VST Bass and Drum

[magritte]

Hey guys.
What's the best VST bass and drum setup for someone using Cubase? I record indie/velvet underground type music, so I'd like those sounds.
Thanks.

[Bill @ Irie Lab]

FL Studio (Fruity Loops) VSTi.

Easy pattern editor and cool beat slicing with Fruity Slicer add-in (even though that's not my thing). FPC is is a drum box with lots of MIDI grooves (including D&B) and the Styrus FM/additive synth is incredible.

You'll be making beats in minutes and finding new feature depth for months.

Fully functioning demo (no saving) is free for the download.

http://flstudio.image-line.com/documents/download.html

BTW - Great fun; and, yes, I really like it and, no, I don't work for them!

Bill

[magritte]

Thanks for the suggestion. Isn't that a complete audio recording application, though? I already have Cubase so I was just looking to add two vsts to it. Any suggestions? Is the Styrus synth what you'd recommend for bass? Maybe I can just add that vst to cubase?

[Bill @ Irie Lab]

Fruity Loops (now FL Studio) is an odd duck. It started as a cool musical toy for the PC, became a powerful tool for dance and beat-based music, and finally added more comprehensive audio recording facilities; but I sure wouldn't want to record a band with it.

I do think it is super neat-o as a plug-in to a "real" DAW; like cubase, PT, Reaper, etc if you're doing house, or D&B, or dance or club music, or hip-hop styles. It just adds great tools for that kind of work.

Styrus is great as a DX-7 on steroids if that's the bass you want and Fl has a TB-303 clone (TS-404) if you going real Old Skool.

Super easy to get started with but I scratched my head for a long time trying to get it to send live MIDI from the step sequencer to a track in the host DAW; but once figured out that trick has saved headaches, heartaches, and time drawing notes.

My work is still primarily with live people playing physical instruments. FL has let me take a dip in the [electro-] pool when an artists wants to experiment with more "contemporary" styles.

Is it right for you? I don't know!

[Bill @ Irie Lab]

After all that blah, blah, blah I must add -

The imperfections and human element (same thing, I guess) are a huge part of the styles that you favor. Anything sequenced, no matter the closeness in timbre of the sound, might always be lacking authenticity and mojo.

Bill

[Nick Sevilla]

Hey guys.
What's the best VST bass and drum setup for someone using Cubase? I record indie/velvet underground type music, so I'd like those sounds.
Thanks.

For Indie / Velvet Underground typw music, a live bass player is best.

If you do not have that available, then I suggest you listen to Spectrasonics' Trilian.

http://www.spectrasonics.net/instruments/trilian.php

Logical

[ott0bot]

For drums I think I'd use a midi controller and find a drum preset that sounds like a rock kit. Find the keys that play the kick, snare, hats, cymbals and a few toms. Then record a pass of the kick and edit to your likeness. Then find a few sections you really like and loop those as needed to get a complete kick track. Then add snare as it's own track, hats and cymbals and so on. That way you'll get a truly played sounding drum kit, with a few little errors here and there.

You can use the Ultrabeat sequencer too, but it only sounds good to me when you have some actual samples to put in the sequencer. The preset sounds are fairly electro sounding.

I'd probably eq out a bit of the low end, and add a decent amount of reverb, possibly with a little slap delay on the snare track. Pan and set levels, maybe even making them a mono or all panned hard lelft or right. Play around a bit. Then I'd bus those tracks to a stereo aux, and add some sutble reverb to make a it have a room sound and give it a little more life. Space designer is good for that. You may or may not want to add a compressor or limiter before the verb, if you want it a little more modern sounding.

For bass, I really don't like any of the presets I've ever used. I've been more happy using on of the synths (EFM1 or ESM if you don't mind mono) in logic and creating a bass sound, then eq'ing and compressing to suit. Maybe even use and amp modeler to make it sound a bit more legit. Still....they don't sound super natural. A DI'd bass, or a mic'd amp is definatley best.

[rushofblood]

I like BFD a lot for drums (Especially the Platinum Samples kits).

Bass is a bit harder to find, software-wise, in that style.

The M-Tron Pro from G-force has a pretty cool vintage-sounding Hofner bass I've used. Acceptable results w/ no tweaking

EVE2 from Dashsignature also has a "Fender Bass" sound that works ok

[BrontoSoreAss]

I don?t have any suggestions regarding what specific vst instruments you should use to achieve the sounds you are after. However I think it is perhaps worth mentioning that on the rare occasions that I do make use of drum loops or vst instruments I often find myself re-amping them. I find this helps the initially digital signal sit more naturally in a mix that quite often is quite coloured and makes use of a lot of room sound ? If I don?t do this I often find it difficult to make it fit naturally in the mix. I?m mentioning this since recordings the musical preference you cited often have many of the same general characteristics as what I mentioned above ? coloured room sound, and perhaps may even be somewhat "lo-fi". This is not to say that re-amping will help you achieve the particular sounds that you?re after, but rather that it may assist you in making your digital sources sit naturally in a mix which otherwise consists of sources that are decidedly coloured and roomy. This may be achieved through blending the re-amped signal with the original or even using it by itself. In the case of bass in particular I think re-amping may be quite helpful - an amp, a bit of air and a mic usually help me get a good bass sound quicker than anything else (including a DI as well actually).

In short re-amping may equal less additional processing to make digital sources fit it the context of the sort of music you are citing.

I should mention that I don?t make use of digital instruments very often ? and I am a hack ? so my suggestion is intended to be taken with a grain of salt (if that wasn?t already obvious).

[Bill @ Irie Lab]

+ 1 on the reamp,

especially if you can do it in the same room that the other tracks were recorded. Maybe place the amp in a spot that the player or engineer :) would choose.

+1 on play it yourself,

with a loose quantization (if needed) and loop it (the more measures in the loop the better)

[calaverasgrandes]

honestly, and feel free to flame me on this, I think most of the charm of Velvet Underground was the naive lack of musical skill you hear on a lot of tracks. Say what you want about the songs, but the floppy drumming and frenetic two chord strumming basically presaged punk, riot grrl and post punk styles. It said, hey anyone can write songs, you dont have to be CSNY.
So if anything, you are probably better off with a "first act" drum kit from Toys-R-Us than any VST if thats the sound you are shooting for. As far as bass, I may be prejudiced as a bassist myself, but every vst/AU bass I ever heard sounds like "hello I am Jonas Hellborg/Billy Sheehan, welcome to Mel Bays how to play electric bass." Just too flat and precise. No string squeek. Perfect intonation (which never happens on a bass, especially any bass the Velvets recorded with).
So look for a Precision bass played through a vox amp. Thats the Cale sound at least. Except when he was using a Vox Phantom or something else!
oh yeah, I would certainly re-amp.

[Chaconne]

Have to agree with above poster, most Bass VST's are dissapointing...except actually Slayer - in FL Studio! Its rough and ready ness negates the multi-sampled clean session DI'd sound found in many packs. and I have heard good things though about the Trillian bass VST from Spectrasonnics.

For drums you could check out the Abbey Road collection. The 60's kit midi'd up to something you could hit would be pretty cool. That might be to purist though, and maybe customising stock sounds would allow you to get close any how - though I cant imagine any of the big drum VST's giving you that cooler sixities vibe. I might just give Mo a listen again.
(P,S WARNING OFF TOPIC - isnt she a Tea Party spokesperson these days?!)

[BrontoSoreAss]

I can't imagine how using samples and triggers has the potential to be
"to[o] purist". Just sayin...

...I take your point. I'm just being a dick. Semantics.

[Chaconne]

OK Data....!

No I get your point.

I meant purist as in spending money on a specialised sample set for one type of sound. Anyhow of course thats a 'british' 60's sound.

[magritte]

For drums I think I'd use a midi controller and find a drum preset that sounds like a rock kit. Find the keys that play the kick, snare, hats, cymbals and a few toms. Then record a pass of the kick and edit to your likeness. Then find a few sections you really like and loop those as needed to get a complete kick track. Then add snare as it's own track, hats and cymbals and so on. That way you'll get a truly played sounding drum kit, with a few little errors here and there.

You can use the Ultrabeat sequencer too, but it only sounds good to me when you have some actual samples to put in the sequencer. The preset sounds are fairly electro sounding.

This sounds like the best solution, but I'm not sure how to use a sequencer or samples. They seem intimidating to me. I do have a korg microkontrol that I use for vst organs.

Also, when you record tracks as you described above, do you use a metronome or just wing it? How do you stay in time?

Sorry for the dumb questions. I'm fairly new to recording on computers.