Live Bass guitar converted to midi ?

[Paul Bush]

Hi chaps , is there a way that I can, after recording a bass guitar (non vst) onto a track and then that recorded bass track convert to midi so that I then can  quantizise for timing purposes . or are the live recorded sources auotmatically converted to midi through the auiio interface    ? cheers

 

[fret_man]

I can think of a couple of options:

1) Melodyne can convert audio to MIDI.

2) Rout the audio to Jam Origin's MIDI Bass input and save the MIDI output.

[Byron Dickens]

I would insert my obligatory comment about learning to play in time here, but people invariably act as if I had cast aspersions upon their ancestry.

[John Bradley]

"You take that back, my mother was a saint!"

[John Bradley]

But to answer the original question, unless you really want to replace your bass with a synth or something, there's no reason to try to turn it into midi.

What you want is AudioSnap. Turn it on, and I recommend you disable as many markers as you can (say, leave 1 per bar enabled) and then move the more egregious errors closer to the grid lines. Oh, turn on the vertical grid lines (1/4 or 1/8 resolution) in the Track window.

If you leave all the markers enabled and start trying to move all of them the be perfectly on grid, you can run into 'problems' down the line.

[Paul Bush]

Well I must agree with the ``playing in time comment ´´,  as I usually do ,   thing is on this new song the bass line is a constant chugga chugga chugga thang and I was just trying to find am easy way out ,Oh well  so I´ll just have to do a couple of punch-ins  .

[Agentcalm]

Joking aside about learning to play better, i think it's a great and legit question.  The ability to convert audio to midi can be useful in lots of ways.   Fret man's link to that guitar 2 software is amazing.   Great share bro.

It's just under $100 which is not cheap but I was expecting to see a price tag a lot higher.   As I'm not playing live at all I probably dont NEED as much as it would be handy to have.  I'll hold off till I have $100 as spare change (yeah right). 

I'll have a look at Fret's other suggestion of using Melodyne.    Is there a basic version included with CbB? 

[mark skinner]

I've gotten some good results on bass tracks just using melodyne. You can correct the pitch and the timing on All of the notes or just the ones you choose. Just don't try and get them Perfect and it will still sound natural.  If the kick drum hits heavy on certain beats pay closer attention to these spots on the bass track.   Even Melodyne Essentials is Well worth buying if you don't have it especially for vocals and bass.    ms

[Paul Bush]

Thanks chaps , for the  information

[Glenn Stanton]

i've been using my Strat to play bass over the past couple of months since i left my basses at home 😞 i play the bass lines, either fingers or picks, then convert to MIDI using Melodyne. i clean up a bit or move things if needed, then render. i then copy the MIDI notes to a separate track and use the SI-Bass VSTi to play it. most times not even transposing. any version of Melodyne should work - like the Essentials version etc. you can quantize the MIDI notes if necessary.

[Starship Krupa]

MTuner from the Meldaproduction MFreeFX bundle has, as one of its functions, an audio-to-MIDI converter. I've tried it and it works pretty well.*

(*what you should really do is grab a bass and practice with a metronome until you can nail the part with impeccable precision. Then set Cakewalk to record in loop mode until you get a take that will require no quantizing, comping, or copy-and-pasting. Ideally, your playing should be so precise that even compression would be superfluous. This is because acquiring skill playing your instrument is inherently better than acquiring skill using your DAW and it is always futile to try to salvage imperfect recordings. You must go back and re-record, even if doing so would require rounding up multiple musicians or inventing time travel, the latter of which is likely to be the easier task)

[Paul Bush]

Hi chaps,  well here´s the thing I always wanted to write a chugga chugga chugga type bass line rock song and I came up with this ,(work in progress ) its my  first attempt so its not finished and the fill guitars need tweeking  and I have no outro written as of today but I think you`ll get the jist of my timming problems

Have a gander at my   ``Rock n Roll cliche ´´ cheers PB

RnR cliche MP3 demo.mp3

[Starship Krupa]

On 9/22/2020 at 10:53 AM, Paul Bush said:

Hi chaps,  well here´s the thing I always wanted to write a chugga chugga chugga type bass line rock song and I came up with this ,(work in progress ) its my  first attempt so its not finished and the fill guitars need tweeking  and I have no outro written as of today but I think you`ll get the jist of my timing problems

Have a gander at my   ``Rock n Roll cliche ´´ cheers PB

RnR cliche MP3 demo.mp3 4.03 MB · 4 downloads

Fun track, reminds me of Foreigner 4.

Yeah, hammering that 8th note for an entire song is harder than it looks (to keep it on time and musical). Bassists and rhythm guitarists tend to fade into the background behind the lead guitarist and vocalist in rawk, but that pulse is important.😎

Since you're playing to programmed drums, my approach to this would be to record a measure or two of each bass section and just copy and paste and/or groove clip it. That way I could get it as precise as I wanted (with energy variations going into and coming out of changes) through repetition. Record each section in loop mode until nailed, then comp.

Were it a human drummer, I'd want to chug the whole song to follow their push and pull.

Warning: I can't resist making a couple of other observations/suggestions. I'm a drummer, so it's part of my job description to pester with "helpful" ideas when I'm not practicing stick tricks.

The MP3 peaked at about -6 dB. I'd either fix that in CbB by turning up whatever bus you're rendering from or put it into Sound Forge or Audacity and normalizing it up to -1 dB. Saves people from having to crank up their playback volume to hear you.

Performance-wise, your chuggery actually sounded pretty okay to me. As noted, you're playing to robo-drummer. However, you're doing a style of music that predates the obsession with tight quantizing, so somebody in your one-man band has to provide a human feel, and letting the bass player dance around the beat a bit makes it sound less robotic.

One touch I'd make to the drum track is tweaking the velocity and timing of the first snare hit in that little fill going into the changes. Having them too close in timbre shouts "MIDI drums." Bah-bap instead of Bap-Bap, if you get me.

[Paul Bush]

thanks Erik I do tend to struggle with the drums so thanks for the tips