Broomstick Bass VSTi + BroomstickBass Library

The meat of what Broomstick Bass is all about pares down to two main areas. One being the virtual bassist styles, and the other being the bass instruments. What I did first was to pick a style that I wanted to work with. Since I had a bluesy guitar riff that I wanted to use I picked Minor Blues from the blues styles.




After working out the tempo I turned on Auto Mode. Now that I had the first bass line variation and the drum metronome doing their thing I thought I was ready to lay down the guitar riff, but something just wasn't working. Having the single variation playing the whole time didn't help me feel what I was playing. So I switched to Manual Mode and only the drums where playing, so I thought I was set. Well, as soon as I cut the first take and stopped everything, I went to turn the drums on by clicking the drum button and poof, nothing! After some checking, I came to learn that the drum metronome apparently isn't intended for use in manual mode. So why was it working before? Well the trick to getting the drum metronome working in manual mode is to turn on Auto Mode, key a note to start the virtual bassist and drum metronome, and then switch to Manual Mode. Viola, now you can have the Drum Metronome playing an appropriate style while you lay down all your instruments.

Now that I had a drum rhythm to feed off of I was able to lay down my guitar riffs in my ideal tracking environment. With drums to hold it all up and guitar riffs to do some talking, I was ready to fill it out with the help of a virtual bassist. So back into Auto Mode I go to get dirty with Broomstick Bass.

Now virtual keyboards are great for doing a quick note check while not by a keyboard, but when it comes to playing, forget about it. So I turned to my MIDI keyboard. OK, the first thing I came to notice is that in Auto Mode, you are restricted to a "useful range", which is usually just over two octaves. So whether you key C1 or C3 you'll hear just one pitch. If a user tries to play a note that's out of the useful range, the plugin transposes the input up or down (by octaves), to put all the notes used by the specific style back into the useful range. Most styles are available in two octaves. For example, the style "Essentials" under "Funk" plays all the way from B-0 to A-2 - just two half-notes short of three octaves - without transposing.

When in Manual Mode you'll have 4 octaves to abuse as you wish, and that makes sense since it is functioning as a Virtual Instrument in this mode. Before I start playing, and given that I only have one octave to play with, I'm going to octave shift my keyboard to get the Control Octave in a comfortable position for my right hand and then I can play the bass line with my left. Now if you prefer to use your right hand to play the bass line, you can go to the Edit page and change which octave the Control Octave start on. The default is C5, so just select C1 and you'll have your Control Octave on the other hand. Pretty cool huh.

When I get a new program I always like to twist some knobs, move some sliders, and see what, if anything the program responds to with my keyboard in General Midi 2 mode. Well Volume and Release knobs corresponded to the same slider on my keyboard, Release Noise was under my decay slider, and I found Glide under my Portamento Time slider. So I had the basic Main page controls working without any additional set up or memory sets, something I like. Time to lay down some bass.

This part is all experimentation and with all the playing variations you'll just need to see what works. For the most part the simplest variation starts at 1 and increases in complexity and pace through 8.

Here is a little tip. Holding down the A key on the Control Octave will pause the drums and Auto Mode, and allow you to play in Manual Mode. But holding down the A key isn't ideal most of the time since it kills the drums. A nice little feature that helps us out with this problem is a threshold on the modulation wheel. Press the Mod wheel all the way up and it will cut just Auto Mode, leaving the drums to re-enforce the groove.

Beyond Auto Mode is where Broomstick Bass really shines for those of us who like to write our own riffs. That Control Octave gives so much extra touch it's a wonderbar! For example, one thing I really enjoy doing when playing a guitar is accenting the backbeat with a string slap and with the Smack note (F key) I can pull this off to really great effect. Another great helper is Legato (E key) that blends nicely between the pre-note and current note giving a nice sliding transition. Basically all of the Control Octave is very useful and helps propels Broomstick Bass into a category all its own.

How is the song progressing you ask? Smashing! I've got my backing of drum metronome, my guitar riff, my arrangement of Auto Mode bass riffs, and I just added a little ditty in Manual Mode to round it out. Now the only thing left is to play with the built in DSP on the Edit page to hone the tone to my liking. There is an equalizer that is set up to get the most out of a bass and also to help pick out, well the sound of a pick. Likewise the compressor has been tweaked for bass dynamics, which is why it is a single knob, and though all the instruments are very even you may need this in certain situations, so it's nice to have. Finally the pitch shifter will help give an otherworldly sound and I'm all for anything that helps expand creativity, but for this bluesy song it didn't seem to work but I thought it deserved mention. Well, that completes the song and also wraps up my look at Broomstick Bass. And now, some final words.


BroomStick Bass
http://rapidshare.com/files/183141489/B-ROOMS-TICK_BAS-S.part01.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/183145441/B-ROOMS-TICK_BAS-S.part02.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/183149627/B-ROOMS-TICK_BAS-S.part03.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/183161202/B-ROOMS-TICK_BAS-S.part04.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/183153897/B-ROOMS-TICK_BAS-S.part04.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/183165745/B-ROOMS-TICK_BAS-S.part05.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/183170679/B-ROOMS-TICK_BAS-S.part06.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/183175732/B-ROOMS-TICK_BAS-S.part07.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/183181014/B-ROOMS-TICK_BAS-S.part08.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/183186470/B-ROOMS-TICK_BAS-S.part09.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/183191908/B-ROOMS-TICK_BAS-S.part10.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/183197684/B-ROOMS-TICK_BAS-S.part11.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/183203660/B-ROOMS-TICK_BAS-S.part12.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/183209544/B-ROOMS-TICK_BAS-S.part13.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/183215456/B-ROOMS-TICK_BAS-S.part14.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/183221416/B-ROOMS-TICK_BAS-S.part15.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/183227367/B-ROOMS-TICK_BAS-S.part16.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/183233435/B-ROOMS-TICK_BAS-S.part17.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/183233701/B-ROOMS-TICK_BAS-S.part18.rar


BroomStick Bass Library
http://rapidshare.com/files/183465363/Bro-om-stickB-assLi-brary.part01.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/183469166/Bro-om-stickB-assLi-brary.part02.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/183472891/Bro-om-stickB-assLi-brary.part03.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/183476709/Bro-om-stickB-assLi-brary.part04.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/183480565/Bro-om-stickB-assLi-brary.part05.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/183484107/Bro-om-stickB-assLi-brary.part06.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/183487845/Bro-om-stickB-assLi-brary.part07.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/183491452/Bro-om-stickB-assLi-brary.part08.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/183493084/Bro-om-stickB-assLi-brary.part09.rar