tips for doing "fake bass" with guitar?

[DankStar]

I by no means want to substitute a bass for a guitar in the long term, but I'm working on a clip for which I'd like to do mock bass until I can get my bass outta storage.

Any tips? So far, I'm thinking of playing sorta clean, turning the bass up and treble down on the EQ, and then using a plug-in for a pitch shifter to drop the pitch an octave.

Anyone ever "program" bass with a soft synth? how'd that work out. seems tedious.

[Markk]

Well, it could work, the soft synth, but it would probably need a specific sound.

The way you're going is probably te best route, I'd probably do it the same way. Remember to select the best pickup too

[RW James]

Before I finally bought my cheap-y bass, I did it exactly the way you describe. It actually worked pretty well for me.

[bigheadood]

I program bass in Garageband all the time. The results are decent.
I don't even own a bass.
It is rather tedious, but so is programming drums.

Soundclick

[GuitarStv]

Here's an idea . . . you can record yourself playing the bass part on your guitar at twice the normal BPM for the song, and then play it back at half speed. This will pitch shift the guitar an octave down, which should sound very much like a bass. (Windows sound recorder can speed up/down files if you want).

The problem with just using a pitch shifter is that they never sound very accurate . . .

[Young Angus]

Here's something that actually works really well...get a wah pedal and turn it on fully in the backwards position. Just leave it in the backwards position and don't move it around, and it especially sounds like bass with some distortion on to sustain it a bit.

[DankStar]

awesome tips - many I hadn't thought of! cool clips bighead!

[ArtieToo]

Here's a couple more options:

Simsynth I: Works great, but tedious - and free. You create just one specific sound, then save that wave file, of that note. After you create a bank of notes, you'ld need some other wave file editor to assemble them together. Like I said, tedious, but free. The strong point here is that you can create some killer old-school analog tones - for cheap. Even if you don't end up using it for music, its a cool free computer toy.

Did I mention its free?

Simsynth II: Much more feature rich, with the ability to create entire passages and riffs. Downside - it costs about $35. Thats cheaper than a good set of bass strings, but still some moolah.

Obviously, its much more fun to play with. Has a great set of presets pre-installed. Btw - the demo version is fully functional except that you can't save your presets.

Artie

[Virtual Kevorkian]

Record clean guitar.

Pitch shift one octave down.

EQ and compress the hell out of it.

[DankStar]

thanks artie and V.K.! I'll do some goofin' and see what works best in the tune. perhaps a blending of 2 options, we'll see.

[daemon barbeque]

I used the whammy for it!Just played clean and used the 1 oczave down option!!Works well.Not suberb ,but it does the job!Cheers!

[DankStar]

I used the whammy for it!Just played clean and used the 1 oczave down option!!Works well.Not suberb ,but it does the job!Cheers!

good idea...those pedals look pretty fun to mess with.

[daemon barbeque]

good idea...those pedals look pretty fun to mess with.

As long as you play single notes ,it tracks well

[Fender_Punk]

As i don't have a bass, what i have to do when I can't borrow a friend's is pull out my midi keyboard, set it to as in garage Band and go to town! there's actually quite a few midi bass settings and it can sound pretty real if used well.

Pitch shifting and the bpm also work, I've done the BPM trick with success. I've also tuned my low E string down to A and figured out what notes were there, it worked OKAY I guess, but not nearly as well as other suggestions.