Paul E wrote
Can you elaborate on ocataving one of the signals? Would this be in one take having 2 octaves?
Yeah, if you have two or more pickup systems (or mics) with separate outputs, it's pretty easy to put one through an octaver/pitch shifter and drop it down a full octave, then you mix the two together and you get an extended low end.
Bonus is that if you do this with a magnetic pickup it ends up with something like a fat, round electric bass tone, if you do it with the piezo, you get a snappier almost plectrum bass tone. Drive the octave signal through a bass amp (or bass amp sim/modeller) for some real backside booting bass. Add distortion for crunchy rock bass, etc., etc., etc... Take a modelled nylon down an octave and you get an almost upright fatness and roundness. Best of all, unlike synth basses, they respond exactly to how you play - dig in and the sound gets brighter, snap or slap the string and the sound changes in kind, and all with no delay (or only very little if you use a digital pitch shifter).
I'll often filter out the highs of the octave signal with a lowpass filter, then it becomes like a sub frequency generator that basically adds extended low end to the sound without sounding like a second, bass guitar and has less effect on the higher strings than the lower. If the lows get muddy, I'll add in a high pass filter to the normal sound (at around the same cutoff point as the lowpass on the octave) to filter out the common frequencies.
Taking it even further, I often use the "12-string" part of my GR-55 to split the strings - shifting the bottom three down an octave, while shifting the top three
up an octave. Then it sounds like a bass on the low end and a mandolin on the upper end. Or the same on the low but just shift the top three a few cent sharp or flat (usually alternating) to fatten up the high strings when mixed with the original sound and without obvious detuning/chorus effects. If you're interested, I can capture a few examples for you...
Of course, these all make for wonderfully massive sounds, but are best suited to solo playing. They can be too big in a band mix.
Whoops... got carried away... :-[ ?
