Where have all the synth bass lines gone?

[SODDI]

My humble opinion. Sounds were much thinner and lighter in the 80s. Therefore, the beats ''bounced'' well. There was a real sense of movement in the rhythm section. If you used todays ultra-phat sounds to create ''80's style music'', the ingredients would be different. It just wouldn't work on the same level.

Synth bass was more prevalent in black dance music, often doubled with a standard electric bass, like in Parliament/Funkadelic - that's Bernie Worrell and Bootsie Collins. Cameo is another good example. but I have no idea who played that.

Prince - there's little on his early albums that wasn't synth and wasn't played by him.

Michael Jackson's "Off the Wall", "Thriller" and "Bad" all have superb synth bass lines mixed down in there. And yes, the synth bits and production are the only reason I listen to his stuff.

If you listen to some of the better hip-hop, that ubiquitous 808-style bass drum is a synth bassline.

But AOR (or as Chuck D called it, "Apartheid-Oriented-Radio") isn't going to play it. That's a good place to explore more.

[Aloysius]

So, would you say that the live bass (and live hats which were also often used) created the real groove?

[SODDI]

I think it varies, piece by piece.

Take a good listen to the big wonderful unruly mess that is Funkadelic's "Flashlight" - I think it's the drum machine clap and the synth bass (Bernie Worrell or Bootsie) propelling that groove. In Michael Jackson's "Thriller", it's kick drum, clap and synth bass.

[Aloysius]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6F7xbF7OnxU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZEHsIcsjtdI

[Girolad]

The text below actually forms Part 2 of a 3-part article I wrote here.

After hearing thousands of tracks from late 80s onward, in particular dance music, the author was aware that something had changed in the workflow somewhere and that generally recent music lacked bottom, or grunge as it's otherwise known. Uncovering the above information clarified this to an extent.

Over the decades digital was always about lower and lower noise floor which is silly considering how good a 'noisy' master tape or a decent vinyl can sound. To put it into perspective, the best tape recorders, those prodigious machines, had noise 72dB down, the digital equivalent of '12bit'. Twelve bits of silence. Signal-to-noise ratio, SNR, so happens to reflect how loud one would need to have a system play to hear such noise. Most people would agree that 80dB is deafeningly loud in a living room and that is on par with 13 bit, give or take 3 bits dependent on frequency. 8bit is equivalent to noise on a cassette tape, radio or a car engine at idle. 24bit is the standard today, indeed it is overkill.

In short - digital boffins and marketing got carried away with specs in converters.

Suppose one provides these people with an industrial-grade measurement device that is more accurate than the consumer-grade converter their measuring, what is one left with? Endless cycle of improvement, usually at the price of quality if on a budget.

The possibility of grunge getting anywhere near the digital domain (inside the PC) has been measured out of existence and eliminated virtually.

The answer to this is easy if one focuses on the transition from all-electrical to all-digital workflow.

To be general, the earliest non-digital gear consisted of a confined arrangement of modular electrical components in sections, accessible via messy patching cables. After this, the transistor enabled solid state logic with OR/AND gates. Logic = on/off. An automated mixer with a drop of logic:

Neater, versatile yet big and expensive. Lots of components - lots of noise normal in terms of analog, 'abnormal' with respect to digital. As we know it's impossible to eradicate noise in an analog medium/path to the extent modern converters and the digital domain pulls off today.

But try telling the boffins, sales and marketing execs back at the lab that!

1990 marks the half-way point of this transition. Digital infused with analog. Sample editors (Akai S1000), drum machines (SP-12), digital synthesizers (EMU Emax), of this era sit between fully electrical synthesizers of 1970 and computers of today loaded with 'software' imitations.

These early 'computers' had a sound owed to grungy sounding, highly resolved, no compromise, money of no object, 'under-sampled' multi-bit conversion. These are the missing link in the authors own opinion - Thermal (Johnson) noise were all over the these devices naturally, as the converter chips used were whole fully electrical, mostly made of electrical components and few had programmed filters.

Add a creative individual, vinyl samples, tape, patience and we have the birth of every recognizable 90s euphonic dance and hip-hop track ever made. (look up euphonic)

Not essential but for a taste of what 'electrical' digital should sound like listen to the first few seconds of these tracks which were digital effects, finalized on tape;

Jimi Polo - Better Days
Liberty City - Some Lovin
Monie Love - The Power (Roach Motel Heavy Dub)

It's a unique 'hum', very typical sound of the under-sampled chips. Speakers, amplifiers and the ears, love it.

While one can achieve brilliant, low grungy effects with 90s gear via the converters in that gear, which one would record into a sound card there is one flaw to this approach and that is the converter chip on the sound card or recording interface itself.

What's wrong with sampling old synths with a modern gear?

1. In most cases the converter chip on it is fragile in comparison to multi-bit MONSTER found in the 90s equipment capable of more electrical accuracy (It's coming for reader and reader knows it). Unless the recorded sound consists of harp plucks or rain drops - the sound card is under threat.

2. Jokes aside, it validates the possibility of linear phase sound, as stated in part 1.

The old converters were incredibly advanced for their time, had a noise floor not that much lower to that of any typical analog signal path (tape, vinyl) and packed with intensively arranged analog components.

Here's the internal of a 14bit electrical digital to analog converter, the same network is used in reverse for analog to digital. 16 bit is much more complex than this and 20bit is the brink of what is physically and humanly possible.

No DSP boffinry just pure analog wizardry.

The trend today is of course superficial oversampling 'delta sigma' chips for multi-rate ADC and DAC function on one chip, highly integrated, small and cheap.

At first they appear to be sophisticated signal dicing machines and boast a 'theoretical' 24bits on paper, yet upon closer inspection only through programmed 'SNR enhancement' techniques do they accomplish this. They rarely convey 10, let alone 24bits of discrete amplitude information. This is contrary to older multi-bit converters because chip manufacturers avoid the input resolution to cut costs. Input resolution is the defining factor of quality from a creative point of view as far as bass, or any signal goes. Therefore oversampling is nothing more than a cheaper alternative, read; detoured departure from the 'classic', electrical approach. One can buy a 24bit recording device for a tenner on eBay today.

For an idea of how bits relate to resolution (quality);

When a 10 volt music signal is applied to a 20bit converter, it can weigh the signal every 0.00000953674Volts, or simply 0.0095mV. 16bit is 0.15mV and 8bit is least precise at 39mV.

In a multi bit converter, less values means more noise (worse SNR), caused by the electrical components that flicker in the converter, when weighing (or constructing) signals - Electrical to Digital and D to E conversion respectively.

Switching noise can be made less noticeable if 'static-like noise' is added at the input of converters, to help 'randomize' switches during conversion. Another trick is to switch (sample) at a higher rate. This was not an option with CD at the time because of its limited data storage capacity and higher rates demand more capacity.

Oversampling, instead, samples at a rate much higher than CD initially, then filters the digitized snapshot to fit on CD. Because these converters work at faster rates, SNR is increased drastically because noise power is 'spread' over a wider bandwidth (bandwidth is proportional to sample rate). Furthermore, not only is noise added to the input like it can be in multi bit conversion, in oversampling its also 'shaped' so that most of the added noise lies outwith the audible range (beyond 20khz) before being decimated to a lower rate with a programmed filter.

Because oversampling enables such drastic gains in SNR, it is/was exploit(ed) to minimize input resolution to compensate, sometimes down to as low as 1bit. Another benefit is that the increased capture bandwidth afforded by sampling higher initially, relaxes the requirements of counter part analog filters. In under-sampled multi bit systems, filters are steep, more complex and therefore expensive (if and only if the rate is low, if restricted by CD back then). As such; Oversampling prevails today even though transmission speeds / storage are in abundance and no longer the bottle neck! Its an out of date practice and its only benefits are low cost, marginally higher SNR and higher chance of linear sound).

So over the years boffins traded this resolution or electrical precision simply put - the expensive part - to outsell competition by clever means of 'oversampling', noise shaping in the digital domain to boost SNR specs and the majority, non the wiser went with it. Although the boffins have more recently come to their senses and converters do now have input resolution of around 9bits only, if it's sound with core one seeks, look no further than ancient hardware. It can be cheap considering the significance of the tech inside them, most people throw this stuff out thinking its junk!

Why have poundstretcher bass when one can have industrial grade bass?

Beware that the second generation of commercially available digital devices (1990 onward) like DAT Recorders, had a highly linear, bitstream modulator with 1bit input followed by a 16bit and eventually 24bit output. The input resolution was minimized here probably because manufacturers realized how much they could fork off the first generation, which sold for about £3000 /$3700 in today's money.

"Bitstream (1990) was therefore intended to be used in low-cost and portable players, the company saying that they would remain with their TD1541-based chip set for high-performance players."

This quote describes playback but the principle was applied in reverse too.

The author is not ware of any sound card today that isn't a 9bit 'delta-sigma-multi bit hybrid'. The trick is to identify the chip on it and cross reference the datasheet online. The minute one reads the words delta-sigma - it's not monolithic.
The take home from this second part is that '24bit' (and more recently 32) as seen plastered everywhere today only represents the depth programmed filters operate at computationally after/prior to conversion, and that from an electrical standpoint it has no connection with the precision or resolution of a converter.

The reader may be aware that creative applications can indeed work at up to 64bit resolution internally today and now realize they cannot fully harness this ability with an oversampling converter. If one does use a multi bit converter, software still cannot match that of old hardware with reasons as to why detailed in part 3.

[fluffy_little_something]

That is a rather technical view, I don't know how much influence those developments have had on bass lines. In other words, I don't know if the change has more to do with technical trends or with musical trends.

I can make old-skool bass lines using Sylenth and my cheap Mixcraft DAW, i.e. completely in the digital domain.

Maybe hardware sequencers played a certain role in classic synth bass lines. But since DAW's allow for perfect bass lines these days, maybe people think it is cheap to even make them and thus don't.

[KushiQ]

I´m a little bit impressed about the Post´s here. Very technical and sophisticated about Sound design and thoughts about the Sound of Bass today, more aggressive, deeper, brighter, modulate and wobbling along.

And really a lot of groovy 80´s Basslines here.
In the 80´s I worked as a DJ and so it was interesting and important to check out, which Beat & Bassline Combination works "the sucker to death" , or brings the People to the floor. The Cameo Tracks, MJ´s Tracks, for example "Smooth Criminal", or the "Way you make me feel", sounds very well in the Club. This one also comes very cool.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTN4sQRlPj0

[fluffy_little_something]

SOS Band were cool, I had several of their albums I always liked the powerful intro and bass on that song, only the lyrics are silly, not as silly as on Just the way you like it, though

[Nspace]

here's what I think: The character of the bass has changed - in pop especially, it's gone more from being melodic/harmonic in it's own right, and is utilized more just as a bottom, or an effect (this effect typically only being wub-wub ). This probably has a lot to do not only with changes in audio equipment but the influence of edm - what's happening in the subs is more important, and most importantly, the bass is no longer contributing to the mids.
One way to really hear this is to listen to modern vs. 80s pop on a laptop or phone speaker. Listening to "Happy" or "Shake it Off", for example, you'd be hard pressed to even hear the bass, so it hardly influences the character of the song.
"Billy Jean" however....
I'll use my Madonna / Borderline example again ('cause I'm having a little love-fest with it right now): That song was written by Reggie Lucas, who played jazz guitar with Miles Davis and wrote / produced R&B (...)- it's brilliant, and you can clearly hear it on virtually any equipment at mid-low volume since it's got punch and content in the mids. It contributes greatly to the harmonic and even melodic content of the song.
That "Borderline" bass was played by Anthony Jackson by the way - a consummate session player, and the line doubled (brilliantly) on synth bass. It's a modified ARP 2600 (...)
So you've got an experienced R&B / jazz musician-producer writing/producing, brilliant session bass player, and guy who knows his synths contributing. Now listen to "Shake it Off" again. Swift is talented, but that bass is lazy.

In my view JoeCat points towards much of the central problems with Basslines in the 80s, 90s and XIX. I outlined what consider his main ideas in black.
Sound systems are a biggie. Right at 87 with the new tide emerging from Yazz's "The only way is up" and evidently so at 88 and over the 90s, Discoteques all over Europe started installing large SUBs and many of them placed on the ground while still having Mids + Highs hanging from the ceiling or from 2nd floors. This way, systems were able to cope with the extra Bass early 80s systems couldn't handle, and music was pushing to deliver.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhZdL4J ... hZdL4JlnxI

Reviewers still resist to the idea, but DM's Violator album changed it all, If anything, because it showed worldwide what could be accomplished in several ways (soundwise too, its basslines being a superb fusion as Joecat described). Again and again amazes me how many musicians -after that- still fail to learn what was so easily spilled just in front of them. Not in obscure genres or tracks but in Top 10 plain sight.
And No, nope; despite how many truths Girolad shares in his post above about DACs and 100% digital (one of my dear subjects for long), it is not relevant to the matter IMHO. If anything, the way the musicians actually -hands on- play the basslines are way more important than the recording gear used. And this gets me to the so far missed argument, one that shows how we were inflicted (musically) with a longstanding drought of good bass and apparently many want to remain in oblivion about it.
//During the 80s, before to that, and gradually ceasing on the 90s and over the 00s, musicians mostly gathered to create music in the way of an ENSEMBLE. Yes, you joined your pals and got along with the jam, set or followed directions or invited the session players in. Nowadays the wiz kids (sorry if this gets you) just turn on the DAW, line the virtual instruments, press a few buttons and keys and voilá, the track is born.
And now we come here talking about what is lost... about basslines!!
What about responsos of double bass? what about pick or slap playing? melodic variations, personal cadenzas and all?
Gone, lost.
(now many reading will probably scrap this post) Until... Dubstep.
Yes, dubstep and its 4 timbres switching woobling bassliness are amongst the few (only?) advancements basslines have seen in two decades!
They ended right when D&B and Psytrance forgot they were about exploration and evolution and started to be rigid frameworks... minutely morphed for best impact, but hardly creative at all, and many new generation musicians bought (and still do) the framework and lost the essence... because getting to do music as ensembles do, has been hard for wiz kids commanding keyboards, complex MIDI setups, even with Max or whatever virtual aid so far has surfaced.
Not that its impossible and the act of getting conscience about this may be a step up, not that ensembles had stopped evolving at the same time too; Mike Patton with John Zorn live show comes to mind. But well, seems that there were loner geniuses all along the road proving you can do it well whilst mostly alone. When are we gonna learn?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUCsxF4eokM

*The Mountain High Album version with the vocals seems to be untractable online

[jupiter8]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zo6UnKr6Bwg

[fluffy_little_something]

I know that Yazz song you mentioned, never thought much of it, seemed quite mediocre. I like her Fine Time song, though.

So you think Europe killed synth bass lines, to put it short?

[Nspace]

I know that Yazz song you mentioned, never thought much of it, seemed quite mediocre. I like her Fine Time song, though.

Yeah, I sort of felt the same about "...way is up" on my first listens. Where was the funky bass I was sorely missing around that time? That was late 80s, when only a few years before Sledgehammer got to number 1s all over, with funky basslines to the masses. Grace Jones, Simply Red and plenty of Pop World was also doing it, while the New Wavers turned Techno kept searching for new tricks and so adopted the gimmicky (and thin) synthetic drumming.
If on anything, Girolad's bit argument in the 80s was in effect on the Synth wars, that confronted the analogue side with the 8-bit Fairlights on the digital trench... Novel sounds, even FFT access versus simpler sound with extra body. As always, the answer resides on focusing on the experience, typically using what is available (both) as Quincy Jones and others did.
I am pointing more to the switch from the 80s sound into the 90s cradle of emergent sonic styles. So yes, many 80s songs sound rather "thin" compared with 70s or 90s ones, but you have to situate yourself on the actual dancefloor to see/hear the real picture/track back then:
No Line arrays, little sound absorption tools and comparatively noisy and boomy speakers meant a lot of the Basslines got lost on phase cancellations, sound modes and reverberances.

As a kid back then (musically enthralled kid, that was), I was at a Balearic disco for first time with those big SUBs on the floor, then this thin Yazz track starts pulsing its beat and synth groove line as late 80's usual fare, soon comes the verse and then a bit jazzy chorus (it's called House for a reason) which raised my extra defenses, comes twice and goes, and right there when you think nothing happened, it gets to MAGIC min 1:27 briefly when 2nd verse starts, or (again) it materialises at 2:36 or more obviously at 2:45, and that is when I got it! Yes, it does work. It did work all over the plethora of Mediterranean Paradise or else called discos, that were fast in adopting separated SUBs on the floor. Incidentally these required Multiamped systems with active crossovers, that produced 1,6 times the power of old passive ones of the same total wattage.
But the magic I was trying to portray is not because of more SPL; it is something few could have guessed. Let's go back to the 88 disco, big Beats pumping the floor and suddenly...its the Highs! which just seconds before were on the verge of boring, transformed themselves into a calm snowing, and a welcomed shower into the dancefloor, all coming from above. There I understood those thin but piercing hihats and the general lack of middle body on a typical house composition. Check that track again and reequalize your monitors to enhance bass and highs, cranck the SUB to fill the room and imagine the highs coming from above, "The only way is up" sounds wonders!
Good, I realized, I could dance again to those bass lame tracks (crowding radios and discos at the turn of the decade), I'm a dancer after all.
Nevertheless, i was happy to soon discover the Brixton Bass and some other BASS-interesting music lanes on the 90s.
At some point someone at RA will wise up and put together the recollections from the real people behind all that, and tell the story, if that hasn't happened already?

So you think Europe killed synth bass lines, to put it short?

Europe was where music evolution was happening on the 80s and the 90s too dance-wise.
I'd advise to let aside the geographical discussion, because Detroit or Chicago... let's leave it aside.
But no, I would not put it that short, let me recap an outline, in no particular order (most ideas by JoeCat):
-Bass has changed, it's gone more from being melodic/harmonic in it's own right, (being) utilized more just as a bottom, or an effect. In Pop, but it is the same with the influence of EDM, the bass is no longer contributing to the mids. It is rather conflicting with the overpowering beats and so was taken out of the equation.
-You've got an experienced R&B / jazz musician-producer writing/producing, brilliant session bass player, PLUS guy who knows his synths contributing. Now they are not there (probably can't afford it). Btw explains the recent return of Nile Rodgers.
-Sound systems are a biggie. Large SUBs deployment often in triamplified sound systems, whereas 4amplified systems are what BASS needs to return to big stages.1 way for Beats, 2, for Bass, 3 on middles and 4 in highs. Line arrays repeat the triadic structure; SUBs on the floor and then the lines, not good for BASS, not as good as a 2nd dedicated deployment of BASS 120 to 400/600 Hz speakers (got carried away ).
-ENSEMBLE lost or call it the software/programming new generations of wizards, that had grown up not knowing about jams and sessions with all kinds of players and they wish they could do everything on their iPads (just kidding, but you get the idea).
-Lets not forget the actual BASS instrument, in all of its acoustic versions, has way up more possibilities to command its playing than most midi controllers, keys or pads, and this substantially shows in the basslines. Add the minute ns swing timming differences and you've just got another relevant factor.
-Underground innovators (D&B and Psytrance, I am pointing to myself here) forgot they were about exploration and evolution and started to abide by rigid frameworks... where Basslines relevance got behind sound impacting -by perceived SPL- and so every production or perception trick you could get hold of is being used. This way, you come next to the DJ that was rocking the floor, and you Bring IN MORE sound impact, which with the mentioned sound system limitations, meant so far boring one-two notes rolling basses or broadband noise to "fill" the scape.

That is in short, hope you like it... really.
And let's get out, shall we?

[Timfonie]

Another well known 80's song of which the synth bass line is very present and typical:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=weMrzt6W8V8

[fluffy_little_something]

@nspace

Just listened to that song on YT, I didn't detect any moment of magic, it is just crap music in my view...
Shannon used a similar bass years before on Let the music play. That song was much more interesting musically.

[vurt]

best bassline ever is the wonder woman tv show theme
/thread.