Hi,

How to get that bass sound played by Jon Harris in Massive Attack's song "A Prayer For England" :

we hear it particularly well at 4'29".
I would use either the "classic" method: "bass + amp + effects" or plugins but, in this case, which ones do you recommend and with what settings for the 2 methods ? My DAW is Ableton.

Thank you in advance for your advice.

 

i can't exactly listen loud enough right now, but this sounds rather fx'd to me. you can notice the attack/strike of the strings smoothly dial back uniformly like it is an automated parameter. it also sounds like there is a digeridoo type of sample fading in at the tail end on some of the bass notes. rather than some kind of talkbox vowel type of effect. i'll listen again later louder and see how wrong i am. Do you know if this was released like this with the vinyl crackling all over it, or was this ripped from a record? (unrelated, just curious).

 

for me it sounds like a bass guitar with a little bit fx maybe saturation

 

I think it's a Lo-Fi effect. For the didgeridoo, indeed, now that you mention it... it gives an extra grain to the bass sound.

 

I think like you. I wonder with which plugin there would be a way to obtain this sound? Maybe EZBass ?

 

@Stevie Dude good tips!

as an cheap alternative @Lou Ulfark you can use a simple chorus vst to widen the bass. after that use a mid/side eq to hold the bass below 150 hz in mono and everything over 150 hz in stereo. Hope that helps ;)

 

I couldn't have said it better ! and thank you also @herznote good tip as well !

 

Definitely sounds like a real bass to me, or a sampled one. But it doesn't sound like it's played on a bass, probably programmed.

On listening to it again it does sound like it's played but it's very metronomic. Excellent player.

 

Last edited: Oct 16, 2023

I think @clone is right when he says : "sounds like there is a digeridoo type of sample fading in at the tail end on some of the bass notes." Maybe that's what makes the sound special.

 

It sounds like overdriven live bass performance chopped up into 2 or 4-bar phrases, or lots of chopped 8th notes - possibly from vinyl/CD/live and creatively triggered via midi sampler with filtering effects and slight attack and release tricks. Most likely has a delicate supporting underlying bass synth tone too hard sync'd to the samples. MA are meticulous.