Orange Tree Samples

furrytoes · Post by **furrytoes** » Mon Jun 13, 2011 1:28 pm

I promised in another thread to post a short excerpt of the piece I was working on to compare a Pick (Pluck?) Bass in the Kontakt factory sounds versus my recent purchase of CoreBass Cherry Slapped.

It took me a while to get the Cherry Slap bass sound into the piece as I had to change every note (and add a few) but it was well worth it. And it makes sense that this is needed, as you need to incorporate various picks and pops to get a proper slap feel working right.

Here's the 2 demo's side-by-side.
The song is currently known as "Groove in D Minor" (or "Groove in the Saddest of All Keys") and this SoundCloud page puts them alongside each other for comparison.

http://soundcloud.com/furrytoes/sets/groove-in-d-minor

*UPDATE - I've now deleted the 1st 2 mix attempts because they're so much worse than the current version

Bare in mind, the demo is not finished and it's not really even mixed properly, but is hopefully good enough to appreciate the differences.

I did add a little bit of EQ at the bottom-end of the Cherry bass and a little compression (which it seemed to need for me) but I'm sure I don't have this right yet either.
For the Kontakt (plucked) bass, I used the default effects chain that Logic9 used for it's bass sound (which sounded about right to me).

Admittedly, the Pick Bass is leaving a little more room for the other instruments than the Slap Bass, and so the mix is slightly better - I'll have to work on this.

Shramm · Post by **Shramm** » Mon Jun 13, 2011 2:31 pm

thank you for your comparison! the difference shown very clearly.

Gregjazz · Post by **Gregjazz** » Mon Jun 13, 2011 8:34 pm

Awesome, thanks for sharing this! While both basses sound great in this context, I prefer the slap bass, mostly because of that extra rhythmic presence it adds.

Great composition, by the way--I love the slow groove and all the syncopation and hits!

Have you heard the band Uzeb? Check out their bassist, Alain Caron slapping in songs such as .

furrytoes · Post by **furrytoes** » Thu Jun 16, 2011 12:40 am

Thanks for that, I hadn't heard of Uzeb.
By the way, I'll keep coming back to this composition and reposting it, since there's more to come and I'm likely to add some Electric Guitar Strawberry as well - the electric guitar in there now is a Kontakt guitar with a NativeInstruments GuitarRig distortion setup.

For others about to use the Cherry slap bass, I recommend getting the MIDI files for the 2 demo songs on the OrangeTreeSamples website to learn how to slap properly (you might have to email site admin ie GregJazz).

These demos use techniques that I was not smart enough to work out on my own, so I couldn't have done without them. In particular, how to use the non-note slap and pops to generate a syncopated groovy kind of feel.

furrytoes · Post by **furrytoes** » Sat Jul 02, 2011 11:47 am

I've added my latest version of this mix.

http://soundcloud.com/furrytoes/groove- ... f-way-mix/

The mix is much better, the bass is sitting just where I want it (at least on my headphones). And there's some extra licks and tightening up. This is so fun, I will say that the Cherry Slapped Bass is awesome!

I compressed the Slap Bass a little to get it to sit right for me -> Ratio: 3:1, Attack:40ms, Release:80ms, Threshold: -20db

I added a tiny bit of eq on the low and mid-high end, to get the meaty, rounded sound. (There's a strange rumble at 48secs, this is some sort of SoundCloud artifact, their transcoding process is not perfect)

And the arrangement is revealing something much more interesting.

This is the style of music that I dig, by the way. Where the "arrangement" creates the main interest (not vocals, song melodies and such).

There'll be more of this stuff in the next few months, as I crank out compositions I did 15 years ago, on crap equipment, into the crazy new world of software synths that we have today.

I'll update again when this is closer to finished, and I expect it will have the Strawberry lead guitar playing the guitar parts.

Gregjazz · Post by **Gregjazz** » Sat Jul 02, 2011 4:45 pm

Great--that bass tone/part sounds lovely! The mixing is really nice, I like the sparseness in the mixing that provides a nice contrast the complexity of the arrangement. Love the piano tone at the end, too!

ptrickf · Post by **ptrickf** » Sat Jul 02, 2011 5:11 pm

oooooo that's really nice - great piece

furrytoes · Post by **furrytoes** » Sat Jul 02, 2011 10:34 pm

Thanks, I just made the original 320K MP3 "downloadable" from soundcloud.
I do think the 128k limit on soundcloud tracks kills too much for this kind of music.
If you're interested, you will probably notice a difference - and the funny rumble at 50sec is not there.

Orange Tree Samples

KVR Audio

Core Cherry Slap Bass vs a (Kontakt) Pluck Bass