Competition participants discuss the UJAM Virtual Bassist series
This past spring, UJAM released the Virtual Bassist series as Rack Extensions, following its release in the VST format back in December. The Virtual Bassist series has been one of the biggest requests of UJAM following the Virtual Guitarist and Virtual Drummer series, rounding out several iterations of a three-piece band.
ReasonTalk teamed up with UJAM to organize a songwriting competition using the Virtual Bassists and the entries were fantastic. ReasonTalk team members Joey and WongoTheSane wanted to take the opportunity to speak with a few of the participants about their songs and their experience with the Virtual Bassist Rack Extensions.
How was iJam uJam We Jam (SummerTime) written and produced?
Carly(poohbear), winner of the competition, graced us with a full video explaining how he went about both writing the song, and the accompanying video: magic, in both senses of the term! Let’s start with him!
What do you like about the Virtual Bassist series?
Miguel Catalão (mcatalao) – They are quite natural instruments, they sit wonderfully in a mix, and though I usually prefer to sequence my bass tracks, some of the sequences are quite inspirational.
diminished – I like that they don’t sound cheesy or out of place, but very natural and professional. The worst thing a bass sound can be is being overly present, repetetive and annoying. VB is capable of carrying the track as a solo instrument, or it can do its job in the background. Both options are viable!
Loque – I like the sound, and that you can easily dial in some real-sounding bass guitars. With some tweaking and solo playing of Virtual Bassist you can have even better results than just using the patterns. By modifying some parameters, the bass can also get very vibrating.
Sortitoutonsunday – It’s a clever and easy way of doing great bass lines. I use the A-list Power Drummer all the time for the same reason. I like that way of working – easy to come up with something and gets creativity flowing.
Rikk Show (Boombastix) – In one word: inspiration. Every part of a song composition is like a blank canvas, and the first brush stroke is the most difficult. The Virtual Bass patterns can be that first “brush stroke” that gets the ideas flowing for building up a complete bass line.
Rare Shadow – The sound quality is excellent. Especially, the random vibrations of the strings make them sound so realistic. Jamming with the plugin is super inspiring.
Imaginary191 – Two things stood out for me: how easy it was to dial the bass tone I wanted with various parameters, and how good it sounded with other instruments almost immediately. Then I spent most of the time improvising various bass lines with my MIDI keyboard.
Jani Tourunen (alterEe, a.k.a. Der Kone) – I like the ease of use: you can put one in your rack and get great sounding basslines quickly.
Derek van Deerstet (Deerstetmusic) – All three Virtual Bassist REs are clearly structured and easy to use.
Rare Shadow – Indeed, the UI designers deserve a big shout out for the clean and easy to use UI. I found my way around in no time as I bought A-List Acoustic, Pop, Power, and Nylon guitar REs a long time ago and use them all regularly.
How do you feel it compares to other basses?
Miguel Catalão – Well, all the other basses I have don’t have a player mode, so that’s the first big difference.
Rikk Show – Yes, The player mode is the stand out feature for that inspiration.
Miguel Catalão – But even considering using Virtual Bassist in instrument mode, the versatility of the device is immense. The whole control you have from character to the miking position to the room ambience and compression, all in one place allow you to set up a great bass sound just in seconds!
Jani Tourunen – I agree, they compare very well to those I have tried. I haven’t made any actual systematic comparisons, but they sounded great for my taste and uses right from the start.
diminished – I think VB has very much earned its spot in the Reason rack. I have a fretless bass sitting in the corner of my room right now and I’m a little saddened to say that I’ll never play as tight and reliable as VB does. I also do not miss having to come up with virtual amp settings, compression etc, when picking up the real instrument. Bottom line, it’s my #1 choice for “real” bass sound at the moment.
Sortitoutonsunday – Same: it made me realize how awful my own bass sounds like. Seriously, i’m thinking of replacing it!
Rikk Show – My other bass libraries are just that, library sounds. So it compares very well, the sound is great too as it allows me to quickly tweak in the sounds to help with inspiration and it gets very close to mix ready.
Loque – It’s more “bassy” than lot of my other bass-guitar instruments, as they do not have that vibrating sound.
What is your favorite Virtual Bassist from the bunch and why? Was it the same one you used in your song?
diminished – Good question. I chose Mellow for my track because of the distinct upright sound and I liked the way the style grooved with my drums, which I put down first. It was the first choice for my genre. However if I were to have only one VB, it would be Royal, because it’s such a good generalist.
Miguel Catalão – I’m a sucker for natural double bass, so my favorite is Mellow. 🙂
Swedish Dude – Mellow was my favorite too. I loved the sound from it and it was the bass I ended up using in my song.
Rare Shadow – Yes, it sounded so inspiring that I didn’t spend a lot of time using the electric basses.
Imaginary191 – I used it too, because it was a perfect fit for the genre of my track, which is somewhere between trip-hop and hip-hop.
Loque – From a pure bass point of view, I like Mellow the most too. Rowdy is more crunchy, that does not always fit my songs. Royal is a bit brighter and good for bass sounds which need to cut a bit through other basses – I used it to top my main Mellow bass. I used Rowdy for a more agressive/rock part. In the end, I used all three Virtual Bassists in my song.
Rikk Show – To me, it’s a split between Royal and Rowdy. Mellow seems more geared towards jazz/lounge stuff… well, mellow stuff. I work with House and RnB, and both Royal and Rowdy have the sound right for those genres. Rowdy needs a little more tweaking to fit my genres, but that is fast and easy, and it really shines when you dial in the “damp” level. For Royal, I add some FX to dial in a bit more roughness, and it has patterns that suit me better. But I couldn’t pick only one out of those two right now. Maybe a year from now, when I have put some more milage on them, lol! In my song, I used two instances of Royal.
Derek van Deerstet – I liked Mellow and Royal very much, and used them both in my production.
Jani Tourunen – I used all the three bass REs in my song. When I learned I had won the licence for one of them, I decided to go with Royal. I think it’s the most versatile, an all-arounder that suits lots of different genres and styles. But on the other hand I found Mellow very nice sounding and authentic. I just thought I personally wouldn’t have as much actual use for it. Rowdy sounded good and promising too, but I didn’t pay as much attention to it, since I can play rock/metal bass a bit myself. I’m sure I would have found lots of use for it too if I had won all three REs! And I really appreciate Rowdy having drop D: I think that these days every bass plugin (or guitar plugin for that matter) should go at least that low, there are lots of genres that use lower tunings, not just metal music.
Sortitoutonsunday – I’ve actually only tried Rowdy. I’m mostly a guitarist and rock musician, although I sometimes try out other genres. But at the moment I’ve been very focused on playing guitar and making instrumental rock songs. Rowdy seemed like a perfect choice for what I play and write at the moment. The choice was a real no brainer, and I didn’t even consider the others.
What was your approach when writing your song? Did you start with the bass and build around it, or the other way around?
Jani Tourunen – I started playing around with all the REs, trying to find cool pre-designed grooves/phrases. Right from the start I had this idea that in order to showcase Royal properly and in a funny way, I could try to make a song that had some funky bass and old sounding drums with the drummer playing way too many crazy fills, and so on. So I started with a groove/phrase called Smooth groove and it became the starting point of the first part of my song.
For the second part of the song using Mellow, I had the preset picked up already. I thought it would be cool to use Ujam’s Beatmaker Hustle in my song too and I found a couple of great beats pretty quickly. After having these two elements it was very easy to make the second part. I felt quite inspired.
Then I made this ending for the song with Fritz and JPS Animus (the latter definitely being one of my favorite RE’s) and some delays. I had Rowdy in the rack and had tweaked a good sound for it already, so I tried playing it on the top of them, just in case. I instantly came up with a cool bass riff that reminded me of Nine inch nails (one of my all time favorites) and I decided to add a third part. So it was basically Rowdy’s fault that the song became so long and even more unconventional 🙂
Miguel Catalão – I started with a drum kit from A-List drummer, and started to build the bass track over it with the final “rockabilly” harmony on my mind, then added the piano parts, and built the melody half-improvised.
Imaginary191 – Well, I had little 4 bar loop from before, with piano, cello and some drums. Just one phrase. As soon as I started playing Virtual Bassist Mellow alongside, it was clear that it could become a full track. The bass line indeed became the main part and foundation. From then on, I knew where I needed to change or add other parts rhythmically and melodically. I added more instruments, e-piano lead melody, effects, expanded drums with Beatmaker DOPE… I ended up using two Virtual Bassist Mellow instruments, one for the main bass melody and one in a secondary role, one octave lower with a more powerful sound. It created a rhythmic pattern that I really like.
Rikk Show – I started with a groove and chord progression. Decided to take it outside of what I normally do, so I added some more complex chords, including out of scale chords and also a parallel chords movement. Put on some vocals, and then built up the bass to fit the context. But anything goes, sometimes I start with the vocals, or with the bass. The common denominator, though, is that drums are added very early on since both House and RnB are played in clubs, and with many years as a club and radio DJ, the groove is such a big part of it that it has to be in there early on: if not first, then usually the second element of the song writing.
Swedish Dude – Personally, I started with the bass and added stuff afterwards.
Loque – I took the song challange as a good way to force myself to really try the instrument. I put in the first bass instrument (Mellow) and played around with it. I liked the sound and played with the patterns, which composed my main backing bass. While playing around I had the idea to try something more pop like, with a bit of a rock style, and went in that direction. While the song writing progressed, I needed something that made the bass shine more, so I picked the next instrument in the list, but Rowdy was a bit too much fuzz/distortion at that point, so I kept it in the song for later use, because I already knew I wanted to try something with an e-guitar. So I opened Royal and it fit perfectly my topping needs. Then I came back to the e-guitar part and used Rowdy as an addition, since it is a bass and not an e-guitar.
Rare Shadow – I wrote the song alternating between the bass and the rest of the song. I spent the second half of the song writing time on the bass only. Adding variations, a little solo, slides, and vibratos to the bass and mixing it to the front of the mix.
Sortitoutonsunday – I had a basic idea (the piano part) and knew the kind of song I wanted to write (though it didn’t really turn out like that.. as always). It was supposed to be some kind of instrumental rock ballad. The idea evolved during production because of the bass line. I wanted to find a bass part that suited that idea and the one I found gave a different but interesting feeling to it. Then I layered guitars on that. Lastly I layered the layered guitar with another instance of Rowdy.
diminished – I started with drums and bass as a driving foundation and basically just “colorized” the whole track with synths and samples here and there. My whole apprach when it came to selecting sounds was: “yeah sure, why not”, which carried me pretty far pretty fast. After I figured out my tonality, I specifically wanted a dreamy, brassy lead sound which I got from Synapse’s The Legend. That’s basically it!
Did you have trouble findind a patch/sound/pattern that fit your song?
diminished – Not really – once I found something cool (Soul 87bpm) I continued with other things. However once I reached the B section, I had to find a suitable variation and I’m glad the common phrases exist, great bread&butter patterns!
Jani Tourunen – Not at all, quite the opposite. It didn’t take long to find grooves/phrases that sounded right for my taste and purposes. I did spend some time tweaking sounds, but I think that’s what you always need and want to do.
Miguel Catalão – No. Actually the character of the patch I selected, together with the drums, drew me to that Megan Trainor’s “all about that bass” sound… from there to the end, it was really quick to finish the song.
Sortitoutonsunday – No, not at all. I don’t remember exactly now, but it took at most 30 minutes, probably less.
Swedish Dude – I think I found it after about 1 minute!
Rikk Show – It was pretty fast too, and I had to work fast due to time constraints. I tried some patterns close to the BPM I was working on, and then dialing in the sound was really easy with the given controls. Since I own a few of the UJAM Virtual Guitarists, I could of course draw from that knowledge and move pretty quickly as the work flow is similar.
Rare Shadow – I had trouble to decide between several alternatives that all sounded good. In the end, I didn’t use an existing patch but tweaked one myself.
Imaginary191 – Not at all. I prefer to start each instrument with a clean “init” state and dial the sound to my liking. I went through available parameters in Virtual Bassist really quickly and moved on to creating the bass melody itself.
What mode did you use, Player or Instrument mode?
Miguel Catalão – I used it in Instrumental mode, I really prefer to sequence my bass stuff!
diminished – Player.
Imaginary191 – Instrument.
Rikk Show – I used both instances in Player mode (with different patterns), but used pattern changes and off-beat triggering quite extensively to get the bass line that I was looking for.
Rare Shadow – Instrument mode for full control.
Loque – Both. I found the “Instrument” mode while I searching for some solo sounds – did not saw it before 😀
Derek van Deerstet – I decided to use only Instrument mode because that’s how I compose my own tracks.
Swedish Dude – Player mode for the bass, Instrument mode for the guitar. I created the guitar with Rowdy and some effects.
Jani Tourunen – I used both.
Sortitoutonsunday – Both. I found a pattern in Player mode that fit the song idea, then I made another Rowdy and played single notes and licks to make variations. The Dave Jerden thing (bass layered guitar) was obviously in Instrument mode.
Anything you did to make it sit within your arrangement?
Miguel Catalão – No! Didn’t even equalize it! I just leveled it against the drums and the rest of the instruments.
Sortitoutonsunday – During production I saw a YouTube clip of how famous producer Dave Jerden records heavy guitars using an extra bass playing the guitar parts through a guitar amp and with a wah pedal. I just had to try that with software! So one of the last parts of the writing was another Rowdy playing the guitar parts through my software amp together with a software wah pedal. I’m not a pro producer but it worked out quite well I think. At least I had lots of fun doing it!
Loque – Just checked the kick and bass so that they don’t overlap too much. I noticed that the bass sits quite well if you use acoustic drum kits.
Imaginary191 – On the main bass line I added a tape saturation plugin. On the secondary one, I used the built-in Virtual Bassist compressor. I also used the built-in equalizer on both instruments.
diminished – Just a little EQing and parallel compression for that bit of extra presence and gnarlyness in the mix.
Rikk Show – I used slightly different bass lines for verse and chorus, but I used “Force” and “Damp” modulations throughout so that the sound of each note changes a bit to give it a more lively feel. And then pushing the sound a bit more when I needed more excitement during the chorus. To get it to cut through in the mix, I added some low end saturation, high end exciter and a touch of EQ, then a very light final compression.
Rare Shadow – Usual mixing techniques like cutting bass frequencies from all other tracks, but also boosting the high end a little bit of the bass to make the vibrations shine a little more.
Jani Tourunen – I think you always need to do something, since all the other instruments have so much influence on the overall sound. And we all have our personal tastes too, naturally. I found the basses quite bass heavy which surely is a good thing in some cases. But for my purposes, there was too much low end. I EQ’d the basses quite a bit, selig’s Coloring EQ was perfect for that, thanks for the EQ selig 🙂
Swedish Dude – I worked quite some time with the kick and bass to not fight so much for the low frequencies. I wanted a heavy kick and liked the deep sound from Mellow so it wasn’t so easy, lol!
Do you find it’s a good citizen in the Reason ecosystem?
Swedish Dude – Absolutely!
Derek van Deerstet – This series is an absolute winner and a must have in a Reason Rack.
Loque – I think there are a lot of musicians that just want a bass backing for their music and such devices perfectly fit this purpose. You can also start simple while you are in a creative flow and just want to write some ideas down. You can tweak it later to make it more unique.
Rikk Show – Reason is all about inspiration and getting that initial spark off for a new song, probably Reason’s strong suit over other DAWs, besides its sound creation capabilities. The Virtual Bassist series is all about inspiration for me, to get that initial bass line idea that grows into something complete.
Rare Shadow – Absolutely. I don’t have a full overview of the bass plugin market, but the Virtual Bassist REs sound is perfect to me.
diminished – Yes! The only real competition is Reason Electric Bass which misses many of the features of VB. VB also goes incredibly well with the A-List series. Back in the day, I never would have thought I’d be able to do ballads and rock music in Reason.
Imaginary191 – Yes. Really easy to use. Integrates with MIDI keyboard well, has “Key Switches” for adding Slides and Dead Notes in real time as I play, and lots of options to set character and tone of the bass sound itself.
Jani Tourunen – I think Virtual bassists are all very good citizens in the Reason ecosystem. Well, to be fair, I think that the ecosystem is very flexible and there aren’t many that wouldn’t be good citizens in it; but yeah, the REs definitely work very well in Reason and I think that UJAM’s history with the ecosystem (their involvement with the A-list series and so on) is showing here.
Sortitoutonsunday – Definitely. As I said above, I use A-list Power Drummer a lot and that way of producing suits me and it suits Reason.
Miguel Catalão – TBH, I think the looks seem a little alien to the rack. I’m more used to something that “feels” like a real-ish device, something that could exist in real life. I think what causes this is the background image. But to be honest, I give way more importance to the sonic and usability aspects than to cosmetics…
Anything you’d like to share about the devices?
Loque – Check out the “Instrument” mode with the detailed control of the “Slide” and “Dead notes” if you try it out.
Rikk Show – A few things. The controls span over 5 octaves, a big keyboard is a big help. There are two mysterious icons top left and top right: they are important, click on them, lol! One thing I will probably try in the future when I plan to use a synth bass line, is to see if I can use Virtual Bassist to “write” the bass line but then use a synth to play it. I would have to convert audio to midi for that to work, so a CV/Note out would surely help. It could also be good to have if you want to use patterns from both Royal and Rowdy, but then only use one of them for sound generation so it stays consistent. Maybe UJAM could consider this for an upgrade?
Derek van Deerstet – Ujam products in general fit perfectly into any production and work perfectly within Reason. I used Ujam Eden in some projects already.
Miguel Catalão – What more can I say, they sound great, they’re really easy to use and they sit great in a mix! And they’re truly inspirational!
Sortitoutonsunday – I had some initial problems on how to use it. It seemed like the device changed pattern randomly some times. I couldn’t understand what I was doing wrong but later I understood it’s necessary to have a larger keyboard than I have to get the most out of the devices. Maybe I’m wrong about that, but it was quite hard at the beginning and I didn’t figure that out by myself. It made me very careful to change the track when it was all done. When it was finished I was very pleased with the result though.
Jani Tourunen – I’m planning on using Royal a lot and I’d be happy to have the full series in my rack one day.
Your song won, what are you going to do with it?
Rare Shadow – I already made a second track with the plugin during the competition: https://soundcloud.com/rare_shadow/tahoe and it’s not going to be the last one.
Jani Tourunen – I’ve been thinking I might use the first two parts of the song in one of my projects.
Rikk Show – The song was more of a soul song that fits a café/easy listening environment, rather than a banging club song, but I think it is really nice. I have to think what I can do with it. A singer in the style of Ella Mai or Maxwell would suit the song style.
Loque – I make music as a hobby, for fun, just for beeing creative and I like to tweak/experiment around and listen to what comes out of my ideas. I like to hear my finished tracks, because they are (mostly) what I wanted to hear when I created them. I do not have any plans to be the next famous star in heaven, so no further plans with this track. If you like it, I will be a happy musician. And while on that, I’d like to thank ReasonTalk for being there and providing a good place for exchanging with professionals and new Reason users alike, for organising the Song Challenges and helping Developers/Companies to promote their instruments, effects and other devices which make us all happy. Thanks to UJAM too for keeping up the great work in the Reason ecosystem and for sponsoring this song challenge, giving me and others a good Reason (pun intended) to try out their instruments!
Sortitoutonsunday – I have plans for an EP with instrumental rock songs and this is will be one of them. I have three songs already and I want at least one more before I feel ready. All the music I’ve ever recorded has been with bands, so doing something like this all by myself is totally new for me. I only use Reason for everything I do.
Miguel Catalão – Maybe release it on a instrumental project with some others that I have laying around, but that does not have a time table.
Swedish Dude – I’m thinking about doing a remake of it in the future. I loved the intro I did and then the song took a different path. But I want to continue on the style of the intro throughout the song.
Imaginary191 – Maybe I will do a re-arrangement or remix in the future.
diminished – I’d like to lower the hihat volume a bit 😛 Things like that aside, I’m super happy about the result, 4th place in the competition… just wow. This was the third track I actually finished since 2003 (all three in the last 3 months). That alone is an incredible accomplishment and for that I’m very proud of myself. I’ve never thought about “using” it somewhere else and that people liked it is very humbling and feels good! By the way, thanks for everything you do for the community. On ReasonTalk I felt at home from the start. I’m also thankful for PR stuff like this with developers, we all profit from it!
Listen to all the winning songs here:
https://www.reasontalk.com/2019/05/virtual-bassist-competition-the-winners/