Gospel Musicians has introduced BASSalicious – a bass plugin for iOS, OS X & Windows that’s designed for gospel, hip-hop and R&B genres.
GM says, “We noticed that there were a ton of synth bass libraries out there that focused solely on dubstep and wobble bass sounds, but not that much out there for the urban community and that pure synth bass classic sound.”
Here are the official BASSalicious audio demos:
BASSalicious is available for OS X & Windows (VST, VST3, AU-32-bit, AU 64-Bit) for US $79. An iOS version is also in the works.
Sounds great…
However, it’s not organic at all.
The way he defines organic is wrong.
The phasing in and out of the oscillators and the unpredictable nature of VCO’s is what I define as organic.
At no stage do I hear these idiosyncrasies in this plug-in.
Every note sounds the same, thus still sounding digital and adding to the endless list of software plug-ins.
If you know the Minimoog, you know that every note you hit behaves differently.
That’s why I still favour hardware over software.
It’s still a cool plug-in though, because it looks clean and simple.
Hip hop and gospel doesn’t care about “analog drift” or oscillator phasing. I think people who use this either A. want software or b. Can’t afford a minimoog, so I think this is a good alternative for a session instrument. I like the way it sounds and I think it’s really cool that it has 4 oscillators. I have honestly never seen a commercial vst synth that Pandors to gospel.
” I have honestly never seen a commercial vst synth that Pandors to gospel.”
That’s a good point. These days it’s: EDM this and EDM that. I’m into to those oldschool bass sounds, but i have Monark for that. This comes with presets that are in the ballpark when wanting THAT bass sound. I say in the ballpark as this does not nail Minimoog like Monark does.
I bought BASSolicious as a way to start sketching out ideas. I have Logic, and I can see myself swapping for Monark or one of the Arturia synths in its place. Monark, especially, has some REALLY phat sounds inna Minimoog vibe.
Nice Moog sounds! Reckon there’s some secret samples in there!
I think the reason that so many libraries cater to dubstep and EDM is because those types of sounds can seem very complex to people just getting started (even if they aren’t very complex at all). When I first started using plugins I had no trouble navigating a typical VA synth but I didn’t know very much about wavetables, formants, or FM synthesis. Some understanding of those techniques is vital to creating diverse “wobble bass sounds” and I think that is a big part of the reason so many people want presets and samples in that style.
If you can’t learn to program a “pure synth bass classic sound” maybe you shouldn’t be playing a synth.
Maybe my standards are too high.
Or maybe you think the whole world works/thinks the way you do. This app is targeted at keyboard players, many of whom probably think “If you can’t do solid left hand vamps at 150bpm with 11ths and 13ths, for color, in a I-V-V-VII-V-II, maybe you shouldn’t be playing keyboards”.
I dunno much about this company but their iOS electric piano app is boss. Also seen a few great instructional videos from them.
The not-dubstep mission-statement-note is amusing if only because in the demo video the narrator gets real excited when playing a dubsteppy patch and exclaiming “it can DO Dubstep”. Regardless: I get that the emphasis is not brash EDM’ism and gotta say it sounds quite lovely.
I’ve been following this company for a while and their products are geared towards Keyboard players playing funk, R&B, Gospel, HipHop, and etc……Having presets for key-bass can come in handy to those not deep into programming and just want to play; but I understand the need for knowing synthesis. If you check their website you’ll see apps where synthesis techniques can be applied. As far as more “organic” sounding virtual instruments, I believe they are on their way. According to certain developers, analog emulation VSTs will require a lot of processing from the computer. All VSTs obviously don’t sound as good as their analog counterparts but having something very close in sound that can be backed up to a hard drive is priceless when price or size is an issue.
I got this a few months back. I’m a bassplayer primarily and was jus getting into keybass. IMHO, the BASSalcious is no Moog, but for the price point it’s sells at you really can’t be comparing the two!!
I now have the app version on my iPad too and use it to practice my keybass chops while on the road along with the iRig Keys PRO and I think it’s great!
Pls add dub