iBassist – A Virtual Bass Player For iOS

Developer Luis Martinez has introduced iBassist, a virtual bassist for iOS.

iBassist turns your iPad into a virtual bass player. Additionally, it sends progression chords by MIDI, so you use it to play keyboards in the background.

Features:

  • You can apply any chord progression to any bass line. The Chord Progression editor is quick, easy to use and allows to create or edit your progressions choosing Key Notes – harmony by steps, midi detection or randomizing.
  • iBassist includes 10 round-robin sampled natural bass sounds. Different styles and colors, from Modern Finger Bass, to warm Double Bass.
  • Live Pads lets to play live sessions on the way with 8 assignable pads for Line-Progression-Jam, and change between them by MIDI.
  • Song Mode. Choosing “Make Drums” in song mode will create the whole song structure drums.
  • Export Midi function to create MIDI Files with the Bass Line /- Progression – Jam combination or whole song structures.
  • Built-In Effects: Compressor, Delay, Chorus, Reverb. Parametric EQ

Pricing and Availability

iBassist is available now for US $17.99. If you’ve used iBassist, share your thoughts on it in the comments!

6 thoughts on “iBassist – A Virtual Bass Player For iOS

  1. If this was from any other developer, I’d be more skeptical, but LumBeat (aka Luis Martinez) has all these very well-crafted drum machines for iOS. (There was one stinker for Android, but I’m willing to let that slide now).

    I’m definitely going to be checking this out.

  2. I heard a more extensive demo, and was disappointed by the way the bass samples were treated.

    The attacks of samples were truncated, and the release times for all bass notes have a zero release-time, so they click as they cut off. The result is very unnatural and kind of messy.

    Still, I think the app will be fun and useful for some folks, but that kind of sloppy sonic stuff just bugs me to no end. Should have been fixed in beta.

  3. Disappointed to hear that, @stub. I, too, bought the app on the notion that all of the LumBeat apps i’ve tried so far have been excellent (and are improved over time). Haven’t tried this app yet, but I’m hearing a little bit of rumbling on the AudioBus forum about various things relating to a “non-organic” feel. Wonder if the “zero release” issue has something to do with polyphony and not wanting notes to overlap in a way that would be impossible if you were working up a bass guitar string. In any event, I’ll hold out optimism given how good the drum apps have been – this is a very different beast and may require some tweaking over time.

  4. It’s a great point, there might be only one voice of polyphony. Though there could be ways around it to make the notes not chop off. I also think the editing was sloppy. It’s weird though, if they went to all the trouble to have “round robin” samples, why wouldn’t they do a more pro job of editing. The drum samples have all seemed fine– not very dynamic, but that’s more just the limitation of the overall architecture.

    I really do hope they’ll consider another pass at the sample editing, they’re chopped too hard on the fronts, and they need a better way to manage the releases. Bass notes can’t stop on a dime.

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