Any good tricks to turn a bass guitar into something more like a buzzy synth bass?

[Chris-Doll]

Have you tried an Electro Harmonix Pedal?
There's also an emulation of it in Guitarrig 3.
Best regards
Chris

[tINY]

Have you tried Moog Filters? An LPF might be just the thing....

Moogerfoogers®



-tINY

[chymer]

podfarm

[msquared]

SWR Mo Bass or Mini Mo, if you can find one. The Moog pedals are also spectacular for this.

[edwonbass]

Octave pedal into distortion into chorus= fat

[7161]

tried that cheap behringer bass synth pedal?, it's actualy quite wacky but really you need to work the basslines in sympathy with the envelope or lfo speed, so it's best to play thru it, not add it afterwards

[muziqfreek]

in pedal/hardware Land.....Thermionic Culture Vulture, Lovetone Ringstinger, ElectroHarmonix Microsynth, Line6 FM4 Filter modeller...connect a couple of those and turn your vanilla 5string into something totally disgusting....
In plugin world... Soundtoys stuff would be top of my list for sonic destruction... and i'm sure there's no end of free VST's that do the same kinda thing when combined... Compress & Distort it, Filter & Modulate it... chop it up and put it back into a sampler and re-sequence and re-synthesise it... keep on eff-ing with it until its doing what you want dude!!!!

peace

Matt

[JR11]

Z-Vex Wooly Mammoth

[js1]

Akai Headrush - that's what the bassist of Muse uses (like on Hysteria).

A totally alternate approach which I have yet to try is pitch to midi, then drive a synth track, or (if possible) sidechain a synth filter that the distorted bass is going through.

js

[Brad McGowan]

EH Microsynth or Big Muff would be my recommendation.

Another idea would be to use something like the new feature in Cubase 5 that allows you to trigger VSTi's with audio tracks.

Brad

[rackdude]

Originally Posted by Brad McGowan

EH Microsynth or Big Muff would be my recommendation.

Another idea would be to use something like the new feature in Cubase 5 that allows you to trigger VSTi's with audio tracks.

Brad

Or use melodyne. Change it to midi and run it through Trilogy or something of the sort. Who knows which VSTi... but it will surely sound like a synth!

[dakine]

Boss me-50b

[Djembe]

Originally Posted by js1

Akai Headrush - that's what the bassist of Muse uses (like on Hysteria). js

Akai Headrush is a delay/looping pedal. Can't see how that would help.

[ryst]

Originally Posted by rackdude

Or use melodyne. Change it to midi and run it through Trilogy or something of the sort. Who knows which VSTi... but it will surely sound like a synth!

Yeah, I think I am gonna do the Melodyne audio-to-midi. I have tried all sorts of things but it's not getting me close to what I want. I have been trying to get it to sound like one of the Minimoog V patches...but it's not happening. Audio-to-midi should do the trick.
Thanks for all the suggestions, guys!

[robot gigante]

Yeahp- if you want a synth, record a synth. If you want a bass, record a bass.

[fuzzrhythm]

Originally Posted by js1

Akai Headrush - that's what the bassist of Muse uses (like on Hysteria).
js

Akai Deep Impact. Also on "Time Is Running Out"

[BLUElightCory]

If you're going for a Muse-style distorted bass tone, check out the MXR Bass Blowtorch. It NAILS that sound. I think there are some demos at the MXR site and there's a terrible demo (doesn't do it justice) on Youtube as well.

[gainreduction]

Originally Posted by Brad McGowan

EH Microsynth or Big Muff would be my recommendation.

+1.

The Electro Harmonics micro synthesizer is exactly what you need.

[DeadPoet]

I find the microsynth and Korg G5 to be kind of one-trick pony's (ponies?). [except for the talk synth in the G5 which rulz big time!]

I really like the SYB-3 but find its tracking very lousy. Try playing a disco octave line through it..


Fuzz followed by a wahwah (+ optional small delay) gets me great synthy sounds.


Woolly Mammoth rocks big time but has no input gain control which sucks on active basses and heavy-handed players like me.


Deep Impact had too much press with the Muse basslines and its price has gone up too much for me.
I think I saw somewhere that the Deep Impact is in those famous lines but the sound is much more complex than that (clean line, disto line, synth line, dubbed by audio-to-midi controller, ...)


Herwig

[vonhagen]

As we're talking Muse.. Anyone knows how they distorted the bass on "Starlight"? Sounds pretty darn good! Got a sort of similiar sound once using the bitcrusher in Logic mixed in with the unprocessed bass.

[fakiekid]

I'd whack the tone down and run it through a russian (green/black) big muff