The story
These samples were created using a violin bow and a Fender Squire Jaguar Bass. The result is a beautiful deep tone full of grit and character. The harmonics are very present with this instrument and they provide for a very rich sound.
Using the dropdown selection, the instrument can be played in one of two modes. The “Looping Samples” mode works like many virtual sustained string instruments. The sustain of the note will loop until you release it.
The “Natural Decay” mode will bow the string and release at the end of the bow allowing for a long natural decay. The timbre of the note changes and evolves as the string goes from being bowed to resonating.
The three round robins add extra flavor and variation to the instrument. Adjusting the reverb and filter controls can give a wide variety of sounds useful for everything from effects to deep melodic tones.
I hope you find it interesting and useful!
Interface
Reviews for Bowed Electric Bass Guitar
- Sound
- Character
- Playability
- Inspiration
- GUI
Leave a review to let others know what you thought of the instrument!
Growling bass!
This is literally the first word that came to my mind after laying my fingers on a single note - GROWLING! Because this is just a very aggressive bass sound, with this growling texture as if it's a monster trying to sing a pitch. The included depth effects do a very good job on making the sound even bigger, too!
Unexpected!
This isn't what I was expecting! It is part bowed guitar, and part cello or double bass, and it has an unusual bright timbre that the 'Tone' control is almost essential for taming. There's an unfamiliarity or other-worldly aspect to it, particularly if you set the 'Release' control to the shorter end of the time scale, when it almost becomes a reverse or backwards sound.
There are 3 round robins, and 10 samples for the 37 semitone span, so there's plenty of detail in the sound. The timbre is even more 'bowed' than I was expecting, and it obscures a lot of the audio clues that you are used to, which makes it sound both real and unfamiliar at the same time.
(One thing that confused the technical side of my mind was the empty 'Loop' folder/directory, where I'm sure some of the samples were meant to be found. I suspect that this merely shows how disconcerted I have been by just how astonishingly different this virtual instrument sounds.)
Back in the non-technical side of my mind, I can see this working well with amplified violins or cellos, in that very modern 'alternative classical' space, but I'm probably constraining it artificially to a narrow space when it has much broader applications. I have obviously got to used to being able to instantly assign genres to sounds, and have now come up against an exception that is defeating me.
There are two different articulations: the 'Natural Decay' is the most realistic, and a big contrast with the sustained 'Looped samples'. Just a tiny bit of reverb spatialises it nicely, and if anything, emphasises the juxtaposition of a sound that is obviously real, but which sounds unsettlingly alien at the same time.
Yes, the usually verbose word-smith inside me is definitely struggling with this one. I can only applaud Spencer for making this available to Pianobook.co.uk, where I am sure that there are people who will be able to make the most of this amazing virtual instrument.
Bass drones with texture and grit
I really like the concept of bowed electric bass guitar. Something about the tone of this sound isn't exactly what I expected. It has a bit of a hallow tone and bass frequencies are somewhat lacking. The organic nature of it is great and perhaps through a chain of effects it could shine.
