Automatic bass line

[BGJammer]

Extremely new to Cakewalk.  I have a relatively simple (I hope) question regarding the use of virtual instruments.

I know nothing about playing a bass - upright or electric.  I would like to have Cakewalk generate a simple bass track for me based (no pun intended) on chords from a guitar track and/or notes in a vocal track.  Is this at all possible?  I am looking for an upright bass sound, as I play bluegrass.  I know very little about the SI-Bass, but understand it can be adjusted to resemble an upright or acoustic bass.  I am also considering the purchase of Adam Monroe's Upright Bass plugin.

If not possible, I guess I will have to live without bass in my recordings.

Thanks in advance for your thoughts/comments/suggestions.

Ken in Kansas

[abacab]

What you are looking is probably something like Band in a Box. Select a style, plug in some chords, and let it generate backing tracks for you.

Cakewalk does not have a built in capability to do that, however the recent releases of Band in a Box come with a VST plugin that you can run directly in Cakewalk (or any DAW that supports VST). So you can drop your generated tracks right into your Cakewalk project. Handy!

 

[Kurre]

Band in a box is nice.

You mentioned that you have chords. If it's midi then in the piano roll view, delete all notes in the chord except the lowest one. You should end up with a series of notes as many bars as there where chords. Select all those notes and move them down to where it sounds bassy.

I think that could work. I saw something like that in a video but can't remember which one.

[brandon]

9 hours ago, BGJammer said:

Extremely new to Cakewalk.  I have a relatively simple (I hope) question regarding the use of virtual instruments.

I know nothing about playing a bass - upright or electric.  I would like to have Cakewalk generate a simple bass track for me based (no pun intended) on chords from a guitar track and/or notes in a vocal track.  Is this at all possible?  I am looking for an upright bass sound, as I play bluegrass.  I know very little about the SI-Bass, but understand it can be adjusted to resemble an upright or acoustic bass.  I am also considering the purchase of Adam Monroe's Upright Bass plugin.

If not possible, I guess I will have to live without bass in my recordings.

Thanks in advance for your thoughts/comments/suggestions.

Ken in Kansas

You could try Freelancer.com or fiver.com - someone will definitely write you some bass tracks for very little reward.

[treesha]

I just googled free bluegrass midi files and some sites come up. You should be able to find some useable bass parts guitar chords etc and use them to be played by your preferred bass instrument. If you already have the chords and the bass doesn’t match you can move the notes in piano roll view to the right notes. Good videos in the tutorial section if this sounds unfamiliar. Good luck

[Kurre]

This is a bit off topic. It's a response to Band in a box.

There's this JJazzLab, a free backing track application.

It needs three files installed: JJazzLab itself, VirtualMIDIsynth and JJazzLab soundfonts.

I loaded a blues swing sng-file and changed the style, by rightclick menu in the style, to a bluegrass style at 142 bpm. It was f-ing awesome. Blues chord progression fits perfectly with the bluegrass instrumentation. And at that speed it was a groovy swing.

As usual you can mute individual instruments.

[Shane_B.]

On 3/8/2021 at 9:32 PM, BGJammer said:

I know very little about the SI-Bass, but understand it can be adjusted to resemble an upright or acoustic bass.  I am also considering the purchase of Adam Monroe's Upright Bass plugin.

TTS-1 has a really good upright bass named Acoustic Bass iirc.

If you want to do a basic bass track you can play it on a guitar and convert it to midi using Melodyne and then drag that midi file on to an instrument track such as TTS-1 set to Acoustic Bass. I use TTS-1 in an unconventional way. I layer the Acoustic and Electric bass using different instances of TTS-1. It's a lightweight synth and takes zero resources so I just use a different instance of it for every instrument. It makes using VST effects and bouncing individual instruments easier.

I have BiaB 2020. At the time I didn't have good internet access so I paid for the audiophile version that comes on HDD. It's a really nice program but overkill if you just want to do bass lines. It also has some excellent steel guitar capabilities also and you can import your own midi song into it and use it's samples. I bought it mainly for the steel guitar because the steel guitar VST's out there require fancy keyboard work to express all the variations and I couldn't wrap my head around it. 

If it's a simple bass line without any slides or fancy fret work I will play the bass line on the E and A string of my strat and export it to midi using Melodyne and drag that to TTS-1 or SI-Bass. Works like a charm and you can easily fix any clunkers in Melodyne or Piano Roll View.

[Soundwise]

On 3/9/2021 at 6:32 AM, BGJammer said:

I would like to have Cakewalk generate a simple bass track for me based (no pun intended) on chords from a guitar track and/or notes in a vocal track.

It's possible to build bass lines out of provided midi clips. Also, you can try Step Sequencer view. Unfortunately, there's no chord/melody line generator in Cakewalk.

[John Vere]

Are you writing original material or just making projects of traditional versions. As said, there are lots of free midi downloads of almost every traditional bluegrass song. It’s well covered in the midi world  

I have played both progressive and traditional bluegrass as well as I have a lot of original songs in that style. 
if you are a guitar player then an easy option is play the part on your guitar and then drag that track to a midi track   Melodyne will convert to midi. 
if you need certain songs PM me I probably have it. 
ps. I hate what Band in. Box puts out. Sounds like a Mall Organ 

Edited March 10, 2021 by John Vere

[abacab]

1 minute ago, John Vere said:

Are you writing original material or just make projects of traditional versions.

This is beginning to look like it may be another one of those "drive-by" first posts where the OP never returns.

[John Vere]

I was thinking about that as well. I broke my own rule of never reply until the Op responds to first reply 

[John Vere]

12 hours ago, Shane_B. said:

TTS-1 has a really good upright bass named Acoustic Bass iirc.

If you want to do a basic bass track you can play it on a guitar and convert it to midi using Melodyne and then drag that midi file on to an instrument track such as TTS-1 set to Acoustic Bass. I use TTS-1 in an unconventional way. I layer the Acoustic and Electric bass using different instances of TTS-1. It's a lightweight synth and takes zero resources so I just use a different instance of it for every instrument. It makes using VST effects and bouncing individual instruments easier.

 

Did you know that TTS-1 can play 16 different instruments in one instance- And it's easy to set it up using 4 different audio tracks.  

  I have more tutorials on using TTS_1 posted here that if the OP ever returns might find useful.. 

https://sites.google.com/view/cactus-studios/cakewalk-videos

 

Edited March 10, 2021 by John Vere

[Shane_B.]

12 minutes ago, John Vere said:

Did you know that TTS-1 can play 16 different instruments in one instance- 

I liked the video. Thanks! TTS-1 also has 4 outputs so you could for example have your drums, strings, piano, and bass all go to their own bus and process them separately. I like to have even greater control and separate out the drum tracks to individual midi tracks and add a different TTS-1 to each individual drum in the kit.

I've gotten in to the habit of using a separate instance of TTS-1 for every instrument. It makes it easier for me to work with individual instruments and bounce them to a wave to edit and use VST's.

I was actually working on the I'm A Believer challenge but got sidetracked at home and never finished it. I think I'll try to finish it and find the thread and post the CWP of how I use it. I was intentionally using only VST's that come with CbB so anyone could open the CWP file and see/hear exactly what I did.

[abacab]

Great echo chamber here folks. No OP in sight!

[BGJammer]

My apologies for not responding sooner.  I've been dealing with some medical issues.  When you are 76, you get to know the inside of doctor's offices quite well.

I will be looking at all suggestions in detail.  RE: my style of playing - I'm just an old chord guy trying to get well - not a flat or finger picker so don't have the skills to play melody or lead.  I should have mentioned that in my post - my bad.  So, I guess, the simpler the better for me in terms of a "solution".  But, if I read these posts carefully (and I will), I'm sure there is a workable answer (or combination of answers) for me somewhere.

Per John:  I'm doing "covers", if you will, of some of the many BG songs I've heard, learned and played over the course of 50+ years.  My wife of 50 years recently requested that I record "my music" for our grandchildren and others.  That is my ultimate goal.  Most of my jams with other pickers included a bass, but I am unable to work with those folks now - don't even know where they are at this point.  Hence, my reason for looking at DAWs, VSTs, etc. to help recreate the "moments" as much as possible.  I would certainly be interested finding free midi tracks of BG songs - also C&W & '40's - '60's hits.  My wife is a big Ricky Nelson fan.

Per Kurre:  I am looking very closely at JJazz and appreciate the suggestion.

Thank you to all who have responded so far.  I will continue to monitor this topic.  I had checked the option to "Notify me of replies", but received no such notifications.  Don't know why.  My email address is on file.

Stay safe!!

Ken in Kansas

[BGJammer]

PS  Just changed settings to receive email once per day for new content.  That should help.

[Kurre]

You have places like this where you can download midisongs for free.

https://freemidi.org/artist-1279-ricky-nelson

[BGJammer]

Thanks, Kurre.  I'll be looking at that site.

BTW - didn't mean to overlook mentioning Treesha's input.  I've been searching the last day or so for suitable sites based on her suggestion.

Ken in Kansas

[treesha]

On 3/7/2021 at 7:15 PM, John Vere said:

https://sites.google.com/view/cactus-studios/home    go to the Cakewalk CWP files tab or directly = 

https://sites.google.com/view/cactus-studios/cakewalk-cwp-files

 

I explain most of this on the web site. But due to Covid I have more or less retired from playing at Dances and Parties. I have over 300 backing tracks just sitting there going to waist and I thought.. Hey, I should share these with the Cakewalk community. So you guys can pick them over and put them to good use. These are a great starting point for new comers looking for simple stuff to learn on. I've put a lot of work into these and most are my own sequences. Some are downloads I worked over. 

These are "as is" right off my hard drive so they are not really optimized for public use just yet.  They are the last save before exporting from 3 years ago.  I'll get going on optimizing  this week if it keeps raining outside. Otherwise I need to prune my trees!

I'll  try and clean them up and possibly swap out the VST's for all freebies. If you have Sonar then you should have everything. Everyone else if you grab Ample P bass lite and Mr Tramp you'll be fine. I used a GM map for AD2 so the drums will play OK on SI drums  ( I think) . 

 

 

Hi Ken, hope you are doing well and making some progress. In another post on here John Vere is generously sharing decades of his  files. If you haven’t messaged him you can go to the link and look at the midi songs he has which might include songs you would want to work on. Reading the entire thread might help too. Good luck

[BGJammer]

Thanks, Treesha.  Amazingly enough, I was actually in the middle of messaging John when I got the notification of your post.  It looks as though he and I share similar musical tastes and backgrounds.  I'm looking forward to perusing his files.

Ken in Kansas