LawrenceH Posted November 3, 2012 Share Posted November 3, 2012 Hi all I had a Deep Impact a while ago. It was ok. Tracked well, and had a couple of useable voice settings, but having been a keys player in a former musical incarnation and done a fair bit of synth tinkering as part of that, sound quality and tonal flexibility were nowhere near even a modest analogue (or VA) synth so I sold it on and don't miss it. But, I would still love to be able to play a decent synth via bass rather than keyboard. My ideal would be something fairly straightforwardly giggable, so compact, reliable and tweakable in real-time - obviously not wanting or expecting the full front panel of an Andromeda on there but an ability to use controller info eg to tweak filters or LFOs would be good. Is there anyone in basschat land who's using midi or similar systems to do this, and does anyone have any recommendations? I am totally out of touch with the synth market but it seems there are loads of small synths that might fill this function nowadays, if I could get a pickup system working which is also something I've no experience with. At the moment this is a bit of a pipedream but if it seems feasible and not outrageously expensive then I would be keen to take it further, I have a spare bass body that could serve as a test site. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xgsjx Posted November 3, 2012 Share Posted November 3, 2012 There's a couple of options available. You could fit a midi pickup (Roland do one) & that plugs into a converter which you could then plug into any midi synth. There's synth access instruments from the likes of Godin (works on the same principle as the above. There's midi guitar controllers that look like a bass, but have rows of buttons instead of strings & frets. Or you can buy a few fx pedals & route them to make your bass sound like a synth. Quite a few of us on here do the latter, as it allows you to build something that has your own sound. Basic pedals for getting there are dirt & filter. Octaver on a wet setting also helps get more synth sounding & then you can get carried away. Shep (Pantherairsoft) has a good blog for explaining how to use effects. Jarman Donohue from Men Imitating Machines uses a full midi setup, Shep did an interview with him on his blog. He can be found on Organic Bass Wobble Facebook page if you have any Qs about his set up (he's a helpful & friendly chap). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mxm Posted November 3, 2012 Share Posted November 3, 2012 Sonuus i2m into (for example) an iPad has some interesting results. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LawrenceH Posted November 3, 2012 Author Share Posted November 3, 2012 Cheers guys! I'm not really into the chained FX thing, I want the flexibility of different oscillators and find that approach much more intuitive. Thinking along the lines of some of the classic 70s/80s synth bass lines that were really input off moogs and the like. Mxm, the Sonuus device looks very cool but the Sound on Sound review of the i2m talks about latency figures for bass that are IME unuseable for live performance. I wonder if the B2m is much improved in this regard? xgsjx, I'm off to check out Shep's interview that you mention as well. Keep it coming, this has all been really useful. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Beer of the Bass Posted November 3, 2012 Share Posted November 3, 2012 If you were going to use a dedicated bass for the job, I wonder if you'd get better latency from pitch to MIDI devices like the Sonuus by setting your bass up as a piccolo bass? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hen barn Posted March 13, 2013 Share Posted March 13, 2013 Have you tried a korg g5?? I might be selling mine soon?? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BigRedX Posted March 13, 2013 Share Posted March 13, 2013 IMO unless you are prepared to put a lot of time in modifying your playing technique and learning to play very slightly ahead of the beat, straight pitch to MIDI systems are a complete non-starter. The latency of the conversion is too great and it gets worse the lower the pitch of the note you are trying to convert (and that's before you start adding in latency of the MIDI devices you are trying to control). If you are serious about using a bass as the controller then you need to be looking at the [url=http://www.industrialradio.com.au/index.php]Industrial Radio system[/url] which uses fret sensing to detect note pitch. It's an improved version of the system that was licensed to Peavey for their MIDI bass and which is the only bass controller I've tried that came close to giving acceptable results. Personally I'd just brush up my keyboard skills and buy a Nord Lead instead. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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