What do you use for Bass sounds?

hendrix2430

For those of you who don’t own a bass, what do you use for bass lines?

i use Logic, and whilst the bass loops / virtual instruments sound quite good, I’m curious about other plugins like EZbass which from the research have done sounds great. You can also import a DI guitar and convert it to bass within EZbass which is a nice feature.

Other plugins like Trillian, Modo seem good too. Lower end price wise would be something like Waves bass fingers (£30).

any experience with the aforementioned products? Thanks 

octatonic

Honestly, a decent used bass costs only slightly more than a plugin like Trilian.

But when I want to use a plugin I use Trilian for acoustic bass sounds.
I mostly go for synthetic bass sounds so I use my Moog Sub 37, various Eurorack modules, Elektron Analog IV or Arturia Matrixbrute for that.

PolarityMan

These look pretty awesome

https://www.submissionaudio.com/

Pretty sure they're made by Ermin of the Systematic mixing guide fame. 

Musicwolf

If I'm making a proper recording of an original song then I'll always use a real bass but, if it's one of the covers bands and I'm just putting together a backing track for practice or to demonstrate an arrangement, then I'll use NI Scarabee Rickenbacker VST.  I usually use a bass amp and compressor within Cubase rather than the ones that come with the Rick.

stratman3142

I often use a bass VSTi owing to the flexibility of being able to radically change bass types/sounds and to rapidly edit things in midi - especially for the backing tracks for the Solo of the Month Challenges (SotM).

I use Spectrasonics Trilian for acoustic/upright bass sounds or fretless bass sounds.

For everything else I use IK Modo Bass, and almost always use the P basses or J basses, even though I've got a real Squier PJ bass. The advantage of IK Modo bass is that (post recording) I can mess around with the dynamics, playing style, picking position, strings etc. I often start with the 'Leland' or 'Motown preset' and tweak from there.

A keyboard mod wheel can do a reasonable impersonation of a fretless in IK Modo Bass, but the pitch wheel moves things in semitones, which is realistic for a fretted bass but not for fretless. There's probably a setting somewhere I haven't found. The Trilian fretless sounds more realist to me, partly because the pitch wheel does genuine portamento.

I've also got the basses in NI Komplete Ultimate, but haven't really used those because I can usually find what I need from IK Modo bass or Trilian.

They can all sound great but if I had to pick one to emulate a fretted electric bass I'd go for IK Modo Bass - for user interface and tweakability.

Bill_S

I also use Trillion for acoustic and stand up bass. It’s a fantastic and deep program, and I use only a fraction of what it’s capable of. EZbass has been widely praised, and as someone who has used EZkeys extensively for years, I’ve no doubt it’s a great program, but despite my limitations as a bass player, I have too much fun playing a bass guitar and have resisted buying EZbass. 

Danny1969

I would also say just get a bass. I have a cheap Vintage (the brand ) bass that you can pick up for around £90 but it's active and sounds great just plugged straight in. All I use is some compression to even out my playing dynamics. I've borrowed friends basses but none of them sound as good just plugged in as this one. 

hendrix2430

Thanks guys - I don't want to buy a bass, too much clutter already! Best is if I demo some stuff... what I like about EZbass on paper is that in theory, I can create and edit bass parts without a keyboard. All I need is my DI-ed guitar which serves as a base for editing. And from the demos, it seems to recognise slides / hammer ons etc.

andy_k

There's a free bass vst from Ample sound I think, which works pretty good, but I got Eurobass, which needs Kontakt player-the free version, Eurobass has clean and distorted sounds, great for Lemmy stuff.

PolarityMan

Danny1969 said:

I would also say just get a bass. I have a cheap Vintage (the brand ) bass that you can pick up for around £90 but it's active and sounds great just plugged straight in. All I use is some compression to even out my playing dynamics. I've borrowed friends basses but none of them sound as good just plugged in as this one. 

Id echo this though. Playing the bass in is just much quicker as well as producing better results. 

pintspiller

You'll get realistic baselines if you use a bass, rather than playing lines on guitar using bass strings and having them played by a virtual instrument in your DAW.

MooseAboot

My bass is out on loan just now so I would give another recommendation for Ample sound's free player.  You can dial in fret noise and tell it rules about how to treat notes played on the same string etc.  Together with the MT power drum kit that I learned about here, this has been good for my uses

andy_k

I like Ample, but it had its limitations for me, I play in E flat, so it sometimes wouldn't go low enough, I saw a demo of Eurobass, and it looked perfect, it relies on Kontakt though ( at least its the free version ), which is a bit of a resource hog for me,  so I render to audio and treat it as a DI and an amp, 2 tracks, 2 settings.

Fez

I have Scarbee but I don't like it that much and find I can get as good a result using the camel vst free from CM layering both can work well.