Acoustica User Forums

Hi,

Have an electric bass but what's the best way to emulate the sound of a bowed double bass please? I toyed with the idea of a bass guitar 'gizmo' but these look glitchy to me - all those cogs spinning round.

Any ideas please - apart from buying a double bass that is!

Thanks

kr236rk wrote:Hi,

Have an electric bass but what's the best way to emulate the sound of a bowed double bass please? I toyed with the idea of a bass guitar 'gizmo' but these look glitchy to me - all those cogs spinning round.

Any ideas please - apart from buying a double bass that is!

Thanks

I don't think there's any good way to get your (presumably) fretted electric bass to sound like a double bass, especially a bowed one. If you get a volume pedal and a slide you can get a more bowed-like sound. An example of this is a bassist called Janek Gwizdala, who uses an octave pedal and gets a very violin-like tone.
In this video he isn't using a slide, but I think he's running his bass through: volume pedal, octave pedal, compressor, reverb. https://youtu.be/LTDKw9Z5C9E?t=8m21s

If you're just looking for a way to get this sound in Mixcraft for composition purposes, one of Mixcraft's virtual instruments is called Double Bass. It's under the Strings - Solo category. It's got a pretty decent sound.

On one of my songs, I used an electric bass initially, then imported the WAV into Melodyne. I then exported it as a MIDI file which I used with Kontakt Free as a VSTi. It has an excellent upright bass.

Here's the result..

https://soundcloud.com/trevlyns-1/swonderful

Thanks Trev and Ajgi

Fascinating!

How on earth do you export a Wav into a midi file please?

Bests,

kr236rk wrote:Thanks Trev and Ajgi

Fascinating!

How on earth do you export a Wav into a midi file please?

Bests,

I had Melodyne as a separate program - this was prior to MC8 Pro. I just recorded the bass (DI) and mixed down just that bass track to a WAV stem. I then opened it in Melodyne, tinkered with it a bit and then Melodyne allows you to save the work as a MIDI file. So dragged this MIDI file into Mixcraft and added the Kontakt VSTi

Just for clarification:
The "Essentials" version in MX8PS wont do that. You would need an upgraded version.

Thanks Trevor

What do you mean Mark, that MC8 won't allow dragging MIDI files into Mixcraft please?

Please explain.

Many thanks

I meant that Trevor's trick of creating MIDI from audio using Melodyne, requires an upgrade from Melodyne essentials.

Cool So which versions of Melodyne can do this please, several or only one please?

Thanks.

kr236rk wrote:Cool So which versions of Melodyne can do this please, several or only one please?

Thanks.

I have Melodyne Editor version 2 - got it in 2012. It certainly has the convert to MIDI feature but that version has been updated - I think they're on version 4 at the moment. And yes, as Mark says, the feature is not available in the version that comes with Pro Studio 8

OK thanks guys