My best Bass Virtual Instrument VST: Spectrasonics - Trilian. Ample Sound - Ample Bass Fender Precision, Waves - Bass Slapper,IK Multimedia - Modo Bass, Toontrack - EZbass

I would take a good sounding guitar from Ample Sound. Then I would edit the sound with, for example:
- Blue Cat Audio - Re-Guitar, the virtual guitar pickup & body replacement
- Blue Cat Audio - Axiom, the guitar multi effects
- IK Multimedia - AmpliTube 5, Nembrini Audio - Guitar FX, Overloud - TH-U Complete

Maybe I would replace the bass guitar with a synthesizer bass. It depends on the type of music. For rock a bass guitar for electronic music a synthesizer bass. @Molly_Lee

 

Last edited: Jun 23, 2021

I tried to edit the poll but can not edit the existing Scarbee Rickenbacker/P.Bass, so I just added P.Bass as an extra.

 

What kind of music / style do you want to do?

 

I have so many styles that I like but at the moment am trying rock and grunge style music and some folk style with country twists. Just a lot of experimenting really.

 

You can buy a criminally cheap bass nowadays for $200 and get away with decent results, maybe even less if you buy second hand. It will sound a lot more human if you plan to use bass for character and not just supporting the root note of your composition.

If it's for the latter then you can get away with just about anything on that list, just don't expect easy and quick results. Anything except Shreddage & Heavier7Strings, because aren't those metal guitar libraries and not bass libraries? Maybe I'm wrong and they have bass content. I don't know I don't really use either.

Just keep in mind bass is a lot more of a physical instrument than guitar so you can get away with being more aggressive if you want to pull out more character out of your basslines. These libraries get the tone right but leave so much to be desired in terms of fluid natural playing to match how you want to write.

 

Trey Gunn playing a Warr Guitar. Or Tony Levin and a Chapman Stick. Friend of mine back home owns a Stick and he’s a beast. Ufff!!!!

Love to read this thread and learn from you guys.

 

Well, I'm looking forward to it - hope you send us a link with your music - Happy create.

You can play a guitar side or bass side with your thumb or you can use an opening pick, which is like night and day. Mark Knopfler from Dire Straits plays with his fingers - it just sounds better. Good amplifiers, good pickups, good effects, good sides, good space and listening and playing practice are important. In short, if you don't know how to use the instrument, its amplifiers and settings, you'd better use a plugin or a wav sample.

Today, for example, the company IK Multimedia - AmpliTube 5 offers you the All In One package for 200 EUR. Keyword "The analog becomes digital". Today you can replace a whole band on the computer as a single person. You don't need to rent a practice room and isolate the room from noise. You don't need to advertise in the newspaper Basser wanted ... And that the drummer cheats on your girlfriend is also history. I am in favor of dealing with the plugins and learning to use them. I also realize that a good song is difficult.

The quality assurance, i.e. the sound quality, is all the more important since the charts or top 100 have been reflecting the misery for years. On the one hand, the labels want to earn money, on the other hand, talent should be promoted. So someone who can write the music, the label is looking for the studio musicians and a singer talent competition then condemns the singer to learn the lyrics and the melody, so that it becomes a song that can be silvered.

But somehow it has nothing to do with music as soon as I understand it. Oh yes sorry some video producer will then make a video that should hit the nerves of life of the young people, you all know what it looks like. Zero content, zero message, pure stupidity.
Maybe it will be like the band "Latin Quarter" once did. You have created an LP across several countries and continents. The drummer sent his tracks to the guitarist and he sent his tracks to the singer and so on and vice versa.

 

I agree to a point. Definitely if you have a smaller ensemble in mind in composing, say a 4 piece band/ensemble because it becomes more evident that it may be a machine processing it due to it lacking the raw humanness associated with that style of playing as it's not perfect and the machine is. In larger ensembles notsomuch. I have heard some demos that are certainly convincing enough to be believable.

It is these days much like working with a lot of the string ensembles and orchestral ensembles in sampled format. You have to learn the individual nuances via keyswitch or MIDI controller to get the most out of them. Straight out of the box not every library does everything without spending the time to learn the intricacies. The Hein libraries for example you have to spend the time learning the controllers. Same with Amplesound and many others mentioned here to get the most out of them. It all depends on how important a specific library is to you and how much time you can afford to allocate, or for that matter, want to allocate. That's why the Project Sam Symphobia series was initially so popular because straight out of the box they have usable and playable patches with a smaller learning curve. That's why EZBass is a popular choice with some people, a small learning curve. For me, I'd prefer a larger learning curve with greater flexibility and more nuances, but that's a personal choice.

It is important to have a working knowledge of how an instrument works when played by a musician too in order to get a degree of authentic believability. For example, for a keyboard player to come close to making a guitar sample library sound real, they need to fully understand the voicing structure of a guitar and that they probably would never play a chord the way it is on a guitar (with some exceptions). So learning the 'how' an instrument is played, voiced, the attack principles etc etc etc go a long way to making any sample library sound semi-realistic. This goes for all libraries. Same with basslines. A seasoned bassist can often tell almost immediately when a keyboard player has written the bassline in a moving line because they'd never play it that way naturally.

 

Last edited by a moderator: Jun 23, 2021

This is somewhere along the lines of my thinking, I write songs and sing a little, I play guitar but don't have the funding to record myself professionally. I know as well as anyone that the real thing probably can't be beat, but the purpose of this thread is to find the next best thing to the real thing or as close as possible...for a poet and a one man (or woman) band.
Also whether that be saving up to buy a used instrument or mixing with high quality virtual instruments.

 

Ah - do not let the manufacturers lead you to believe this as Gospel. Billie Eilish did her first CD in a small room of her house with her brother.
You can learn to record yourself professionally. This site and the sister site have plenty of tutorials on how to do that. One of the moderators @No Avenger knows more than most people would in two lifetimes down to the smallest intricacies of the technology and how to get the most out of whatever you are using. PM him, he's a great guy. I am sure he will show you that what you have may already be enough and point you to places where you can find what you need if something else is needed if you do not have everything. Sounding professional is not the same as owning professional gear.

 

But I could.

 

A lot of useful things have been written here, I'll ad my point of view (and keep it short).

Which of these VSTi basses is best for you also depends on the sound and it's versatility. If a sampled one covers your needs soundwise, ok, but if you need several different sounds I'd go for MODO because it's analogue modelling. You can edit a bunch of settings which contribute to the sound in a way you just can't edit with a sampled bass.

Whether to 'use' a bassist (or a bass) or a VSTi depends on your requirements, your skills and time. A skilled bassist (not the ones flying around here - just kidding) is way faster than editing all the nuances for a VSTi (micro timing aka groove, velocity, note length, glides, pitch bends, all the modulations...). So, if the bass plays a prominent role in your tracks, nothing beats a human player. If it has mainly a supporting role, a VSTi will do fine.

Since you are not a bass player, as you said yourself, I would skip the idea of recording your own bass in the near future. That doesn't mean to stop you from buying one, practise, have fun and record it in a few years, ofc.

 

That's too kind, but I'm neither the only one here who has this knowledge, nor the best.

 

Someone asked why EZBass is so popular. It's because it's not called 'Difficult Bass'

Whether that is true or not, you are here nearly every day which makes you more than most people on here - Accessible

 

Doesn't work, the notes are translated to the according strings. Therefore you can only play as many notes as the instrument has strings - the appropriate note spacing provided.

 

In legato mode absolutely. When a sample developer makes it polyphonic, it then makes chords possible. If the developer thought about it more they would do exactly what you suggest. Even if they only sample the average maximum range of a 6-string bass from Low B to High C, in polyphonic mode I have heard a keyboardist make chords from it that are completely unplayable on any bass. There is no hand/finger stretch long enough or wide enough to reach the chords he created. It also no longer sounded like a bass. That's why I suggested the importance of learning the natural nature of every instrument being used.
One day in the not too distant future, I reckon they will consult players of the instruments more and prevent any polyphony from doing something that no player of that instrument can play. Like jumping from the lowest to the highest note twice in one second consistently and flawlessly. Feasible on a piano but not on bass. Basic physics - distance with one hand for any note (not counting tapping) versus a piano having one hand on each note.

 

A couple more Jazzy Uprights..

Acoustic Bass Premier, seems very Authentic and Refined:
https://premiersoundfactory.com/acoustic-bass-premier-g/

Back Beat Bass, not as refined but more Punchy perhaps:
http://www.artvista.net/back_beat_bass.html

 

My point was that a virtual instrument removes the limitation inherent in a real instrument which opens up new avenues of creativity. If the vst instrument has the same limitations as a real instrument simply create two instances of it, two tracks or more... Of course the limitations are removed the same with with a real instrument too. I recall watching Mark King with Level 42 back in the '80s performing live - incredible player, made to sound even more impressive (to a perhaps unaware audience at least) as he used a bass sequencer and played over the top of it; still impressive considering he was also singing...

 

I don't like your list at all. Only Ample Sound I find quite good.
You forgot the best^^

SubMission Audio (Eurobass II, DJINN Bass....)
Odeholm Audio (The Inferno Bass, The Avalanche Bass...)
Solemn Tones (The Loki Bass, Kraken)
Colossal Bass (Colossal Bass II)
Spartan Sound Studios (Bass of the Gods)

My favorite here is the Eurobass II for Metal and Ample Metal R for Rock/Metal!
I find the EZbass pretty lousy, as well as the Trillian and Modo Bass, etc.

 

Last edited: Jun 23, 2021

You forgot to add 'for Metal'. But

maybe explains why these are not listed?

BTW, for Metal your list is really good.