Last month I had a small tour with Des mots sur mesure VI. Érick, the sound guy, is someone I’ve worked with a fair amount, both before and after my switch to fifths, and I trust his ears – I’ve always had good sound with him. At the end of the tour we spoke about how mixing a double bass tuned in fifths is different.

In most styles of music, the bass (electric or upright) and the kick drum are playing roughly the same thing, and usually they’re mixed so that the bass provides the attack and the pitch, and the kick drum provides the resonance (jazz is different, because the two instruments play different roles). What this means is that the bass is usually EQ’d in a way that the low and low-mid frequencies are rolled off a bit.

Well, Érick found that with my bass in fifths, there was more than enough pitch and resonance, so he switched the roles. He EQ’d the kick drum to provide more attack (rolling off the low and low mids), while my bass was flat except for rolling off the 60dB range a little bit. He was a big fan of my new sound!