Bass. I love it. But what are your go to tracks to show of Bass DEPTH. What gets the air moving, and what frightens the cat.
Not bothered about your Marcus Miller Funky Bass slapfests - and you can keep your Level 42 - I want LOW!
Here are a few Nominations to get things going. Shared in Spotify just for ease.
The first track is from Higher Intellegence Agency, and has two basslines. The First is low. The second is subterranean. Possibly the lowest I know.
This stellar dub remix from Kruder and Dorfmeister - available on the classic and highly recommended K&D Sessions Album - again this Bomb the Bass track has two basslines - a lovely deep walking bassline, and Bass squelches that get bigger and better as the track goes on.
Then something to really scare the neighbours - a great pop song from LaRoux given the Skream treatment. Relentless.
Finally - speaking of Pop - something from Madonna. The first bassline is Deep, the second one that kicks in is beyond. Pure Bass Bliss, that you possibly never realised hit quite as hard as it does.
But one of the best for really low bass (you need active DBLs to get all of the bass depth) is Micky Hart Umasha (Strawberry Swamp Fever Mix) on the Supralingua Bonus Disc. It is on Deezer and Spotify, but I couldn’t get a suitable URL for here. This track really shows what your system is capable of.
The secret of deep bass in EDM, is not necessarily its depth in terms of frequency (as that is not very useful) , but it’s speed… so bass with high frequency elements with fast attack often sounds the best … and I suspect what many associate with powerful bass.
This get those cones moving… and a is a good system test, as he uses polymorphic rhythms in the track… on a poor or bloated system it will sound a mess… but on good system you can hear how he uses it to build tension in the break. (You can see in the wave form graph below)
I find pure deepest bass tends to come pipe organ and certain orchestral recordings… that is often verging on a subsonic rumble… and gives a feeling of scale. For me down there below 20 to 30 Hz I need to magnetic planar headphones… and one tends to feels the pressure in your ears and skull … can make me feel a little nauseous however if loud.
Also remember much commercial music uses a bass shelving filter to remove much below 30 Hz… as it wastes energy in compression and lossy codec encoding … in short on 99% of systems it will loose its punch. Mastering to give the impression of bass strength on most consumer equipment and even commercial replay systems is quite a skill.
Feed a 30 Hz sine wave into your system, and then play a strong EDM track such as above… which feels it has the bassist response?
The question is, what do people mean by deep? I’ve come across tracks that people have claimed deep bass, which have simply had prominent bass but not actually going very low. So to the OP, it might help if you defined: e.g. do you mean, say, 30Hz and lower (i.e. below the lowest note of a bass guitar or double bass having a low C string)? Or say 40Hz and lower ( i.e. below the lowest note of a 4-string bass guitar or double bass with standard tuning)? Or something higher?
Indeed, also you will probably need a subwoofer to really feel the bass for most of the tracks posted. My B&W DB4S has a -3db rolloff at around 14hz, and some of the tracks above go all the way down to it’s lowest point.
The 'deepest ’ bass I have come across is on Prog Rock where Bass Pedals have been used - often the Moog Taurus (which is a Bass Synth). Early/ Foxtrot era Genesis is one. Several tracks have this. A bit later, on The Lamb, there are big low frequencies on Fly On A Windshield.
Another is Enya - believe it or not. Again, I think its Synth Bass. Try Boadicea from her first album.
How could I forget… the most explosive, literally, bass response I heard was at a Signal show came at Suffolk show ground.
Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture (I don’t know which recording) was playing through a Statement based system driving a pair of I believe large Focal Utopias…
When the canon went off… so did the Focal bass drivers
You could try this. It’s slow and by intent not the finest quality recording, but I guess deep base could be noticable! “This song could level an entire suburb”.
Could be the the Telarc 1812 Overture which has warnings on the cover and in the booklet of digital canons.
P6 - Warning! The canons of the Telarc Digital “1812” are recorded at very high level. Lower levels are recommended for initial playback until a safe level can be determined for your equipment.
It is 11:13pm right now down under. To be kind to my neighbours, I won’t play it until the morning.
