Bass sound effect

I don't think I can help much with VSTs, but maybe you could find one with 'Swell' or 'Volume Swell' in the description. That would take the attack out of the notes you play and soften up the sound a bit. You can kind of also do it by using a lot of compression. If you have a POD or something similar, you could use those effects.

As far as muddying up the sound - just do the opposite of what bassists try to do - which is to keep things clear ;)

You could boost the bass freqs, take out all the mids and top end, pluck the strings right over the 12th fret area and maybe use your thumb to pluck with.

To get a bowed sound, you could use the 'Volume Swell' effect or get yourself a volume pedal and pluck with the volume off and quickly bring it up. I think with the Auto Swell effects, it's something where you set it and every note is brought up at the same speed. With a volume pedal you could get more and varried expression because it's manual.

Hope this helps.

Maybe someone will come along and suggest specific VSTs though.

Best regards

Try flat wound strings on your bass. Old ones. You'll get a nice "thump."

Mitch & Demo thanks guys, Demo I probably have my terminology wrong, it's really just a softer sound that I'm looking for, I find when I play (at least that's what I call it) that my notes are quite "plucky" (for the want of a better word) and not nearly as smooth or soft as what I hear when others play.

Thanks for the reply

Paul

Oh, compressor then maybe...

Finger technique!

(Sorry, LOL, we could make guesses all day. How about some sound clips, of what you've got, and what you want?)

Thanks Guys I think you are both probably right, I certainly dont play it often enough to have mastered any kind of finger technique yet. When recording my acoustic I generally use a little compression and enough reverb to give me a more natural sound (funny that isnt it?). I was just wondering if there was anybody else that had a standard set of effects that they regularly used for their bass.

Paul

Don't know if this'll help much, Paul, but I took a look at my bass amp....it's a Roland Cube 30.

Settings are:

Bass, full
Middle, 7
Treble, 6

Reverb - about 5, half-way.
Compression - about 5, half-way.
Gain, between 1.5 and 2.
Volume - about 3.5.

On the "Shape" setting I use "Concert"....

With these settings, I'm pretty close to the sound I want, and there dosn't seem to be any "finger noise" like unwanted pick noise on, say, an electric guitar.....

Oh, and on the bass guitar itself, the volume and tone controls are both roughly half-way....it's a single-pick up (well, the p/u for the bottom two (E and A)strings is slightly further toward the neck than the p/u for the top two (D and G) strings, so they're staggered, I suppose....) and I tend to pluck the strings fairly near the pick-ups.

Like I said, I don't know if this'll help much, but I seem to get the sound I like this way....so maybe just messing around with the amp settings could help, before investing in pedals and software....

(And I always make a note of what settings I've used on different songs - I use my keyboard through my bass amp as well, and I do tend to mess with said settings to get the sound I want....)

:D :D :D

Vic

Thanks Vic,
that sounds like plan to me Ill have a play this weekend
cheers mate
Paul