The Harmony

Pop, rock, mainstream, multitrack, Wonder Bread® music relies heavily on harmony and its progress through a series of changes toward some form of resolution, sort of like classical music without the key modulations. Dance and rap music often abandon harmonic progression altogether. This music lives in the groove. Rhythm and syncopation are the essence. Melodies, such as they are, mostly come from the odd synth, sample or scratch. When a melody is actually sung, it is generally over a static chord, pedal note or ostinato. Chord changes would interfere with the music or may simply not be needed.

This has important implications for the bass. The harmonic role the bass usually plays is no longer needed. A pedal note, very low please, is about all the pitch we want from the bass. But before the unions complain, check out what the bass does do.

“It’s Like 10 But It’s 1 LOUDER.”

The bass is a great indicator of loudness, inducer of distortion, and communicator of energy. It is important for these styles of music to move their listeners. That’s the point of dance music. And off the dance floor, listeners at least want to tap their feet and bob their heads. Good tunes do this through a good beat and lots of energy. The best source of energy in audio is, I’m happy to report, VOLUME! When mixing, I rely heavily on a plaque in my studio given to me by audio guru Neil Muncy, containing the Four Great Rules of Audio. Rules One and Two are:

1. Up Is Louder.
2. Louder Is Better (used to be Less Is More – sorry, Neil).

Making your mix louder than all the others will help sell records. But since we can’t (yet) adjust the listener’s volume knob before and after our tune is played (I have proposed this feature for a revised MIDI standard but it’s fallen on, like, deaf ears), we must rely on more sophisticated techniques for communicating loudness.

One way to convince us humans that it’s loud is through distortion (see sidebar on distortion: “Distortion or Deafness”). We seem to clue in on distortion as a sign that things are ‘pushing the envelope,’ as we say in the test pilots’ lounge. Such distortion is a good thing. We distort , without hesitation, guitars, synths and vocals (whadda ya think Jagger has been doing with his tubes all these years?). Why? “It sounds good.” “You’re supposed to.” But another reason is that it triggers an instinctive reaction that something pretty powerful is happening – it sounds bigger, cooler, more exciting. It sounds intense. It sounds louder. In the case of dance, rap and hip-hop, the whole tune needs to sound bigger, cooler, more exciting, more intense. The whole tune needs to sound louder. Distortion is just the ticket. And the boom boxes and car stereos are particularly good at this (Don’t miss “Boomvan: Subwoofer on Wheels” in an upcoming issue. I’m gonna write it as soon as the one H&SR is buying me for academic study arrives.). A good, musical way to achieve distortion is through use of some low lows. Nothing gets a speaker to break-up like an amp overdriven by a band of frequencies near the lower spectral limits.

Rap and hip-hop have taken advantage of this for years. Synth basses have made possible lower lows than can be created on a reasonably sized, reasonably priced string bass. I’m no physicist (except when the Scotch has really kicked in), but it seems to me that in order to acoustically produce some of the super low notes we hear in rap would require a bass approximately the size of Rhode Island. Listen to the bass in “Steve Biko (Stir It Up)” on A Tribe Called Quest’s latest album, Midnight Marauders. Many stereo systems simply cannot produce these frequencies without distorting. If they can play it clean, listeners turn 'em up and crank the bass level so that distortion finally does appear. This is how you know you are now playing the music loud enough. To facilitate this, distortion is often added to the bass at the studio to guarantee listeners this feeling that comes from superhuman bass sounds. So the bass takes on an important role as a communicator of energy, not just through the adrenaline producing low frequencies it provides, but also with the help of at least a little distortion along with it. Low, distorted pedal notes or simple two- or three-note ostinatos are perfect for this!

Interestingly, you need to have the power amplifier reach its limits for this to really happen. When doing the listening for this article, I had an interesting and instructive experience. I was using a Bryston 4B power amplifier with 250 Watts/channel to drive whatever monitors I was using at the moment. My reference monitors handle low frequencies (30 Hz.) with ease and no distortion. Now, I measured the spectrum of this music, and it includes a band of frequencies from 40 to 100 Hz. that is six to ten dB louder than the rest of the spectrum (usually there is little energy below 40 Hz.).

This low-frequency band includes extremely loud sine waves being turned on and off by a gate triggered by the kick, plus bass sounds. What was interesting was that when I switched over to the Auratones, the bottom end simply faded about 15-20 dB, with no significant distortion. This seemed to be the case even when I cranked the level (believe it or not, Auratones can play gangsta rap at 96 dB SPL when suitably encouraged, with few signs of distress – however, you might want to check out the sidebar, the part about pain cues.). In both of these cases, with the reference monitors and with the Auratones driven by a really substantial power amp, the music sounded kind of wimpy. Those monster LF sine wave whooomfs really sound kind of lame.

So I borrowed my daughter's boom-box (yes, I asked permission) and listened to it with the levels at about 13 and the hyper-Bass on full warp boost. The SOUND was back! The bass was hard, solid, gritty and strong. The music was happening!!

Think of the irony here! I spend all of this money to get a really nice room, monitors and power amplifier, and have to borrow my daughter's Teen-Age Audio Trash Compactor in order to listen to this music with any particular sonic enjoyment. Go figure!!!

Post a Comment