Having trouble creating a nice bass guitar

[srmccann94]

I own Komplete 12 standard edition, EWQL Complete Composers Collection, Arturia collection, some Cubase 10 Pro vsts, and some u-he synths. I've been messing around so much with the various bass guitar vsts I have plus using guitar rig 5 on them and haven't been able to produce a decent bass guitar sound.

I'm wanting very prominent, deep bass that's clean. No string/strumming/picking noises that are characteristic of lots of the bass guitar vsts. A great example of what I'm going for is Tame Impala's music, specifically Currents.

If anyone has some advice, or could get me started in the right direction I would greatly appreciate it!

[colonel_mustard]

Wow, you've got a lot of plug-ins. If your u-he synths include Repro, there's a nice little tutorial on making a bass guitar sound here (first 4 minutes):
https://youtu.be/QlT1lJcOYNQ

Lots of transferrable techniques in this series, even if you don't have it.

[Harry_HH]

I don’t know your skills, but I would start ”creating a nice bass track” by the bass line itself, listening good music, whatever your genre is, and putting effort for impressive melodies, counterpoints/harmonies, rather than bass sound.

Sound/recording techniques are important, but better a good bass line with a modest sounds, than an unmusical bass arr, which is soundwise excellent.

I personally use both real bass with DI and bass plugins.
Plugins I use are:

Bass vst:
-Trilian
- Scarbee Rick
- IK Modo Bass

Amp plugins:
-Overloud Mark Studio 2
IK Ampeg SVX

FX:
Heavy compressing, type API 2500
Eq
Bass enhancer, type Kush Reddi
Sometimes Waves Bass Rider

Diverse:

Depends genre, if subbass needed, Bx Subsynth

The who synth scene by creating bass gives endlesly options. Unison bass lines with el.bass or even cello/contra bass, etc.

[Forgotten]

Short of buying a bass guitar and learning it, you would probably do best with a good sampled bass guitar.

[Music Bird]

I made a good bass guitar sound on Synth1. It's a saw wave with low cutoff and an envelope on the filter at lower than 100%. You can adjust the filter attack to get a tuba or horn sound out of it.

[khanyz]

Using a string synth, such as Sakura, can get you a good basic bass sound, without the stuff you don’t want. An additive or hybrid synth can do it too but isn’t as easy. I’d avoid a sampled instrument as they usually have the extra sounds for realism, You can, however, minimise, or even remove, picking, finger noise etc. with a combination of gate, eq or transient or envelope shaper. It’s a hassle though.

You can then feed it through a channel strip with saturation to customise the sound. Voxformer is good at this, as is DDMF’s but there are many others, depending on saturation preference. For dirt/distortion, D16, Audio Damage and Ohm Boyz have a selection which work nicely on bass and fit any budget. I still like Predatohm. FabFilter’s Saturn is also great at the pricier end.

Finally Lowender is a nice effect to beef up the sound.