PANTERA - HOW I PULL BIG BASS TONE

Shall we talk about Big Bass Tone???

I’m so proud of this cover. There really was a lot of thought that went into the final tone of this track, including thoughts like, am I fit enough to do a Pantera song justice?

I hope so.

Pantera are widely known for insanely heavy grooving, fat sounding riffs. Their musicality has always blown me away. The engineering and production on Far Beyond Driven is incredible.

Rex Brown always had a killer tone, so quite simply, this is my tribute. And I feel honoured to be releasing not only a cover, but also a video explaining exactly how I pulled this tone.

For me, when you’re doing a Pantera cover you can’t play soft which is great, as I naturally play aggressively. I had to do this justice with the correct amount of feel and aggression, without going overboard.

I wanted something original and innovative. I love tone innovation.

I’ve used my beautiful 2008 Warwick Custom Corvette. This bass has been quite popular on social media since this release of the clip of this track. I’m really happy about that, as it’s completely my own design.

It sounds killer, this is also the first time that I’ve used a ‘cab-sim’ (bass cabinet simulation) pedal. This is an incredible game changer for recording. It emulates the speaker movement as if you were miking up a cab. Technology at it’s finest, I’m a fan of using mic’s, but sometimes you don’t have the right room and set up to do this.

I work with Dylan Mitrovich closely on the mixes. I have a natural audio ear, but I don’t yet know how to physically obtain the sound through using the computer. I have always just explained this verbally. Dylan then gives me a bounce, and I work from there. This sometimes can take up to 7 or 8 bounces, as we are doing minor eq tweaks or level adjustments. Also for an engineer to be able to reach a sound from a verbal description means that they really know what they’re doing. This is an art in itself.

I’m critical on final mixes, once they are finalised there is no going back.

I’m super stoked with everything about this tone. I’ve had an awesome response globally, having appreciation shown, and questions asked about how it was obtained.

My passion is tone, so talking about it makes me one happy little Vegemite!

I hope you enjoy it.

Click here to view the video.

Kade