In need of a kicking bass library

[scrofani]

I'm looking for a solid sample library for electric bass for the EXS. Something with the full range of articulations. Anyone have a favorite?

[RolandFan]

Not an EXS instrument, but have you considered Trilogy from Spectrasonics. No Intel-Mac version yet (supposedly coming out this fall) , but if you are on power pc, then it might be something to look at.

[simonphoenix]

I suppose it's not to helpful of me to suggest buying a Bass and learning how to play it... I did.

 

And now to years down the track I am so glad i have. It' easy enough to find a guitarist, but not a bass player... they seem to be more rare. So learning bass may help you become more "in demand."

[Beer Moth]

I'm leaving learning bass to my son.

After 2 months he could already play Portrait of Tracy!

[scrofani]

I sort of did that. I have a nice Jazz bass that I can play pretty well. But sometimes I feel like it would be a whole lot faster and more convenient to have a great plug. No DI box, no having to play in the other room since the pickup coils alway hum terribly anywhere within 10 feet of my Motu 828 interface (my one big gripe with that piece of gear - crazy RF interference). Plus the perks of working with midi.

[simonphoenix]

Oh hell yeah!!... I'm with you on that one.

 

Sometimes it is just a hell of a lot quicker to pull out a plugin. I'm a keyboard player myself, so much more advanced than my bass playing, though it's quite good in it's own right.

 

But sometimes laying a bass groove down of the keys is so much easier. In fact the entire bass line may have been a slightly more elaborate mimmic of what my left hand was doing anyway!! Sometimes it makes a lot more sense to just go with that instead of having to "relearn' the part.

[scrofani]

Keyboard is my instrument too, piano and B3 mostly. I even own a great conservatory C3 Yamaha grand but still use Ivory for a lot of recordings because - well, it's in perfect tune, you don't have to set up mics and you get a score. I feel like I'm cheating on my acoustic piano every time I do this.

[simonphoenix]

I never bought into this whole "weighted" feel argument on keyboards. But in the early days I taught myself how to play on a DX-7 so I wasn't missing much when I played other non-weighted keyboards.

 

I see it as the difference between an electric and acoustic guitar and their different feels.

 

So when it came to getting a new keyboard a year or 2 ago, I know I wanted a 7 or 8 octave one because I was coming to find 5 octaves restricting. I wanted something with awesome, piano, electric piano, B3, clav, and synth sounds - I consider myself a "keyboard" player in the true sense, I don't just play piano.

 

Anyway, in the end I came to settle on the Roland VR-760. Which is kind of a combination of an RD Stage pianos and their VK Organ... Bloody awesome keyboard I must say!!

 

But it's keyboard was "waterfall" action. While the keys have a weighty wood feel, they don't have the hammer action, this is indicative of the actual B3 design I'm sure you might be aware of.

 

The reason for this is that there were just certain organ techniques that are only ever possible to achieve on this kind of action. And since there were no technical advantages to a hammer set up and the keyboard was still touch responsive and even responds to after touch - it seemed to me the way to go.

 

As a side note, I remember at college the lecturers got jack or the piano players always requiring the weighted feel, they ended up buying a monster just to keep them happy, but was so bloody heavy and unconventional to lug around to gigs... It may as well been a REAL piano!!