Realistic Bass and Drums.....help?

M

Masala

New member
Hello,
I have been cruisin the music stores looking for a keyboard. Basically, the most important things to me are some great drum and bass sounds (though I will use lots of other sounds for my recording, drums and bass are my priority).

Well, I am a bit depressed, since I have so far been completely unsuccessful. All the drums sounds very synthetic and see geared to Techno Pop stuff, and I am really looking for a very natural sound to use with rock, jazz fusion, and funk. The bass sounds were even worse. I could not find a single keyboard that had some realistic bass sounds. They all sounded like a keyboard trying to imitate a bass, and failling miserable. Once again, I want to fins something that will give me warm, BASS sounds, not techno hell disco stuff.

Any suggestions, or am I just asking too much of todays technology? Is there anything out there that is made specifically for the complete rythym section, and doesn't sound fake?
 
I'm pretty much in the same boat, but I haven't started the search yet. I have a keyboard player friend who does a lot of session work in Los Angeles and I called him with basically the same question - his recommendation was start looking at Kurzweil 2500 for those natural type sounds.

What I'm looking for is a great acoustic bass, plus that really round Jazz bass almost overdriving the amp sort of sound.

If you come across anything really good, please post it here.

Thanks,

foo
 
You might want to check out some gear by Kurzweil. I have a keyboard from them that's about ten years old, but it has some of the best sounds in general I've heard. There isn't much variety of each sound, but what there is is pretty good. In your case, there is 1 acoustic bass, and 2 electric basses, and one acoustic drum kit. I'll post a short mp3 sampler, if you want.

William Underwood
 
I think 12 second .wav files (~525K in mono)
would give a good idea of the sound and I'd be interested in hearing those Kurzweil sounds. I'll trade ya some Canvas sounds, eh?
Even cooler would be to use a standardized 12 second MIDI sequence to cover as many aspects of the sound as possible. What does it sound like soft loud fast slow, etc.? You only need a suitable MIDI clip for each instrument.
Tell us where you've posted the clips. And send me the clip and I'll record the Canvas sounds with it and post them.
 
Something I've been meaning to try, is to actually put some of these sounds through an amp... but in any case...

I'll try to get some recordings for tommorrow afternoon... my computer is too tempermental to do this right now.

I'll post the site when there's something there.

William Underwood

[This message has been edited by cwillu (edited 01-11-2000).]
 
You should be able to find a keyboard that imitates drums fairly well without much of a problem. The GM sounds are the most realistic, and a lot of boards have multiple drum kits that cover natural, jazz, techno, etc sounds. Any mid to upper end workstation should cover the drums, particularly if you're recording demos instead of true masters. Look for something where you can offset the quantizing feature a little. This will make the drums beats less than perfect, and create a more realistic sound.

Bass is another issue. The only unit I've found to adequately cover bass is the Roland MBD-1. It's a drum/bass sound module with lots of drum kits and tons of bass sounds. Many of the bass sounds (and drums too) are very recordable, with the string noise, touch sensitive slaps, slides, etc all available. The unit's out of production, and a lot of stores sold them really cheap (I think I paid $200) to move them out. If you can find one of these modules I'd give it a try. I use it all the time to make high quality demos suitable for sending to A&R folks.

Good luck!
Ron
 
If you can affored it go for a Kurzweil k2500 or k2600.
Add sample RAM and buy 2 Cd samples

1 Bass Legends
2. Sweetwater's cd for drums ( I'm not sure of the name )
 
I think you'd better a sampler and use lots of sample sound by loading'em, just like I do. For a couple of years I've been trying to make my drum programming sound REAL, and I found nothing can be better than using a sampler. Because you can get cases of sound including all categories, and you only have to classify'em instruments by instruments.

Of course, you've gotta do all processes and surely it will take much more time to work. But I bet you can POSSESS all real sound over the world. But remind the sample data CDs and CD-ROMs are more expensive.
 
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