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Looking To Play Basslines

B

bingefeller

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jun 25, 2007
618
42
Northern Ireland
Hi guys,

I have everything I need to record guitar with and I have EZDrummer for programing drums - all I'm missing is bass guitar! I had been using Band-In-A-Box but the bass guitar sounds are somewhat limited.

I was thinking of buying something like the Line 6 Mobile Keys 25 but I'm not sure if this will do what I want it to as all the demos I have seen just have people using it to play piano and keyboard sounds.

I use Garageband for recording and I thought that I could play the single notes on the Mobile Keys unit and Garageband would provide the bass guitar sounds for me. Is this even possible?

Any advice or guidance is appreciated!
 
Get a cheap bass on ebay, you'll never get a completely convincing sound out of software instruments and you can already play guitar, so there wont be that much of a learning curve. Just remember to dampen your strings :)
 
bingefeller said:
Hi guys,

I have everything I need to record guitar with and I have EZDrummer for programing drums - all I'm missing is bass guitar! I had been using Band-In-A-Box but the bass guitar sounds are somewhat limited.

I was thinking of buying something like the Line 6 Mobile Keys 25 but I'm not sure if this will do what I want it to as all the demos I have seen just have people using it to play piano and keyboard sounds.

I use Garageband for recording and I thought that I could play the single notes on the Mobile Keys unit and Garageband would provide the bass guitar sounds for me. Is this even possible?

Any advice or guidance is appreciated!
Click to expand...

Check out Spectrasonics Trillian. Awesome bass VST if you're not looking to learn the real thing.
 
bingefeller said:
Hi guys,

I have everything I need to record guitar with and I have EZDrummer for programing drums - all I'm missing is bass guitar! I had been using Band-In-A-Box but the bass guitar sounds are somewhat limited.

I was thinking of buying something like the Line 6 Mobile Keys 25 but I'm not sure if this will do what I want it to as all the demos I have seen just have people using it to play piano and keyboard sounds.

I use Garageband for recording and I thought that I could play the single notes on the Mobile Keys unit and Garageband would provide the bass guitar sounds for me. Is this even possible?

Any advice or guidance is appreciated!
Click to expand...

Yes, it is absolutely possible.

If you are using Garageband you have everything you need [sound wise] right there. Any keyboard MIDI controller will allow you to play the bass line, or keyboards parts, or whatever; it's what most software-based studios use to record bass and keyboard (and sometimes drums if you don't have a drum controller) parts. So you should be fine with the Line 6 Mobile Keys 25 as a MIDI controller for the Garageband sounds.

And yes, when you get more experience you can always pay $300 for a plugin like Trillian or buy a real Bass (which is what I use along with several hardware synths for bass like the Korg MS-20 mini.) But for now, you really do have everything you need...
 
Last edited:
genshi said:
Yes, it is absolutely possible.

If you are using Garageband you have everything you need [sound wise] right there. Any keyboard MIDI controller will allow you to play the bass line, or keyboards parts, or whatever; it's what most software-based studios use to record bass and keyboard (and sometimes drums if you don't have a drum controller) parts. So you should be fine with the Line 6 Mobile Keys 25 as a MIDI controller for the Garageband sounds.

And yes, when you get more experience you can always pay $300 for a plugin like Trillian or buy a real Bass (which is what I use along with several hardware synths for bass like the Korg MS-20 mini.) But for now, you really do have everything you need...
Click to expand...

Thanks! I'll go with the Mobile Keys 25 as it's quite cheap. I'm not really looking for super realistic bass guitar sounds, and the Garageband iOS bass guitar sounds will be fine for me :)

Thanks to everyone for their replies.
 
I used various soft synths for years, then I bought a squire jaguar short scale bass for around $180 new. It's a steal, really fun to play, and it sounds great. If you're a guitar player, you will really enjoy it.
 
joebingo said:
Get a cheap bass on ebay, you'll never get a completely convincing sound out of software instruments and you can already play guitar, so there wont be that much of a learning curve. Just remember to dampen your strings :)
Click to expand...

Not true, you can get insanely good sounds with Trillian and a midi controller.
 
ChrisA said:
Can you actually play that thing? Can you play explosively on it? Please let us know what you think.
Click to expand...

Sorry dude I don't know what mean by explosively. You need to press the keys quite hard, IMO, to get full velocity (not sure if that's the right term).

I'm a guitar player and don't really know anything about keyboards and what is good quality. For my needs it's good. I just record stuff at home for fun and am not looking for high quality equipment.

Overall I like the Nanokey2. It was only £35 so it was a nice bargain.
 
You don't need to buy a real bass if you don't want to. VST bass instruments (like Spectrasonics Trillian) sound just as good as the real thing these days. In fact, many of the vst bass sounds are a A LOT easier to get to sound good in your mix. Real bass can be tricky to record in a home studio. Just my 2 cents.
 
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