I’m looking for an AU plugin to treat my bass tracks.
In this case, i’m speaking about bass tracks played on a guitar thru an octaver. The sound is a bit robotic somehow (although it sounds realky convinving on big sound systems).
Please don’t try to tell me to do otherwise that’s how it is for this project.
I’m looking for recommendations, wether it’s a free or paid plugin to come closer to the sound or a real bass or at least to work on the bass part if the spectrum. I’m on Logic Pro.
Check out toontrack EZ Bass. I’ve never tried the bass but the drums are very good.
Didn’t tried EZ Bass but i can confirm about quality of drums and keys.
EZ Bass seems more performance oriented regarding it’s tools and after checking the specs, i don’t see that many option for sound design ( as in Basic EZ Drums and EZ Keys)
I can speak about MODO Bass from IK Multimedia and it’s advantages versus EZ Bass :
it uses physical modelling for the sounds, so it doesn’t need to weight a ton in disk space for the number of model it offers (around 20 models)
You can choose strings type/age mic type/placement, number of strings ( so you can turn the Macca Hofner bass with six strings)
There is basic amp/stomp boxes already included and some options about playing styles.
I’m very happy with the results.
EZ may be better sound wise but MODO is more tweakable and apparently version 2 offers a pattern/performance mode ( i have version 1)
There is a free version available.
One thing that looked super cool with EZ Bass is you can upload a guitar recording and it will translate it to midi.
Yeah i saw that .
But my terrible human playing skills makes this option not that useful in my case.
My few attempts with Ableton Audio To Midi proved that i should use Midi from start :
Quicker and better results, less pain and humiliation.
But yes it’s a possible plus for EZ.
I don’t have the full version of live but in standard and suite you can also convert audio to midi if that’s an option that’s already available on the local hard drive (a lot of people seem to already have ableton).
Converting Audio to MIDI — Ableton Reference Manual Version 11 | Ableton
I got a free trial of Virtual Bassist DANDY by UJAM when I bought my audio interface and it looked cool when I checked it out but I have to be honest that I haven’t had a reason to dig into it and I think it might be less useful than converting your guitar playing to midi notes.
Anyways, Ujam also has a flat wound strings plug in that might be worth looking at and they do have 30 day free trials on all their plug ins so if you wanted to take a look at what they have here’s the link:
Maybe I’m misunderstanding your question but if you think eq-ing your bass (‘the spectrum’?) might work, this can be helpful. There is a free trial and it’s discounted at the mo:
I did bass this way, in a live context, for years, using an EHX POG 2…
The trick to getting a convincing bass guitar sound was to mix in the raw guitar signal about 20 percent, then run the whole thing through some light tube saturation and drive, notch the EQ around 400 Hz, with a subtle amount of chorus to mask the inherent warble of the octaver.
Your mileage may vary…
Cheers!
Not sure why adding some raw sound of the guitar since it would add more of these fresuencies i am already willing to notch out.i shall try your recommandations though, did not thin about chorus as a mask.
It wirks for live recordings as such (i’m also using a micro pog) but for recordings it has this robot like sound u wanna get rid of.
I might have been confusing: i’m not looking for an instrument plugin but for a plugin to treat the sound especially targetting bass. I know how to play guitar and i suck at programming with midi and don’t wanna spend hours to get back all the natural articulations of a natural playing.
…if we’re not talking about realtime results, u could always copy ur bass line recordiings and pitch that down in a dedicated layering track…carve the low and hi end out to ur liking with an eq, put both signals on a summing bus and compress/ treat them together as one, same signal again…
advantage here, since octavers, even the tight ones, always end up a bit sluggish and gnarly when it comes to timing sensitive content…and in most cases they provide “just” a whole octave, which pushes ur overall frequency out of the “peerfect” lowest possible octave in the low end spectrum, which leads to suboptimal translation in ur overall spectrum…
by adding the same recording, ur always free to pick pitch adjustments in closer harmony relations, like 5th or 3rds, and ur not bound to fixed settings, since each note can walk in individually pitched ways…always comforting/doubling the original signal in an optimized way alongside ur bass line…higher notes can go down all the way of a full octave, whie other just go down a 5th…for example…
no dedicated plugins needed…just what u already got, respectively what logic can offer by default…
or u just turn ur audio into midi and add a synth to play along with ur bass.line…