8-string guitars, please explain how it works in metal?

jerotas

jerotas

Experienced
This posting is prompted by my friend recently telling me he "really wanted an 8-string guitar". He also said that it's "cool but if the bass guitar also added 2 lower strings, you wouldn't even be able to hear those notes". Not to mention a bass amp probably wouldn't be able to reproduce those notes.

So honestly, help me understand why metal bands use 8-string guitars....Is the bass guitar actually playing in the SAME octave as the guitar when the guitarist uses the lowest string? That seems lame. I could see using an 8-string for solo pieces like Joe Pass or Segovia used to do. But this makes zero sense to me when an 8-string guitar is accompanied by a bass guitar and band.

What am I missing? I'm not bashing, I want to understand.
 
Actually now that you mention it, animals as leaders do not have a bassist and it may be for the reason you stated which indeed makes sense. Meshuggah has a bassist and it makes them sound heavy because their tone is pretty BLARG alone. But in the end in my opinion, a guitar is still a guitar and a bass is a bass and they need to be glued together in a mix. Guitars don't sound heavy without bass and a lot of bass mixing techniques like duplicating the bass track and adding a bit too much distortion on it and blending it with the original track make the bass sound weird alone but in a mix It's killer. Sometimes music doesn't have to make sense to sound good. That's why I love music. By the way, Joe Pass was awesome RIP.
 
Sammetal91 said:
Actually now that you mention it, animals as leaders do not have a bassist and it may be for the reason you stated which indeed makes sense. Meshuggah has a bassist and it makes them sound heavy because their tone is pretty BLARG alone. But in the end in my opinion, a guitar is still a guitar and a bass is a bass and they need to be glued together in a mix. Guitars don't sound heavy without bass and a lot of bass mixing techniques like duplicating the bass track and adding a bit too much distortion on it and blending it with the original track make the bass sound weird alone but in a mix It's killer. Sometimes music doesn't have to make sense to sound good. That's why I love music. By the way, Joe Pass was awesome RIP.
Click to expand...

Interesting. But does Meshugga's bass player play in the same octave as the guitars? That just seems like a no-no haha and would (for starters) make mixing much more difficult. On a CD and live.
 
jerotas said:
Interesting. But does Meshugga's bass player play in the same octave as the guitars? That just seems like a no-no haha and would (for starters) make mixing much more difficult. On a CD and live.
Click to expand...
I just checked and I am gonna say Yes but because meshuggah is the father of djent and their tone is pretty gnarly alone, they need that bass. It is strange that the bass is playing the same octave as the guitars. It's kinda rare. Now it'd be interesting if the guitars played the lower octave and the bass played the higher one.
 
Even if the guitar is down that low and the bass is playing in unison, it's still not going to be putting out the same freqs as a bass.

People said, and I guess still do say, the same thing about 7-string guitars.


I've considered getting an 8-string for my current band. A few times I've been presented with a situation where a low A would really be handy, but I tune my 7s standard so I can only go as low as a B. Not really a fan of different tunings as I'm too used to thinking my way around a std tuned guitar, plus I had a think about it and something like drop-A would make some other things pretty much impossible for me to play. But even if I was playing an 8, a low A in unison with the bassist's low A is still going to be putting out very different sounds. For starters, anything I'm playing is going to have the low end rolled off at least from 80Hz or so, probably higher. The bassist is still the one who'd be filling out the low end. Even a heavily distorted electric bass is going to sound very different to the same notes being played on an extended range guitar.
 
I know It's a bit of a musical oddity but it just needs the bass. It doesn't sound the same. In fact, I'm gonna try that out. Make a djent patch, play my 8 string, and program bass with pt 8 through MIDI. Then I'll do a variation of the bass playing a higher or lower octave to see if it affects the mix or if it isn't needed.
 
DNW said:
People said, and I guess still do say, the same thing about 7-string guitars.
Click to expand...

What? Not true unless they're morons. On 5-string basses I can clearly hear the lower string string even on the zero fret....of course you might have been addressing a different point than the OP :)
 
As for Meshuggah, they're a pretty good example of how this kind of thing can work, if you go back to before they had 8s. If you listen to Chaosphere (Neurotica has a good example), the overall sound is pretty huge. But when you hear the guitars on their own they're quite small sounding. Rather bright, not much going on in the low end, or in the low-mids and mids. Most of it (going from memory anyway) is really high-mid and high freqs. The bass is what really helps fill out the space. They'll be doing a similar thing now, even if they are playing in unison. The guitars along with the drums create the sharp percussive attack, and the bass fills out the growliness.

Another odd one (although no extended range instruments here) is Spiral Architect. The bass seems to have more mids than the guitars (which are rather scooped sounding), and isn't really too bothered with filling out the low end. Not much in the way of low pounding bass lines, more melodic playing higher up on the fretboard. WTF is with the guitar/synth/bass lead thing in Cloud Constructor? Why not have a heavier bass sound thumping out a nice bass line instead of widdling the same thing an octave down with the guitars and synths? Who knows why they thought that was a good idea... but I guess it works one some level though, coz it sounds great to me even if it's not a traditional mix and way of using the instruments.
 
Sammetal91 said:
pro tools 8 which is a DAW :) has some pretty spiffy bass sounds if I do say so myself. A bass guy might say otherwise :razz
What is trilogy I may ask?
Click to expand...

Ah ProTools, I thought you were talking about a SoftSynth VST plugin :) That's what Trilogy is. You program some midi and then choose from a wide list of bass sounds. It's one of the more expensive plugins like this and sometimes sounds pretty good. But nothing sounds as good as a real bass obviously. During songwriting I'll usually use Trilogy, then break out the real bass for final takes after composition is finished. I realize that ProTools doesn't allow VST plugins - that's all I've ever used. I'm on Sonar.
 
Spiral Architect is amazing. I'll have to check out Meshuggah sometime for curiosity. Good comments people :)
 
jerotas said:
What? Not true unless they're morons. On 5-string basses I can clearly hear the lower string string even on the zero fret....of course you might have been addressing a different point than the OP :)
Click to expand...

Yeah, you can still obviously go an octave down on a 5/6-string bass. But I've heard many comments along the lines of, "Why don't you just play bass instead?" when talking about 7-strings. Apparently a guitar should have 6-strings and anything more than that is just unnecessary and pointless. Meh, whatever. They can do their thing, I'll do mine. :)
 
Ok here I was thinking that a 6-string bass only had one string lower than normal, and one higher...haha. I guess not always.
 
Nothing sounds better than an actual recorded instrument but hey I ain't a bass player :razz
So that's why I use xpand 2 from pro tools le.
 
jerotas said:
Ah ProTools, I thought you were talking about a SoftSynth VST plugin :) That's what Trilogy is. You program some midi and then choose from a wide list of bass sounds. It's one of the more expensive plugins like this and sometimes sounds pretty good. But nothing sounds as good as a real bass obviously. During songwriting I'll usually use Trilogy, then break out the real bass for final takes after composition is finished. I realize that ProTools doesn't allow VST plugins - that's all I've ever used. I'm on Sonar.
Click to expand...
really? Last time I remember, pro tools 8 was a vst mostly thing. i tried au stuff and it just doesn't read them.
 
Never seen ProTools. That's just what I always hear...."VST...oh those are not going to work on ProTools, they use proprietary stuff to lock you down you only the plugins they make". Something like that. Apparently not entirely correct haha.
 
jerotas said:
Ok here I was thinking that a 6-string bass only had one string lower than normal, and one higher...haha. I guess not always.
Click to expand...

No you're right, a 6-string bass has a low B and a high C. So a 6er as far as low range goes is the same as a 5er.

I've seen basses that go way down low though. Extended scale lengths with huge strings and amps/cabs designed to put out crazy low freqs. Not really sure what that's all about, but I guess someone's having fun with it. :lol
 
DNW said:
No you're right, a 6-string bass has a low B and a high C. So a 6er as far as low range goes is the same as a 5er.

I've seen basses that go way down low though. Extended scale lengths with huge strings and amps/cabs designed to put out crazy low freqs. Not really sure what that's all about, but I guess someone's having fun with it. :lol
Click to expand...
its called the brown note :lol
 
DNW said:
No you're right, a 6-string bass has a low B and a high C. So a 6er as far as low range goes is the same as a 5er.

I've seen basses that go way down low though. Extended scale lengths with huge strings and amps/cabs designed to put out crazy low freqs. Not really sure what that's all about, but I guess someone's having fun with it. :lol
Click to expand...

No that's pretty cool when you think about it. I would like to play a bass like that. hahaha, that would own.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom