A
virtual bass player; that's what many of us would
like - no more hanging around for a musician to
turn up, or dealing with recording problems and
tuning and timing issues along the way...some
immediate benefits spring to mind as we consider
Virtual Bassist. It's a natural progression to
augment the virtual drummer (Groove Agent 3) and
guitarist (Virtual Guitarist 2), and to see how
close to a real bass player we were going to get.
Loading is easy, once you know the drill with the dongle (not supplied; that's extra) and the subsequent licensing, and in this case we only have a CD, not DVD, so the space required on the hard drive is fairly minimal by current standards. Virtual Bassist works as a standalone instrument, allowing for ReWire connection to a host, (we used Cubase) or more commonly perhaps it will be used as a plug in in the usual way (It's also suitable for PC and intel based Mac). It's not difficult to understand; a few minutes with the manual is time well spent and helps us understand how Steinberg are doing things - real recordings are used, made by top players by the sound of it, and superbly recorded (as you would expect). A four octave midi keyboard is especially useful here - the bottom two octaves control the "Remote range" which determines which phrases and fills are playing within a particular style, and the top two, the "Pitch range", dictate which root note (or play a chord if you prefer) the phrase pertains to. That might sound a little confusing but in practice it's easy. There are thirty styles avaliable, allowing for a fairly wide variety, especially when used with the Groove match page and Micro timing settings - these allow subtle or radical changes in feel and groove of a part.
The basic recordings themselves as we say are excellent; however most bass players would use effects; the effect board (which itself can be used as a plug in) is realistic and fun to use. Amongst others we have drive, chorus, compressor, flanger...our personal favourite is the Wah Wah pedal. The only thing that concerned us a little was the necessarily limited library of phrases and fills - on reflection there are so many variations that this may not be an immediate issue, if ever, but one notable point with this instrument is described as a "bonus feature".... we are reminded that usually we will be using midi track one, but use channel sixteen instead and Virtual Bassist behaves differently. Now the components making up any given part can be played individually, and recorded and edited as such, so allowing for new, completely different parts and grooves to be created.
In summary, Virtual Bassist is easy to set up and use, it's fun, has great effects and will give you great bass lines (tempo matched to your host) straight away. As time goes on, or you need something "non-standard" - try the channel sixteen approach for even more possibilities.
Loading is easy, once you know the drill with the dongle (not supplied; that's extra) and the subsequent licensing, and in this case we only have a CD, not DVD, so the space required on the hard drive is fairly minimal by current standards. Virtual Bassist works as a standalone instrument, allowing for ReWire connection to a host, (we used Cubase) or more commonly perhaps it will be used as a plug in in the usual way (It's also suitable for PC and intel based Mac). It's not difficult to understand; a few minutes with the manual is time well spent and helps us understand how Steinberg are doing things - real recordings are used, made by top players by the sound of it, and superbly recorded (as you would expect). A four octave midi keyboard is especially useful here - the bottom two octaves control the "Remote range" which determines which phrases and fills are playing within a particular style, and the top two, the "Pitch range", dictate which root note (or play a chord if you prefer) the phrase pertains to. That might sound a little confusing but in practice it's easy. There are thirty styles avaliable, allowing for a fairly wide variety, especially when used with the Groove match page and Micro timing settings - these allow subtle or radical changes in feel and groove of a part.
The basic recordings themselves as we say are excellent; however most bass players would use effects; the effect board (which itself can be used as a plug in) is realistic and fun to use. Amongst others we have drive, chorus, compressor, flanger...our personal favourite is the Wah Wah pedal. The only thing that concerned us a little was the necessarily limited library of phrases and fills - on reflection there are so many variations that this may not be an immediate issue, if ever, but one notable point with this instrument is described as a "bonus feature".... we are reminded that usually we will be using midi track one, but use channel sixteen instead and Virtual Bassist behaves differently. Now the components making up any given part can be played individually, and recorded and edited as such, so allowing for new, completely different parts and grooves to be created.
In summary, Virtual Bassist is easy to set up and use, it's fun, has great effects and will give you great bass lines (tempo matched to your host) straight away. As time goes on, or you need something "non-standard" - try the channel sixteen approach for even more possibilities.
Steinberg Virtual Bassist Review