Thumbs up for Scarbee Black Bass

[dannthr]

I know there's a bunch of bass players on this forum, so you all can go somewhere else because this is for the bass deficient!

Scarbee announced a 33% off sale recently and I couldn't resist buying Black Bass which is a K2.2.3 sample bass library programmed by legendary Kontakt script-o-matic, Nils Liberg (sp?) and let me just say:

It's flippin' awesome!

It has some of the absolute best programming I've ever seen for a bass/guitar/anything library yet!

It's all placed on a single, compact keyswitch instrument. Which at first makes you think, damn, why do I need another keyswitch instrument? Well, I wish all guitar libraries were programmed like this!

Basically, the library keeps track of one major thing--automatically or by user control--the hand position. From the hand position, it tries to play whatever note you want it to play within the reach of the hand, and if it can't reach the note, it'll move the hand. Above the sampled keyrange are keyswitches to move the hand manually, letting you fine tune your control over which notes are played on which strings. I plugged in some tabs from portrait of tracy and it worked like a charm.

There are also keyswitches which will let you play a note on a specific string if you so desire (if you don't want it to automatically determine which string) and legato (hammer on/pull offs and portamento) is controlled by overlapping same string notes or using the sustain pedal respectively.

The library is made for live play being a straight up keyswitch instrument so there are a bunch of keyswitches that initiate some kind of articulation change for one note before switching back or for some notes depending.

Like trills, which will make the next note a trill and then automatically switch back so you can keep playing.

Or they have an extended hammer on/pull off keyswitch that makes every note you play a hammer on (if possible) while you hold it down. I say if possible because if you switch strings, it won't work, which is actually good for most people since the idea is to try to get as realistic a performance as possible.

If the hand position is automatically moved, or if you manually move the hand position, it'll make a little fret noise, which is a great effect.

Additionally, harmonics are all controlled by attempting a harmonic on the low, low 1-14 velocity range. What that means is that you can try to do harmonics on every string and on every fret (which is determined by the hand range or if you're manually controlling the string) and if there's a harmonic on that fret, on that string, then it'll play, and if not you'll get that little dull string pluck noise you'd normally get if you tried to play harmonics on a fret that doesn't make one.

They also have grace notes which are made by hitting two notes next to eachother one immediately after the other.

They also have all these interface features that let you fine-tune the instrument like a 3-band EQ and controlling how "sloppy" the virtual player is and the release of the notes, etc.

In short, they sampled almost EVERYTHING!

With all these new proprietary samplers coming out, it definitely reminds you of how awesome Kontakt can be if people put the work into it.

What I didn't like?

They didn't use aftertouch, I know a lot of keyboards don't support it, but despite how clumsy Prominy's programming is, the fact that I can get a vibrato with aftertouch is awesome--I wish I could do that with Black Bass.

There aren't (m)any FX, not that I need them, I own QL HardCore Bass XP, but all it has is a little fret slap--which I'm sure comes in handy, but I haven't seen myself using yet. They do have random pickup noises and the frequency of those can be controlled with a knob in the interface, but sometimes you like to dirty up your compos.

Additionally, the Jaco piece asked for some harmonics that weren't created from an open string, that I couldn't seem to do--I needed an Eb harmonic and I couldn't create one without doing that, so I just went with a D harmonic.

Nonetheless, it offers A LOT for its current sale price of $67, so I'm very pleased with my purchase, extremely pleased.

It gets a thumbs up from me, if you care.

So now I'll just leave you with a little transcription I made last night made from some guitar tabs of the opening to Portrait of Tracy with Black Bass and Guitar Rig 2 for some extra drive and some amp "air" :

http://www.dannthr.com/music/tests/black_bass_jppot.mp3

Cheers,

EDIT:

Here's a revision with no FX applied except some normalization in soundforge:

http://dannthr.com/music/tests/bb_jppot.mp3

I'm looking into a hurdle I've run into that has more to do with Jaco being super advanced...