Looking for a few good bass sounds

[jarrell]

I am currently gigging with a Kurzweil PC4, doing a few left hand bass gigs here and there (which I actually enjoy), and looking to upgrade my bass sounds. Wondering what my options are. Both with the PC4, and with an iPad or even small module.

 

The PC4 bass sounds are decent, and I already have some multis with them. However, I know I can do better. I spent some time going through these bass sounds, and I think the problem is not patch programming, but the actual samples themselves (although I'm no expert patch programmer I admit). In particular, I play a session at a friend's house every week where he has a Yamaha p115 digital piano, and I have to say, the electric bass patch on there is really good - very touch responsive, nice tone, just the right emphasis when digging in - definitely better than any bass sound on the PC4.

 

In addition while the PC4 has a decent fretless sound, it sounds better for solo than rhythm section usage - I had a great fretless sound on my old Peavy Cyberbass module, for example, and know I can do better there. The acoustic bass sounds in the PC4 are good enough for me, at least for now.

 

So, looking for good electric and fretless sounds.

 

I looked around for bass libraries I can buy and load into the PC4, as I have about 1 MB sample ram left, and would prefer for ease of setup/teardown to have everything in the one keyboard. However I can't really find any, at least in Kurzweil format. I have Chicken Systems Kurzweil Creator, which supports up to K2600 format (good enough, probably), and/or the Logic Sampler, which allows one to build an instrument. TBH if I can I'd prefer not to spend the time to do things that way, and find something more ready made.

 

Or, I could use my iPad Pro (6th gen, so would need a USB C interface/dock), or even my old iPad Pro 9.7 (lightning, and I have a Korg plugKEY somewhere, although the latter with its short built in lightning cable seems pretty delicate). But all I can find in the App Library is iFretless, which sounds OK I guess. It seems bass AU instruments have not migrated to iOS yet.

 

Again, I'd rather get the sounds into my Kurzweil - it already has a great synth engine, just need the right samples and patch programming. Any thoughts/advice?

[octa]

When our bassist is busy with other gigs, I play some LH bass (we call this bassist "the Stranger") with Nord Stage 4 compact. The Fender w/ pick or whatever the sample is named is okay, but adding onboard compression/EQ makes it much more useful. Same with YC88 that I sometimes bring instead. 

[ProfD]

20 hours ago, jarrell said:

The PC4 bass sounds are decent, and I already have some multis with them. However, I know I can do better. I spent some time going through these bass sounds, and I think the problem is not patch programming, but the actual samples themselves (although I'm no expert patch programmer I admit). 

 

So, looking for good electric and fretless sounds.

 

Again, I'd rather get the sounds into my Kurzweil - it already has a great synth engine, just need the right samples and patch programming. Any thoughts/advice?

Spend more time with the PC4, combining different bass samples and using EQ to come up with a desirable sound. 

 

Most importantly, assign the LH bass sound to a separate output in mono. 

 

The PC4 has 4 audio outputs (2 stereo pairs).  Hopefully, an output can be run in Mono using either Left or Right.😎

[UnderGroundGr]

I have Sweetwater's Ultimate Guitars cd-rom. I wrote bass in an entire album with the patch "Music Man StingRay" from this cd. What a great sound!!!

[Moonglow]

4 hours ago, ProfD said:

Spend more time with the PC4, combining different bass samples and using EQ to come up with a desirable sound. 

+1

 

I only play LHB on a couple of tunes in my classic rock band. I obtain the best results by combining a bass guitar sample with a touch of “analog” (VA) bass to fatten things up a bit. I had to play around with various combinations until I found two patches that sounded/played good together. I recall adjusting the filter cutoff and envelope of the analog/VA to obtain the best fit with the sample. I think I messed around with the velocity settings, as well.

[jarrell]

2 hours ago, ProfD said:

Spend more time with the PC4, combining different bass samples and using EQ to come up with a desirable sound. 

 

Most importantly, assign the LH bass sound to a separate output in mono. 

 

The PC4 has 4 audio outputs (2 stereo pairs).  Hopefully, an output can be run in Mono using either Left or Right.😎

In the past I normally used a separate device (Rhodes PianoBass, Minimoog, 360 Systems MIDIBass, Peavy CyberBass module) going into a bass amp and speaker, but now doing smaller gigs I just use my 2 EV ZXA1's using just the PC4's main outs (they work surprisingly well for acoustic jazz volume). For bigger and better sound, I have been thinking of exactly what you said, using the second output pair and of course a separate amp. While I can route individual patches within a multi to these outputs, I don't think addressing just one output is possible, but no matter, I can just take one output to the amp.

 

But yeah, probably time to roll up my sleeves and get programming 🙂 Just a little frustrating that a $1,000 cheaper keyboard has exactly the sound I want out of the box, but I have to spend time working on it. I forgot to mention that I had an old Kurzweil bass sample CD, that I spend hours with trying to transfer a sound to the PC4 (I even wrote some code to decode the proprietary Kurzweil disc format, before I realized I could use an old Chicken Systems app to do that. I don't remember the details (this was a pandemic project), but several pf the programs I ported over had problems and just didn't work that well.

 

Having said all that, I think part of the problem might just be that the Yamaha patch seems to more organically respond to velocity, whereas say PC4 patch 847 P-Bass, while it has a nice slap sound at high velocity, doesn't. I think the fact that it switches from one keymap (set of samples in Kurzweil parlance) to another above a specific velocity makes for too abrupt a sound change - ideally you want the sound to gradually change with increased velocity, like you might scale a filter to velocity.

 

I spent some time last night just playing with different bass patches, and I noticed a funny thing - part of the problem I had with the fretless bass patches was added effects (even gasp reverb!). Once I tried out one of these patches in one of my multis, as I expected, there were no more effect units available (the PC4 has 32 units which are  allocated from the lowest to highest slot (zone) in a multi, so a bass patch in slot 7 or 8 will get none). Of course I planned to disable effects one them anyway... And sure enough, a couple of the fretless basses sounded better to my ears without effects (although this was just through headphones).

 

[ProfD]

25 minutes ago, jarrell said:

In the past I normally used a separate device (Rhodes PianoBass, Minimoog, 360 Systems MIDIBass, Peavy CyberBass module) going into a bass amp and speaker,....I don't think addressing just one output is possible, but no matter, I can just take one output to the amp.

Approach LH bass from a bass player perspective in terms of gear set-up.

25 minutes ago, jarrell said:

...part of the problem I had with the fretless bass patches was added effects (even gasp reverb!).

A huge problem.🤣

25 minutes ago, jarrell said:

Of course I planned to disable effects one them anyway... And sure enough, a couple of the fretless basses sounded better to my ears without effects...

Turn off effects when sound designing.  Add effects later if/when necessary. Getting the *right* sound first is crucial.

 

For similar reason, I'd imagine the bass sound in that cheaper Yamaha sounded better because there is less happening with it.😎

[AROIOS]

On 7/22/2024 at 12:40 PM, jarrell said:

...looking to upgrade my bass sounds. Wondering what my options are. Both with the PC4, and with an iPad or even small module...

 

JV-1010 with an SR-JV80-10 Bass/Drum expansion card.

Here's a demo:
 

 

[Anderton]

I was never happen with most bass samples. So, when I was consulting to Gibson, I borrowed and sampled a ton of their basses, including slides and some other FX. They're all I use these days, sometimes layered with synth bass.

 

FWIW the MPN shop has three sets of these bass samples available: Pop Bass, Rock Bass, and 5-String Bass. There's a demo video of the three sets...check it out. Also, Public Enemy's Brian Hardgoove has a loop library in the MPN shop, which includes Steinberger bass chromatic samples.

 

 

[ProfD]

Most LH bass players do not want the sound of a real bass guitar. It's usually a tone somewhere between organ pedal bass and Rhodes piano bass. Of course, it depends on the style of music being played.😎

 

[Mighty Motif Max]

I was spoiled by Yamaha samples and then switched to a PC4…huge drop in quality. See if you can find a copy of the ancient Bass Gallery sound library. I managed to and had some success importing some of the patches. You may need to use the raw samples and build your own patches, but they were an improvement over the stock samples even though they’re quite old now. I no longer own my PC4 so I’m not of much help on how I did that, and I don’t really recall the specifics. 

[Paul Harrison]

On 7/24/2024 at 2:08 AM, ProfD said:

Spend more time with the PC4, combining different bass samples and using EQ to come up with a desirable sound. 

 

Most importantly, assign the LH bass sound to a separate output in mono. 

 

+1

 

I have a Kurzweil SP4-7 into which I have imported several PC3LE sounds from this set ...

 

https://ksetlist.com/community/ksetlist-com-compilations-volumes/for-sp4-users-pc3le-programs-one-per-file/

 

... and I have several setups with two of these programs (237 Sly bass, 240 Squire'sHeavyPik) layered together on the bottom end of the keyboard and panned hard left, with lead sounds (piano, Rhodes, Wurli, Clavi, strings, brass, etc.) on the right end of the keyboard and panned hard right, so I can run the bass (left hand) and lead (right hand) sounds out of the left and right outputs respectively, into separate channels on my mixer. The combination of those two sounds works well for left-hand bass with electric blues, jazz and rock.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VuPJ16HMxZw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lJefc6i7Cc

 

I use it for organ trio too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQcNGY6OPHw

[Anderton]

On 7/23/2024 at 6:38 PM, ProfD said:

Of course, it depends on the style of music being played.

 

Yes, that's why I mentioned layering synth bass with physical bass - for electronically oriented stuff, the physical bass adds an organic quality to  synthesized sounds. I do this kind of thing all the time: synth strings + sampled strings, harp + triangle wave, female choir + octave lower triangle wave to add ersatz male voices, bass transposed up two octaves + FM clav sound, etc. I like having each key play a slightly different sound, which the differences among samples provide (assuming each note is sampled individually). 

[dazzjazz]

Not sure if you can load Trillian into n iPad, but it’s a stellar bass VI. 

[SMcD]

if (kurzweil_mentioned)

then (recommend @Dave Weiser's custom sounds)

 

In all seriousness - they use the same samples, but you might be surprised by how much you can get out of them, properly tweaked.

[ProfD]

8 hours ago, dazzjazz said:

Not sure if you can load Trillian into n iPad, but it’s a stellar bass VI. 

Excellent choice if the PC4 cannot deliver and/or the OP wants to add another piece to the KB rig.😎

[jarrell]

11 minutes ago, ProfD said:

Excellent choice if the PC4 cannot deliver and/or the OP wants to add another piece to the KB rig.😎

 

Trillian is great; I have it, but only available on MacOS. However, it could be possible to gain access to the various Apple bass instruments in Logic if one got Logic for iPad, and then (in theory) access those AU from another iPad app, like AUM - anybody who has Logic iPad try that?

 

2 hours ago, SMcD said:

if (kurzweil_mentioned)

then (recommend @Dave Weiser's custom sounds)

 

In all seriousness - they use the same samples, but you might be surprised by how much you can get out of them, properly tweaked.

 

I have Dave's patches, and they're really good, but again, I think it is the actual samples that is the issue.

 

20 hours ago, Mighty Motif Max said:

I was spoiled by Yamaha samples and then switched to a PC4…huge drop in quality. See if you can find a copy of the ancient Bass Gallery sound library. I managed to and had some success importing some of the patches. You may need to use the raw samples and build your own patches, but they were an improvement over the stock samples even though they’re quite old now. I no longer own my PC4 so I’m not of much help on how I did that, and I don’t really recall the specifics. 

 

Yeah, I think the keyboard and ensemble/orchestral sounds in the Kurzweil are competitive, but IMHO the weakest are the guitar and bass sounds. Like I mentioned, I have the Bass Gallery sound library, and like you I don't remember the exact process I used to port a patch and its associated sample, but it didn't work out as well as I hoped.