Heavily distorted bass - why?

Musicman20 · June 2019

Cirrus said:

It's amazing how distorted a bass needs to be to sound like a distorted bass in a mix. Generally, as you add on distortion you get more harmonics to play with which help your ear pick up the sound of the bass on smaller speakers that don't reproduce the deep, fundamental frequencies very well.

You don't even hear it as distortion in the context of a full band arrangement a lot of the time. It's just easier to hear it, and maybe a bit more exciting sounding. Most classic recordings have some amount of gain on the bass, either from an amp, overdriven mic preamp, or tape saturation, but in small doses it adds character rather than sounding dirty.

So, if you play heavy music (think Muse etc) and you actually want the bass to sound like it's distorted, even against guitars which are themselves distorted, then you really need to pile on the gain. Gnarly, nasty jagged sounds can be fantastic. If you want the bass to catch your ear as a central part of the mix it's just the way it is. It can sound top heavy and harsh in isolation. No good for Brown Eyed Girl, but if you want to sound like this;

It's just the ticket.

Just to say I LOVE Cave-In. Caleb will be missed.