So I’ve never really been that focused on making money off my music. I’d rather give it to people for free and just get paid to play shows. Recently I’ve received a few requests to use my music in a couple videos. I was thrilled to receive exposure through videos, and more than that environmentally focused videos. The first of which is from my friend Alex Vanderweil at Forestethics, and the other is from a company called Solar Design in the UK. They somehow found me in the cluttered mess that is Myspace. Anyway, here are the videos my music is featured in. all of which were taken from the album “May No Day Be Wasted”. Click to download full album.

Forest Ethics:

Solar Design:

What do you love about bass? My favorite bass sound is an upright bass. It has such character. When you hear the tone it’s not only the bass note, but all the overtones that make it what it is. The difference between a perfect sine tone and an upright bass note is what’s called Timbre (“Tambur”). Every sound has its own timbre and its timbre is what makes it unique.

When producing hip hop and electronic music the bass is very important. Many tracks don’t even have a bass line, but  are still supplemented with a low kick drum. The 808 being the most common example of this.

Can you hear it? It’s so low that if you’re listening on quiet laptop speakers you might not even hear it.

The 808 kick got its name from the Roland TR-808 drum machine. It wasn’t sample based, it actually used a very low sine tone and modified the pitch and decay to make it sound like a kick drum. To give an 808 a different timbre often times people will add distortion of some type. The two types of distortion are Even or Odd, AKA Symmetrical or Asymmetrical. When using Odd distortion the overtones will be every other octave. Such as C1, C3, C5, C7. While Even distorts in an even pattern every octave and can even include fifths and thirds. Ex: C1, C2, G2, C3, E3 etc… Even is generally more pleasing to the ears and sounds more natural. Analog tube distortion is a good example of this. Odd distortion generally comes from digital distortion. If you have a guitar handy you can hear even harmonics on the string when you put your finger over the 3rd, 5th, 7th, or 12th fret and pluck the string.

Another example of this is the difference between simple and complex oscillator tones. Such as simple Sine, and complex Sawtooth, and Square. Sine is just one single frequency but when stacked in even harmonics it will create a complex sawtooth wave. When the overtones are stacked in odd harmonics it will become a square wave. Now we’re getting into the interesting stuff.

I’ve learned a lot about from a music genre called Dubstep. It originated in the UK and utilizes very deep “sub” bass. Every producer has they’re own method but the common formula is a synthesizer with a LP (Low Pass) Filter.

Sawtooth Wave no LP Filter

Sawtooth Wave with LP Filter

It’s the same sound we make with our voices when we say “wow”. Our lips act as a filter for our voice. The tone of our voice is actually a very complex wave form.

So try experimenting with distortion and harmonics. If you have a Bass that sounds too loud try adding some distortion to brighten it up its timbre. Many times the actual bottom note of a bass line isn’t reproducible by many peoples speakers, if you add some harmonics more people will be able to hear what you’re playing!