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Sampling a real bass guitar to use as a future Ableton preset. How?


Polytrix

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Hi,

 

I've just sold my Yamaha BB1500A bass guitar and thought I'd sample the hell out of it before I let it go.

 

The question is, what the advised route for doing this so it can be reused later as a virtual instrument. 

 

It's got a few dials etc like bass boost/treble, pickup selection and some eq settings.

 

Is it best to simply sample C notes across all 4 strings in a few octaves and then use those root notes as the basis for transposition to all the other possible notes within that range?

 

I could obviously sample with a pick/fingers and clearly there are many ways to play a note, i.e. velocity variance and amount of sustain I want. 

 

All advice greatly appreciated. 

 

http://s965.photobucket.com/user/Marcus_2048/media/Controls.jpg.html

 

P

 

 

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I could be oversimplifying what you're asking about. Record sample, put into the Simpler. Then just group the desired effects with it and save it out. Should appear in your instrument library.

 

Essentially you would be using the same process as this

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Just depends how much time you want to put into it. Ableton's Sampler instrument is pretty powerful when it comes to warping notes, but if you want the best sounds I'd suggest sampling as many notes across the fretboard as you're willing to. Then it's just a matter of chopping.

 

If you're careful, you could get Ableton to do the chopping for you: you'd have to play on a given beat, say 1/4 notes, and play each note sequentially upward...then open the file and choose convert to MIDI at the rate with which you recorded (1/4 in this case), this will chop up the whole audio file at once just how you need. You could (should be able to? never tried this...) then move each of those chopped notes into Sampler relatively easy. Do this a few times for the sounds you want/settings on your bass/whatever, and create a few Sampler instruments: Picked Bass Boost, Fretted High Pickups, etc. That should cut down on the manual waveform editing for you.

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Just depends how much time you want to put into it. Ableton's Sampler instrument is pretty powerful when it comes to warping notes, but if you want the best sounds I'd suggest sampling as many notes across the fretboard as you're willing to. Then it's just a matter of chopping.

 

If you're careful, you could get Ableton to do the chopping for you: you'd have to play on a given beat, say 1/4 notes, and play each note sequentially upward...then open the file and choose convert to MIDI at the rate with which you recorded (1/4 in this case), this will chop up the whole audio file at once just how you need. You could (should be able to? never tried this...) then move each of those chopped notes into Sampler relatively easy. Do this a few times for the sounds you want/settings on your bass/whatever, and create a few Sampler instruments: Picked Bass Boost, Fretted High Pickups, etc. That should cut down on the manual waveform editing for you.

 

Brilliant thank you! Yes, I'll try that way.

 

When you say sample as many notes as you can, I could essentially sample every note on all strings on all frets right? 

 

Also, how it would work if the bass is obviously a 4 stringed instrument, would I need a sampler instance for each string in its singluarity? 

 

This is me being dumb right, the other strings are simply higher octaves of the same set of notes right? 

 

sorry :(

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Just depends how much time you want to put into it. Ableton's Sampler instrument is pretty powerful when it comes to warping notes, but if you want the best sounds I'd suggest sampling as many notes across the fretboard as you're willing to. Then it's just a matter of chopping.

 

If you're careful, you could get Ableton to do the chopping for you: you'd have to play on a given beat, say 1/4 notes, and play each note sequentially upward...then open the file and choose convert to MIDI at the rate with which you recorded (1/4 in this case), this will chop up the whole audio file at once just how you need. You could (should be able to? never tried this...) then move each of those chopped notes into Sampler relatively easy. Do this a few times for the sounds you want/settings on your bass/whatever, and create a few Sampler instruments: Picked Bass Boost, Fretted High Pickups, etc. That should cut down on the manual waveform editing for you.

 

Brilliant thank you! Yes, I'll try that way.

 

When you say sample as many notes as you can, I could essentially sample every note on all strings on all frets right? 

 

Also, how it would work if the bass is obviously a 4 stringed instrument, would I need a sampler instance for each string in its singluarity? 

 

This is me being dumb right, the other strings are simply higher octaves of the same set of notes right? 

 

sorry :(

 

 

No need to worry about the distinction as to which string it came from; though that can affect the tonal quality, you're going to be playing many of the same notes (as yes, other strings feature multiple instances of the same note, e.g. in standard tuning playing fret 5 on the E string will produce the exact same note as open on the A string, but again you may get different tonal qualities from playing the same note on a different string). If you're worried about just a true copying of notes available then I'd go with MGF's suggestion above, or just focus on like I said doing short runs at 1/4 note speed to a metronome.

 

Ultimately, the time you're spending questioning and reading our answers is a bit wasted, or would be better spent just recording your bass. I'd say just start recording as much as you think is unique and interesting, keep the recordings relatively short (no more than a minute or so each) and label them well. Shouldn't take more than 30 minutes. You can dig in to the sample management and Ableton instrument making further, later. :)

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Sweet, thank you. I'll just get the notes recorded in their entirety and then go ahead editing them all.

 

Across all frets on all strings is 84 samples. That's not actually too bad but could be time consuming to record sets of 84 at different settings on the bass/played differently. 

 

Yeah, I'll deffo share when it's done. I also have a valve amp which I'm going to send it all through after the raw WAV is recorded just to add character.

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Well ive recorded the whole thing on the eq1 setting and bridge pickup. .sounds good.

 

Two questions

 

Should I use any preamp on my focusrite interface to amp up the signal more? Its already on the instrument setting for the input so in my mind that's already a boost to the signal. Ive left it off and thinking of boosting later.

 

Next, im trying to record standard length and velocity notes. ..tricky. most of the notes are like 1/2 bar or even a bar...rather than quarter notes. Does that matter? Just loads of fading on a per sample basis right?

 

Sent from my GT-I9100P using Tapatalk

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Just depends how much time you want to put into it. Ableton's Sampler instrument is pretty powerful when it comes to warping notes, but if you want the best sounds I'd suggest sampling as many notes across the fretboard as you're willing to. Then it's just a matter of chopping.

 

If you're careful, you could get Ableton to do the chopping for you: you'd have to play on a given beat, say 1/4 notes, and play each note sequentially upward...then open the file and choose convert to MIDI at the rate with which you recorded (1/4 in this case), this will chop up the whole audio file at once just how you need. You could (should be able to? never tried this...) then move each of those chopped notes into Sampler relatively easy. Do this a few times for the sounds you want/settings on your bass/whatever, and create a few Sampler instruments: Picked Bass Boost, Fretted High Pickups, etc. That should cut down on the manual waveform editing for you.

The same thing can be done more easily if you have Adobe Audition: you can use it to automatically split every part of a long wave file that is separated by silence to a new file. First choose to automatically place markers around silence and then batch export all parts that are not silent. In this way, you can record all notes in a long wave file with random timing and separate them all to new files with a couple of mouse clicks.

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^interesting feature in Audition, I've never used that program

 

@Polytrix, I'd say clean without preamp is preferred, but doing both wouldn't hurt if you're wanting to put that extra time in, assuming your preamp adds a unique color to the sound. If it literally just boosts the volume and gain a touch, it's likely not worth it.

 

Whatever length notes you feel comfortable recording is fine, just make it consistently that length for that recording (if you're wanting to use the Ableton MIDI convert trick I mentioned). If you want to manually chop the recordings into individual notes, length doesn't matter.

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Hey so I've done note-for-note four times through/pick/finger with an individual clip recorded for each string and marked that way so I know where it came from.

 

This is great fun. I now have recordings for 4 instruments/samplers. It's amazing the amount of different tones I'm getting. I might stop after the next one because slicing this all up must be essentially TORTURE.

 

Anyone want to do that for me?!

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If I were to record it I would record every note plus three or four levels of intensity (pianissimo to fortissimo).

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Hey mesh that's really kind of you. It's like 16-20 audio clips for string by string fret by fret recordings mostly a bar long for each note...attempted consistent velocity and repeated some notes when they didnt play as expected so there is waste material there as well meaning you have to kind of pick the best repeats.

 

My next step is to send all the files through my valve amp to add character then ill send you the files

 

When you slice into individual clips, please ensure. It's labelled so you mnow intended tuning and from which set of recordings it originates from.

 

Amazing.

 

Sent from my GT-I9100P using Tapatalk

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Yup, I also think this is a job for manual slicing and then renaming to know the tuning of each individual note to ease mapping to a sampler.

 

As I said before, there are instances of fret buzz and just me fucking up every now and then so there's also an element of selection required after the fact.

 

It's all done Mesh, I'm just uploading to dropbox and I'll send you those links by PM.

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