Adam Monroe Music has released Adam Monroe’s Slap Bass, a virtual bass guitar instrument sampled from a Fender Jazz electric bass guitar with Carvin J99 pickups and DR Hi-Beam bass strings directly into a Radial Pro48 DI Box.
An extended range was obtained by tuning the E-string all the way down to a C. The low B (B0) of a standard 5-string bass was omitted do to “floppiness” from down-tuning.
“Slap” and “pop” articulations were carefully and meticulously recorded for each note, although in the extreme upper range of the bass, do to tension of the string, normal notes starts to become indistinguishable from a pop articulations. Regular notes were recorded with a guitar pick, in order to maintain a semi-percussive and metallic sound.
Regular pick notes were recorded in 5 note round-robin with 4 velocity layers. The velocity layers themselves don’t have much of a dynamic range (between -7 -1 dB), as bass guitars are typically compressed signals that end up somewhat level in modern recordings. Slap articulations are 5 turn round-robin, but exist as one velocity layer. The decision was made to simply pick the best representations of a slap or pop sound, rather than mix in many different sounds, in order to achieve a “better” sounding vst instrument as opposed to a more “realistic” one.
Adam Monroe’s Slap Bass features
- 3 octave range from C1 to D#4.
- Slap and pick articulations.
- Major third and perfect fifth slides.
- 3.8 GB of sample data.
Adam Monroe’s Slap Bass is available as a plugin for Windows and Mac (VST/AU) and in Kontakt format, priced at $15 USD.
More information: Adam Monroe Music / Adam Monroe’s Slap Bass
