Double Bass Sound, Indeterminacy
Lately, I’ve been thinking about the trouble, opportunity, pitfall, hybridization of amplifying the double bass. Naturally, the instrument, given its size and acoustic peculiarities, often proves difficult to represent through amplification or recording. I say acoustic peculiarities due to its body, its bridge, the influence of the wood, the interior life of the instrument, the pegs, the tailpiece; each one of these components exists in an enmeshed, relative relationship to other components, and thus the sound of each double bass is quite unique. The fundamental problem, is identifying, with specificity, the characteristics of the tone as if they could be determined, isolated, known, as qualities produced by the double bass exclusively without the intervention of other apparatus.
Let us hold off on the previous problem. To begin my examination, the question must be asked: is the process of amplification or recording the bass intended, from its conception, to be in pursuit of an “accurate” acoustical image of the double bass’s sound, or something else? By accurate, I mean, does the instrument’s resultant sound, through its electronic processing, exist identical to the impression the sound makes when standing before it, either just louder or digitally captured? It seems to me that many times the double bass is amplified, it would appear as though the goal is indeed to make louder the “natural” sound of the instrument, the result of its enmeshed parts in sympathetic vibration, though I am skeptical of the philosophical or pragmatic possibility of such.
The trouble of the double bass tone is defining its source; our common conception of tone seems to be that the instrument intrinsically possess’s tone or the potentiation for tone, but in this thinking, we are overlooking a seeming indeterminacy. The instrument’s sound has been thought of a summing of parts, but again, I am skeptical that the parts themselves possess distinct qualities that may be “added” toward the composite sound. I think a better model is to consider (and this is the hard part), how the components’ qualities are to be realized in an enmeshment, enacting upon each other - no component can be said to simply “hold,” or “bear” a tonal characteristic…
It’s this intra-action that seems to be overlooked often; I’m reminded here of the debate that frequently occurs in electric guitar/electric bass circles regarding the influence of “tone wood” upon the resultant amplified tone of the instrument. Much of the discussion, thankfully, has moved beyond the supposed acoustically imparted qualities of mahogany versus alder in the amplified sound, toward a more reasonable consideration - the actual speaker, pickups, and amplification components themselves! In the process of wishing to reduce the complexity (in favor of mystical imaginings) of the interplay down to relatively few components (for simplicity, or sales, or status), the whole of the sounding apparatus is ignored.
The double bass, the conception of its sound as a tangible entity, here suffers (or benefits?) from our sudden acknowledgement of greater complexity; the instrument itself belayed by a morass of interlocking acoustic considerations - now the amplification apparatus must be considered in the pursuit of the acoustical image.
But again, in this process of making the instrument louder, the pickup/microphone influences the sound greatly as they are fed into the amplifier; already, a quest for a simple “loudening” of the acoustic image is beset with problems of an “observer effect,” reminiscent of Heisenberg or Bohr from a perspective on quantum physics. The coloration and influence of the pickup apparatus, the signal chain’s components, the amplification, the sound-board, plug-ins, will each and all color or alter the tone we are perceiving, to say nothing of our own neurological particulars…
Even then, the experience of the bass sounding is informed by the listener, the space, and the other listeners (if applicable). Indeed, the bass resonating alone in a space (if it were possible to experience) is still yet subtly different from the experience of just one person being in the room with the instrument, their body affecting the acoustical affordances of the space, these affordances themselves being unknowingly reflected, affected, back into the ears of the listener.
Bass tone, as we pursue it with an eye (ear) to “actual” representation, is still beholden to the same problems of quantum measurement and the effect of observation; in the process of instantiating, perceiving, or capturing an instrument’s sounding qualities, we introduce greater, intra-relational complexity into the system, whereby the simple elements we set out to measure are increasingly affected in a web of intra-relation. I use the term intra-relation to describe not just an interrelation, but rather intra-relation to illustrate the effect components have upon one another in a system, rather than some mere exchange of action. For more about intra-activity or intra-relation, see Karen Barad’s work, “Meeting the Universe Halfway.”
Thus, one component necessarily has an effect on the others - this simple thought experiment of amplification or recording has brought us to a Niels Bohr sort of indeterminacy; the tone of the instrument, altered by the presence of the listener, affected by the coloration of the microphone apparatus, dampened by the C-clamp (or other piezo pickup), is itself impossible to perceive, to know empirically, without some alteration. Perhaps, the best that can be imagined is a threshold of acceptable, or negligible, alteration, though in that process, we have to admit, to acquiesce, that the “truth” of a double bass’s tone is imperceptible, impossible, as a knowable quality or quantum.
Perhaps future developments in machine learning may yield a hypothetical sounding of “impossible” bass sounds, as if “balanced” through adequate training data, summing and “makeup” of microphone eccentricities, or perhaps neurological mapping of sound perception to be exported or reproduced elsewhere…