managed to give it tone (the resonance) but yeah, the concept of starting with a huge amount of frequencies and then stripping them back is obviously not new but for musical purposes, noise just seems like hard work and what you are actually attempting is, in essence, making noise sound like 'more musical' waveforms, so why not just use them and get there quicker?

I know steevio was saying low frequencies which are discordant sound bad, well even concordant sounds are bad at low frequencies, thats why we dont like hearing piano chords at low frequencies because the ear has trouble making sense of it but you have to consider percussive sounds, which is why im inclined to disagree to an extent. Low gongs, toms, djembes, clangs etc and whatever, can all be played at low registers. Are they not also acting in part, as bass too (at least for a small period) and probably all of them contain inharmonics.

But my point being (and i revert back to my 1st post in the thread) is that these are not really tonal in the musical sense of the word, that is, you wouldnt get a sensible triad chord out of a gong or a tom etc, same with noise and thats why i was initially looking at it from more of a percussive thing. Does the sound get 'tomlike' if you put a pitch envelope on it? If so, you might have yourself some D.I.Y simmonds toms even if you dont use it as a bass tone.

Try this, a few 8ve's higher, play yourself a 3 note chord and see if it is clearly percievable, you can do that with a bass tone. If its a muddle, id go percussive with the sound, if its clear, id be happy using it as a bass tone (although i wouldnt want to be going through that hassle every time i wanted a new bass sound lol. )

[steevio]

Low gongs, toms, djembes, clangs etc and whatever, can all be played at low registers. Are they not also acting in part, as bass too (at least for a small period) and probably all of them contain inharmonics.

theres no argument if what youre after is percussion, but i thought it was bass we were after here, this isnt really a sensible way to get a good bass sound, i can imagine its never been used before in a musical context, but maybe in an atonal / avant garde sense.

my monitors didnt like it.

its an interesting experiment though. keep it up.

[AK]

Yes absolutely, you only part-quoted me. I did go on to say they are not something you'd choose to play in a musical capacity, in the true sense of the word. But yeah, totally agree with you that's why i initially thought the idea was more percussive orientainted rather than melodic.

[thasim1]

is it possible to use white noise to create low rumbling basslines like these? i gave it a shot but i wasnt able to arrive at anything similar. what do you guys think? is this a stupid question?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8NP23laSCE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSUf3YD7XLU

bass @ 1.00 on both.

[pafufta816]

the first track; the bass is a non-noise waveform. it's probably saw, being played at a very low octave. the second track; i have no idea how they make that sound. sounds like copius amounts of lp filtering.

[AK]

To the OP, there's a track by Seph which uses a bass very similar to yours, in his track he's playing a 'call & response' with another 'normal' bass. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBisWc3psu8

[s.k.]

... so why not starting with all frequencies and use say a bandfilter with some resonance to give it some direction?

i think you are misunderstanding the meaning of white noise. it is not "all frequencies happening at the same time", thats kinda impossible. white noise sure contains all the frequency range, but the frequencies come and go randomly, which makes it pretty unstable especially in the low range.