Why can't anybody figure out how to tune Bass samples?

[Astralv]

This is frustrating! So I spent entire evening trying to figure out progression for this one part we wrote with the partner to add bass line. 16 measures, 4 chords. I hear something like Am Dm F Dm or possibly Am Dm F G or any combination of these. And dont matter what I play- it would not fit. Then I am realizing- these are untuned samples of guitar! I was using Substance by Output. Good sound but sooooo out of tune. So I close it out. Trying NI Scarbee Pre-Bass, MM-Bass, Jay-Bass- in every nki instrument such as Crunchy, Fat, Heavy I find one or another sample off. And this is by ear. And I am not even guitar player or Bass player. If I take tuner, I know it will be all over the place! I noticed this in the past even with Yamaha Motif Bass samples. And for Scarbee- it sounds like crap! The bass does not cut through the mix. The sound is very low, yet the meter picking over 0db. I keep wanting to turn it up and it gets more and more clipping. And all the articulations- why in the world I need all these details? I use NI Kontrol keyboard. I press keys equally- I been only playing keys for 40 years, why in the world it keeps changing from muted to open strings to who knows what else they programmed in it- all I want is to play bass sound that is in tune so I can record this stupid part, and I can't 3 hours later! Any recommendations for simple bright bass without any nonsense and that stays in tune for at least 7 notes in one active? Thank you.

[Distorted Horizon]

https://www.thomann.de/fi/marcus_miller ... _tbk_g.htm

[digitalboytn]

This is frustrating! So I spent entire evening trying to figure out progression for this one part we wrote with the partner to add bass line. 16 measures, 4 chords. I hear something like Am Dm F Dm or possibly Am Dm F G or any combination of these. And dont matter what I play- it would not fit. Then I am realizing- these are untuned samples of guitar! I was using Substance by Output. Good sound but sooooo out of tune. So I close it out. Trying NI Scarbee Pre-Bass, MM-Bass, Jay-Bass- in every nki instrument such as Crunchy, Fat, Heavy I find one or another sample off. And this is by ear. And I am not even guitar player or Bass player. If I take tuner, I know it will be all over the place! I noticed this in the past even with Yamaha Motif Bass samples. And for Scarbee- it sounds like crap! The bass does not cut through the mix. The sound is very low, yet the meter picking over 0db. I keep wanting to turn it up and it gets more and more clipping. And all the articulations- why in the world I need all these details? I use NI Kontrol keyboard. I press keys equally- I been only playing keys for 40 years, why in the world it keeps changing from muted to open strings to who knows what else they programmed in it- all I want is to play bass sound that is in tune so I can record this stupid part, and I can't 3 hours later! Any recommendations for simple bright bass without any nonsense and that stays in tune for at least 7 notes in one active? Thank you.

Well that sounds pretty frustrating...

I put together a song yesterday using the Scarbee P Bass and I had no problems...

In fact I chose it because it has a little "growl" in the mix...

So here are a couple of suggestions...

Turn off any key dimensions that are triggering the extra articulations...

Use some compression and EQ to get it sitting right in the mix....

You might want to detune the program down a few cents so that it is a little tempered...

Most synths are tuned to mean tuning and while that is OK in the middle of things,it gets a little ugly at the extremities...

And always remember that most road accidents are a result of user error

[jancivil]

I've experienced that with Pre-Bass. It drove me nuts. I'm a terrible stickler for tuning and intonation, as a guitarist for far too long.

The thing is (and you don't want to totally mitigate this or the effect gets to be too sterile or plastic right quick), is a strong pluck of the string is sharper than the string when it settles down. So I suppose it's rather hard to hear doing a whole lot of recording individual notes, but Pre-Bass is not perfectly intonated.

I wouldn't recommend tuning it down very much either; in fact iirc this was where I noticed it more.

I used it in my last track and while it was not perfect it didn't bother me all that much although it did limit my choices.
I use it because of that growl, btw, I like the sound of it more than anything I've used, for a certain thing. Sometimes 'J-Bass' is the sound for the track and here I used both (I needed some slap).

You know what's a very in tune e. bass library is Cherry Bass by OTS.

[jancivil]

that said:

And for Scarbee- it sounds like crap! The bass does not cut through the mix.

This is you not knowing what to do, to be perfectly frank. Learn mixing. I know that seems like an insult but if you can't make Pre-Bass be a Precision Bass in a track it's down to you and you need a reality check some place. I don't know what your music is like, but if you want this classic e. bass sound, it's there. Thomas Skarbye is world-renowned for a reason (since I first had my own DAW setup in 2003, at least).
It probably needs compression, and it might need some more attention to cut through a particular mix; as things do in the world of samples libraries. The expectation of instant gratification from something like this may be a mistake.

Why all these articulations? People that want something on the order of a convincing bass performance out of the thing USE THEM.

[digitalboytn]

It's rather hard to hear doing a whole lot of recording individual notes, but Pre-Bass is not perfectly intonated.

I wouldn't recommend tuning it down very much either; in fact iirc this was where I noticed it more.

You know what's a very in tune e. bass library is Cherry Bass by OTS.

I agree with the slight intonation problems with Pre Bass,but it has a "sound" to it that works well in the mix...

I usually tune my basses down by 0.005 - 0.015 cents in Kontakt...

Another bass library that is "in tune" is the one released by Yellow Tools...8 velocities with lots of articulations...I made my own Kontakt programs with the samples...

But none of the basses have that growl of the Scarbee P Bass...

I guess the key to the tuning of Pre Bass would be to go into the sample editor and manually tune every single samp!e ?

But I'll leave that for the techs

that said:

And for Scarbee- it sounds like crap! The bass does not cut through the mix.

This is you not knowing what to do, to be perfectly frank. Learn mixing. I know that seems like an insult but if you can't make Pre-Bass be a Precision Bass in a track it's down to you and you need a reality check some place. I don't know what your music is like, but if you want this classic e. bass sound, it's there.

It probably needs compression, and it might need some more attention to cut through a particular mix; as things do in the world of samples libraries. The expectation of instant gratification from something like this may be a mistake.

This

[Astralv]

Thank you for your replies. The music is EDM in general, in details- it is a mix of everything from orchestral to dubstep to euro-metal to trance, depending on the song. I noted that when producing Dubstep, with wooble basses sound programmers dont pay much attention to note tuning or it is just hard to tune, so the it open to significant error was beyond what my ear cat hear. Most dubstep producers do not use many chords in their music, it is more atonal sound effects oriented. I try to make melodic dubstep and implement chrods changes as well as key changes. Unfortunitely, very often I find this very cool growl bass sound (and I am not laking about like guitar bass), and it has no pitch, so I arrange it with other sounds in key. I use guitar bass to keep everything on the ground. My mixes are super busy, I use 70-80 tracks per song, so ability to cut through the mix is important. Scarbee recorded low. Yes, I can boost it but before I can boost it, I need to record it and to audition it within the sound environment, it needs to cut through the mix, and it recorded too low. And sorry- I dont want to go and turn down all 60 tracks and disturb mixing balance trying to bring Scarbee up. So... I need simple bass sounds that recorded hot, cut through the mix row and sampled in tune. Any recommendations will be appreciated. Thank you.

[DSmolken]

I probably shouldn't give advice to people who obviously want to make artistically meritorious music, but here goes...

This is bright, growly, free, and we checked the tuning on each fret before recording the samples, adjusting the intonation as necessary, which was sometimes necessary as it's an inexpensive Squier: https://www.karoryfer.com/karoryfer-sam ... growlybass

MODO's also perfectly in tune, IMO not very good at aggressive, growly sounds where you'd have some fret buzz etc. but might be fine in more electronic mixes.

In any case I'd probably do the typical metal bass thing where the signal is split into two tracks, one lowpassed and with sidechain compression to get it out of the way of the kick, the other highpassed and run through some distortion, amp sim etc.

[sampliist]

Very surprised by the tuning in mm-bass. Although I found it fine in lower register the higher register it was quite noticeable, even when demoing the patch solo. Mostly on the string specific modes.

That is a bit of a shame because I do enjoy using patches with high-quality scripting key switches.

[MadDogE134]

i really like MODO... but i run it into PA's Bass Dude emulation most of the time for aggression and flab. used to love the scarbee ric but found a LOT wrong with those samples so i never bothered with any more scarbee samples from any of their libs