Ableton Forum

I am trying hard to stay inside Live for my current project. At the mo I am building bass guitar parts. I am using a limiter/compressor/chorus/tube effect. It sounds ok so far. Does anyone have go to bass guitar presets/racks you are happy with that you don't mind sharing?... or clues > suggestions about building them?

Cheers.

Interesting one G. I keep meaning to put together a load of Live racks for guitar and bass use but I use GR4 as my go to, I just never get round to it.

The real beef being no amp sim in Live, the FX are fine but you lack that amp/cab sim element I think.

Chorus and a touch of tube/saturator sounds like a classic bass combo but be careful with the stereo element of the chorus (or phaser/flanger for that matter). I tend to stick a mono utility after it to keep the bass ncie and central only widening it for FX now and then.

This is mainly to keep the mix simple and under control. I'm sure there splenty of clever buggers who can mix stereo bass very well, but for me it always turns into a mixing nightmare so I keep it mono.

Live has some nice preset racks for bass too. I like the '5 Borough Bass' and 'Thump and Sheen' racks meself.

Thanks Rusky. Ha... my bad for only looking under 'Instrument Racks' for Bass presets and not 'Audio Effects' where the two presets are that you mention. I'll check em out later today.

Thanks for the tip on the Mono utility. The bass part I currently have has some very high octave work in places and thats where the chorus effects really shines as the bass is not supporting at that point but focal in the mix. I shall experiment though.

Hey, Thanks to both of you. I'm new to Live and I've been searching the library for a generic electric bass that emulates the sounds from my days in HS and when I was gigging at the drums (65-77). If I come up with a decent preset I'll make it available. For now, it you need a flexible bass to cover Yes, TOP, 70's LA Funk and early fusion, this is what I gleamed from your tips:

Drop these onto a midi track, group them together into a rack, and save a preset back into the library:
[instrument rack/string bass/] "Bass-Electric Bass"
[presets/audio effects/audio effect rack/bass amp/] "Bass-Thump & Sheen"

The unchanged sound from the combination is an ideal starting point for anything from the disco/funk and post-bop early-jazz-fusion days... I gigged in a lot of LA dives and disco lounges in the 70's before the turntable started replacing live music, and it was a ton of fun. Jazz one month, disco the next, funk after that, lounge lizard off and on, wash rinse repeat. : )

I haven't dug into the rack yet, but nailing most of the sounds and styles is going to be subtracting elements and tweaking the attack of the strings. Reducing it to a basic dry bass eq'd to the response of a 15" JBL in a flat cabinet will cover Santana, Sly and other groups that played the Woodstock stage.

thrillseeker is a great free compressor