Adam Monroe's Slap Bass was sampled from a Fender Jazz electric bass guitar with Carvin J99 pickups and GHS Boomers bass strings, directly into a Radial Pro48 DI Box and an AMPEG Micro VR SVT AMP. An extended range was obtained by tuning the E-string down to a D.
"Slap" and "pop" articulations were carefully and meticulously recorded for each note, although in the extreme upper range of the bass, do to tension of the string, slap notes starts to become indistinguishable from pop articulations. The user can blend between Amp and DI sounds. The AMP channel is slightly brighter/edgier well the DI channel provides more of a mellow slap bass sound.
the plugin features 10 velocity layers at 4 note round-robin, and the dynamic range is between -15 db and -1 db, as bass guitars are typically compressed signals that end up somewhat level in modern recordings. For D and G string notes, pop articulations can be triggered at higher velocities with slap articulations being triggered at lower velocities. Alternate articulations are omitted, and thus the plugin only features a slap bass sound - this was done to preserve space and quality - the older version of Adam Monroe's Slap Bass featured pick articulations but with less velocity layers and channels.
Bass strings were periodically cleaned with denatured alcohol, as the metallic Boomer sound tends to darken quickly. Pains were taken to ensure that the transition in tone between strings was minimized by selecting the best places to start sampling a new string.
Slides were recorded for most strings, but were omitted for things like open strings, or when sliding down or up would overshoot standard tuning. Major and minor thirds were chosen for the sake of usability. Slides were recorded at a tempo of 120 BPM.
The Kontakt version of Adam Monroe's Slap Bass is depreciated (1.13.2020). The VST, AU, and AAX versions are programmed entirely by AdamMonroeMusic. The goal in any sample library that is also a VSTi (virtual instrument), Audio Unit, or AAX plugin is to attempt to match the performance of the Kontakt Player. With this library, we feel we have done just that.
The VST, AU, and AAX versions include updated, high-performance algorithms that have been improving with each new virtual instrument released by Adam Monroe Music. For example, the buffering algorithm is double-buffered and multithreaded, which means that buffering performance is fast, even on slower computers, and at lower latencies. Voices are held and iterated over in a pure, C-Style array. Memory use is comparable to the (depreciated) Kontakt version. Because of the solid VST/AU/AAX code base, you can feel confident that the VST, AU, and AAX versions will work just as well as the (depreciated) Kontakt version. Mac VST, AU, and AAX versions are separate 32-64 builds (with Catalina), and the the Carbon GUI framework has been replaced with Cocoa, compatible with OSX 10.9 and later.
This library now includes sample rate conversion for the VST, AU, and AAX versions. Sample rate conversion is automatic, real-time, and supports 44.1, 48, 88.2, and 96 kHz sample rates. Why develop native VST, Audio Unit, or AAX versions at all? Although a great piece of software, the full version of Kontakt (required to run 3rd party sample libraries) is expensive. Developing VST, AU, and AAX versions that anyone can use does not add significant time to the development of a Slap Bass library - most of the time is spent sampling and processing the samples - so it's a real no-brainer.
Audio engineering is a large part of creating a VST/AU/AAX plugin, but the sound of this slap bass has barely been processed. Slight eq tweaks were done here and there, mostly so that the instrument would have a similar sonic footprint note-to-note. Some noise was removed to level out some of the "hotness" associated with bass guitar circuitry and pickups.
Release v2.2 1/10/2020
Improvements since last version:
*Mac Au/VST versions now conform to OS X Catalina code signing and notarization requirements.
*Mac versions are now installed via package installers.
*Resources for Mac versions and a config file are now placed outside of the vst and component bundles. This is because Apple wants things code-signed now: verifying resources in a bundle would take too long and the config can't be inside because it would invalidate the code signature. If you don't like it, complain to Apple!
*Maintaining separate legacy (32-bit) Mac versions for those who need them (OS X 10.9-10.14)
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