rontarrant

Anderton How often to people play bass harmonics?

The only times I can think of are:
- during bass solos
- while accompanying acoustic instruments with no percussion
Any other time, I'm pretty sure they'd get lost.

This one-hit-wonder from the '80s makes subtle but effective use of sampled bass harmonics:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6k6ll7x2H8
Example at 0:54, and similarly in the last 2 bars of each verse before the start of each chorus.

Well this is interesting...I put sample loop points in the samples using Sony Sound Forge, but when loaded into Dim Pro, most (not all, oddly enough) of the samples played as a one-shot. I tore my hair out trying to figure out why some did and some didn't (and if any of you have seen me, you know that would mean there's not much hair left at this point).
 
The solution was equally odd, but it worked: I loaded the samples into Steinberg WaveLab, which recognized the loop points. Then I just saved the file from within WaveLab, and Dim Pro recognized all the loop points.
 
I'm going to have to let Sony know about this.
 
Given the response, I'll definitely turn this into a blog at some point. Making SFZ instruments is not difficult and it's a good way to get unique sounds. The hardest part is recording the samples you want to use and making sure they're of uniform quality. I have to say the EB-5 is a honey of a bass, not just because of how it plays and sounds, but because the sound is quite uniform over the entire range of notes and that makes sampling easier.

Guitarpima
I just looked up that bass. The specs are the same? Swamp ash body, maple neck and a rosewood fingerboard?
 
I used to have a Warmoth guitar with similar specs...Anyway, that guitar had tons of sustain as well. I think people may overlook that combination of woods for their guitars. I miss that guitar at times.

I visited one of the EB bass designers today to get a more detailed answer on why the sustain is so good. He said you're right, the woods do indeed make a difference and that the Babicz bridge is a huge factor. But he also said the set in neck plays a major part in the sustain.
 
I have a meeting set up with Cakewalk in a few hours to discuss he blog and how to get the EB-5 Dim Pro instrument out into the world. I should be able to finish it by the end of the week.

Looking forward to it!

Well, if it's a bass for Dim Pro, you'll have to make the samples out of tune. <grin, duck and run>

This "new" EB bass must be different than the old EBO and EB3 back in the day.  I had one...not sure why...I think it even had a fuzz box built in.  Muddy sounding piece of mahogany.  Unless you were Jack Bruce, slamming it thru a Marshall, the only thing I thought had going for it was it looked like an SG guitar.

I'll have to check out this newer EB bass.  I like Bit's idea of the layer with the 4 elements...or something similar.

I'm going to have to let Sony know about this.

 
It's been happening for a while now, Craig (6-7 years).  I'm not certain of the specifics, but I did receive confirmation of the phenomenon from Rene Ceballos.  I had thought that I was overriding the points with GUI controls or .sfz.  I believe he was using Audition for his loop point requirements, and suggested the same to me.
 
It's a shame, too, because the capabilities of embedded loops never get explored by those of us using Sound Forge as the go-to editor.

... for Rapture (which doesn't do multisamples) ...

All the respect in the world, Craig, but this one bothered me at a fundamental level.  DimPro is optimized for longer samples, sure, but ...  Rapture is about two features short of being the ultimate (six string) guitar synthesizer.  Samples or wavetables.
 

I don't like how the formant shifts when you transpose a sample, and I want this to sound really good.

 
The Shift parameter (somewhat unique to DimPro) has its uses.  It won't save an extreme transposition, but it can offset smaller intervals (not to mention creative application without complimentary offset values).
 

Well, if it's a bass for Dim Pro, you'll have to make the samples out of tune.

 
Now that is just good (insider) comedy.

b rock

... for Rapture (which doesn't do multisamples) ...

All the respect in the world, Craig, but this one bothered me at a fundamental level.  DimPro is optimized for longer samples, sure, but ...  Rapture is about two features short of being the ultimate (six string) guitar synthesizer.  Samples or wavetables.

 
Don't get me wrong, I love Rapture. I use the two expansion packs I made for it all the time. But IIRC it doesn't take wavs longer than 3000 samples, so I couldn't have done this instrument with Rapture. But even without those two extra features, it's still a helluva guitar synthesizer...
 
Anyway, back to sampling. I'm doing some more R&D tonight. Last night I quantified the eight different bass sounds, which was probably a mistake because now I want to sample ALL of them.

A video on the major steps of sfz construction would be helpful to many, I think. I have downloaded a few different programs to do things with sfz files, but never done much with them yet :(
 

b rock I believe he was using Audition for his loop point requirements, and suggested the same to me.

 
As far as sampling, I did my first-ever this weekend and gravitated to Audition to complete the task. I have a friend I talked into a TD-9 a couple years ago, and it made it into my house last weekend. I ended up sampling it 20 sounds at a time, removed noise from those "masters," then used "Mark Audio" with custom settings to get all of the envelopes. It was sort of a painful exercise until I got a nice work flow to it, but saved them all as 32 bit waves files and then batch normalized them when done. 552 samples... ugh!

I miss the natural slap that a bassist will sometimes put on snare hit notes, it's very hard to make a synth bass sound (for want of a better word) real, without that little rythmic quality.