EZ Bass NOW Available!

[Bapu]

21 minutes ago, John Maar said:

$162.68 with AZ tax at Sweetwater. YOLO!

EDIT: Serial number received within 2 minutes! Installing now.

Did you at least get 6 months interest free?

 

[TheMaartian]

 

3 minutes ago, Bapu said:

Did you at least get 6 months interest free?

 

I've been interest-free for almost 3 years (when I quit dating ?).

Edited May 19, 2020 by John Maar

[Reid Rosefelt]

3 hours ago, Greg said:

As far as playability - did you get a chance to look at the keyswitch pdf?  I copied and pasted the list below. 

Where do I find this PDF?

[Greg]

1 hour ago, Reid Rosefelt said:

Where do I find this PDF?

Can get to it under "help" in the plugin menu. 

[Zo]

I watched th ewalkrthought the should call it Bass , not EZ bass /.... looks like a lot of stuff to do , this is more on the superior side than an ez stuff ...nope ?

[PAL Music]

So much fun, Got it to transpose some acoustic guitar and  midi drums.messed with a bunch presets (very nice by the way) and gave the editor a whirl and "bam" 3 hours passed. This is not good for my hyperfocus ADD.

[Grem]

We were talking about EZB Xpansions. Well look at what I noticed:

TT is recommending a spot to put the libraries, because there will be many more ya gonna buy!!! I had to laugh out loud on that one!!

Not if your gonna buy them, but you will buy them!! : )

[paulo]

7 hours ago, Zo said:

I watched th ewalkrthought the should call it Bass , not EZ bass /.... looks like a lot of stuff to do , this is more on the superior side than an ez stuff ...nope ?

This is only the first release version. 

Planned future releases include:

ABMD (A Bit More Difficult) Bass

RQH  (Really Quite Hard) Bass

CHLTPTFBBN (Could Have Learned To Play The Fookin Bass By Now) Bass

[Marshall]

This does look and sound fantastic. I have thought for a month or so that I'd buy it straightaway, but I love playing real bass - I'm a guitarist who plays bass very much as a second instrument. This thing would outperform me in many situations, and I am sure it will give great results, but I am actually thinking it will be less fun than playing my real four -string. 

I mean I really am NOT a keyboard player and I've used EZKeys extensively over the years in my music - it was and remains a real game changer for me. But I can play a bass...I'm hesitating on this purchase right now! 

[Grem]

1 hour ago, Marshall said:

I can play a bass...

I can too. But I really don't play like a Bassist. I play like a guitar player playing bass. I find it hard to work on the guitar parts and bass. I have a tendency to want to follow the guitar instead of the drums.  And my biggest problem is when I want to do a fill, it tends to sound like a guitar fill!! : )

I have played bass in bands. And it was an awakening to me to realize how much of a percussive instrument the bass is. I thoroughly enjoyed it. And would do it again if the need arises. But I realized very quickly, I am not a bassist. 

My hope is I can get this to sound more like a bassist than I am. With the little playing around I did last night, I realized, this ain't EZ Drummer!! It's a little more involved than that for sure. But the results were promising. I just need to learn the program some more.

[Marshall]

14 minutes ago, Grem said:

I have played bass in bands...but I realized very quickly, I am not a bassist. 

 

That’s me - I can play a bass but I’m not a bass player. However, it’s such a fun thing to do! I’ll no doubt cave in and buy this thing - maybe in a few months.
 

Or later today ?

[Grem]

5 minutes ago, Marshall said:

However, it’s such a fun thing to do!

Yep! And I'll do it as long as they let me!!

I like to sit around with EZD and let roll and play stuff. It is fun!!

[Larry Shelby]

 

[Vernon Barnes]

2 hours ago, Grem said:

I can too. But I really don't play like a Bassist. I play like a guitar player playing bass. I find it hard to work on the guitar parts and bass. I have a tendency to want to follow the guitar instead of the drums.  And my biggest problem is when I want to do a fill, it tends to sound like a guitar fill!! : )

 

One thing EZKeys has taught me as a (rather mediocre) synth player is that I will never be a piano player.  As such I find EZKeys very useful. . 

[Hidden Symmetry]

1 hour ago, cclarry said:

 

This looks useful. I do similar things using Melodyne but this might be easier?

[Larry Shelby]

1 hour ago, Hidden Symmetry said:

This looks useful. I do similar things using Melodyne but this might be easier?

Yep...I have multiple tools for this.  X-Stems if I want to isolate Drums and convert
to MIDI with Melodyne to drive a Drum Sampler, and of course Melodyne itself for
others...and now this...the fact that this will generate at least a rudimentary bass
line will be useful...

Edited May 20, 2020 by cclarry

[Reid Rosefelt]

14 hours ago, Greg said:

Can get to it under "help" in the plugin menu. 

I found the manual there and three is a section on the articulations.  But it doesn't specify the key switches as your post did.  It's not a problem, as it explains what they do, and it's easy to find them within EZBass. 

I still am not convinced that this is designed primarily to be played.   Here are some things spotlighted by Steve Lum on VI:Control from the manual.

If you play around on the keyboard, you may notice key switches that are beyond the range described in the Key Switch Layout. These are mostly used in a strict fashion by EZbass and are not easily programmable, or were deemed less important than the twelve main key switches available in the layout. Expert MIDI programmers are free to study how they work, but many are practically impossible to get right by human hand within the piano roll of a DAW."

"The most important reason for using the grid editor is that EZbass offers many features that are not easily translatable to MIDI, and therefore complicated to program without assistance. The EZbass piano roll takes care of that programming for you in a way that would make no sense to expect from a DAW. But..! Even once your EZbass MIDI is perfectly programmed, the reality is that not all DAWs support the MIDI specification fully, or may filter out certain messages by design. To ensure that EZbass plays back your song correctly anywhere, the easiest way is simply to keep the MIDI within EZbass. "

"If you prefer to program in your DAW, you'll get the results you want 99% of the time. We designed EZbass to be usable as a live instrument, and so naturally the basic functions that matter most are accessible also within your DAW.

I hope to be using this over many coming years and will develop my workflow. But while I never bought a piano instrument for EZKeys and just dragged the MIDI over to my other pianos, I think I will need to buy bass expansions, for this as otherwise it will be too much work.  It will be anything but EZ!   

So I figure that I will get at least a P-Bass and an Acoustic bass, if they make one.  And I'll be loading up on bass MIDI parts.

I relate a lot to what @Gremsays.   My bass parts can sound the same because I didn't devote as much of my life to the bass as much as I've done with other instruments, like guitar,  ukelele, piano, blues harmonica, violin, etc.   I've owned a few basses, and yeah I can play it, but I suck at it and I know it.

So getting all those bass parts from TT will make my stuff better.  Add variety and realism.   I have found that to be the case for years from Band-in-a-Box. 

Still, one thing I do know from playing bass is that sometimes the best part is extremely simple. You don't have to be a hotdog.  The bass player serves the song. 

If I just want to play at this point I think I will be using a different VI.  Those 12 key switches don't work for me, and the ones that are outside the range even less.  I'll leave them to the "expert MIDI programmers."  I just want to make music.  

Edited May 20, 2020 by Reid Rosefelt

[Vernon Barnes]

25 minutes ago, Reid Rosefelt said:

I hope to be using this over many coming years and will develop my workflow. But while I never bought a piano instrument for EZKeys and just dragged the MIDI over to my other pianos, I think I will need to buy bass expansions, for this as otherwise it will be too much work. 
 

Exactly this. EZKeys piano MIDI is going to work on any piano library with may be a few  differences caused by differing velocity curves, Bass is different because of the many articulations, guitars will be even harder.

The closest thing that I have come across to EZBass is the Riffer function in the Amplesound basses, this suffers for the same limitations and if you want to use the output from Riffer you are pretty much stuck with Amplesound. Unless manufactures get together are develop a standard for this  (not going to happen) it will always be the case.

EZBass looks like it is in many ways is what Amplesound's Riffer could have been.  Riffer is cleaver in its string selection and use of multi channel guitar mode and comes with some excellent riffs but they have not got the chord /key change thing beyond a clunky transpose function. Programming your own parts requires really good knowledge of bass playing if its going to sound right. The Amplesound basses grew from a "normal" VSTi / library with Riffer added an extra feature later and they can be played as well as any virtual bass.  As they can use MIDI guitar mode they would lend their selves to being played with a guitar controller (is there such thing as a MIDI bass controller?)

Edited May 20, 2020 by Vernon Barnes

[Grem]

23 minutes ago, Reid Rosefelt said:

Still, one thing I do know from playing bass is that sometimes the best part is extremely simple. You don't have to be a hotdog.  The bass player serves the song

Yes, exactly. Well said. And it's being this "Extremely simple" "Extremely well!" that separates the good ones from the run of the mill crowd.

I just used the Audio Tracker (before I watched Larry's video) on a clean guitar trk (the whole song) and the results note wise was on the money. The playing that was generated wouldn't be that useful without some major editing. However, after watching the video Larry just posted, it gave me some ideas about how I could have gone about it better. 

So, I am going to keep using the same guitar part (because it works well with EZB) and try the different options I learned about in the video to see what it can generate. It seems that the little effort I put into getting the generated part, is what I got out of it!!

[BassDaddy]

One of the great things about EZ Drummer, EZ Keys is building your part in that instrument. You can save different versions of any part of song  and go back later and find where the midi came from.  Once you drag it to a track there is no record of what it is made of.  Im sure it is same in EZ Bass. Im another guitar player who enjoys playing bass and is unsure about spending the money for software. maybe it will be useful to build a track with EZB and then learn it and play it in.