Free Ableton Live Pack #107: Univox Bass "Lucy"
The Inspiration
A few years ago, I wrote and recorded a track called "I'd Never Leave You." One of the unique aspects of it is that there are a couple of bass guitar parts. First, there is the tradition hold-down-the-root-of-the-chord type bass. Then there is a melody played on some of the bass' highest notes, topped off with some delay and EQ filtering. This part is doubled by an electric guitar (actually this one) with tremolo. I wanted to recreate the sounds of these bass guitar parts in Ableton Live, so I created this Free Ableton Live Pack. Here is the song, "I'd Never Leave You."
"Lucy" The Univox Bass from the 70's
The bass on the recording is an old Univox bass from the 70's that belongs to my friend and occasional collaborator, SuperKid (We recently played a few songs on acoustic guitars for a benefit show). The bass, named Lucy, is one of my favorite basses I've ever played. It's got a great punchy, thumpy sound, and it's slightly smaller than traditional bass guitars, so it plays almost like a guitar.
The AfroDJMac Univox Bass Ableton Live Pack
I've had a lot of experience recording this bass, and I'm often torn on how to best record it. Running it through a bass amp is usually my first choice, but I also really like how it sounds coming out of my guitar amp. So what I did while sampling was run the bass through an SWR bass amp and my Fender Deluxe tube guitar amp. Also, I put up an AKG C414 mic in the room to capture both amps simultaneously. On the Ableton device, you can mix the three signals together to meet your taste.
When you pluck a string on a bass, it will always sound slightly different. So to emulate that, I recorded 3 different samples of each note that I recorded. I set the LFO in Sampler to play any of these three samples at random. That means that any melody you play will always sound slightly different. Even a MIDI clip will never loop in exactly the same way with the same samples. You will always get a bit of subtle variation, just as you would with a real bass player.
As you can see from the picture above, there are a few racks within racks here. You could certainly save any one of those racks individually and use them on other sounds; just click on the little save icon (floppy disc) at the top right.
So that is it, get the Univox Bass Lucy Free Ableton Live Pack 107, just enter "0" in the price field to make the credit card stuff go away. I hope you enjoy it, and please send along any tracks you make with it here.