Bass Drone

drofluf

Saw Seth Lakeman last night - excellent gig by the way. 

At some points he was using a bass drone activated by a pedal.  Any idea what he might have been using?

Springywheel

drofluf said:

Saw Seth Lakeman last night - excellent gig by the way. 

At some points he was using a bass drone activated by a pedal.  Any idea what he might have been using?

Possibly something like a gamechanger plus, or an ehx freeze? It basically takes a tiny sample of what you're playing and loops it...at least that's how I think it works. You can also use a standard looper - one method, with a continuous overdub function, is where you begin by recording a few seconds of silence, and then use a volume swell to play a note or chord until it tapers out over itself in subsequent overdubs. 

drofluf

Thanks - I ended up getting a TC Electronic Infinite Sustain which does the job for me. Not exactly what I saw used in the gig as he was triggering pre-loaded samples that were lower than the violin he was playing. 

TheBigDipper

No idea what Seth was doing at the gig you were at, but this sort of thing can be done using a MIDI bass pedal playing samples on a computer/tablet. 

The original pedal for that was probably the Moog Taurus, but there are plenty of others available now. Something that looks like the bass pedals on an organ, sending MIDI Note commands to trigger the sample. You set up each note to trigger a different sample and play it with your feet. Instead of samples,  you could trigger notes on a software synth app- or even a hardware synth.

Anything that can send MIDI Note commands or MIDI CC commands could do it.