Native Instruments Scarbee Pre-Bass Operating Guide

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The information in this document is subject to change without notice and does not represent a commitment on the part of Native Instruments GmbH. The software described by this document is subject to a License Agreement and may not be copied to other media. No part of this publication may be copied, reproduced or otherwise transmitted or recorded, for any purpose, without prior written permission by Native Instruments GmbH, hereinafter referred to as Native Instruments. All product and company names are ™ or ® trademarks of their respective owners.

Manual written by Thomas Hansen Skarbye, edited by Patryk Korman

Document Version: 1.0 (08/2009)

Product Version: 1.0 (08/2009)

Special thanks to the Beta Test Team, who were invaluable not just in tracking down bugs, but in making this a better product.

Germany

Native Instruments GmbH Schlesische Str. 28 D-10997 Berlin

Germany [e-mail] www.native-instruments.de

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Native Instruments North America, Inc. 5631 Hollywood Boulevard

Los Angeles, CA 90028 USA

[e-mail] www.native-instruments.com

© Native Instruments GmbH, 2009. All rights reserved.

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1	Introduction......................................................................................................................			6
	1.1	About the Bass .............................................................................................		8
	1.2	Thomas Hansen Skarbye – The Bassist and Producer.........................................		9
	1.3	Nils Liberg – Script Developer........................................................................		10
2 Playing Bass Notes on a Keyboard ...................................................................................				11
	2.1	Automatic String Selection ............................................................................		11
	2.2	Manual String Selection ................................................................................		12
3	Key Layout......................................................................................................................			13
4	Articulations...................................................................................................................			14
	4.1	Sustains, Mutes and Harmonics ....................................................................		14
	4.2	Hammer-on / Pull-off...................................................................................		14
	4.3	Fast Grace Note Up......................................................................................		15
	4.4	Slides .........................................................................................................		15
	4.5	Buzz-trills, Trills ...........................................................................................		16
	4.6	Trill Tails	.....................................................................................................	16
	4.7	Pickup Clap.................................................................................................		17
	4.8	Automatically Triggered Samples ....................................................................		17
		4.8.1	Release Samples .............................................................................	18
		4.8.2	Pickup-hits .....................................................................................	19
5	Playing Techniques .........................................................................................................			20
	5.1	Index and Middle Finger Alternation...............................................................		20
	5.2	Extended Hammer-on / Pull-off.....................................................................		21
	5.3	Cross Hammering........................................................................................		21
	5.4	Chords.......................................................................................................		22
	5.5	Chord Slides...............................................................................................		23
	5.6	Percussive Slides ........................................................................................		23

SCARBEE PRE-BASS – IV

6	Sustaining Notes.............................................................................................................		24
7	Vibrato ...........................................................................................................................		25
8	Instrument Reset.............................................................................................................		26
9	Main Menu and Instrument Settings .................................................................................		27
	9.1	3OD\HU 3URƂOH ..............................................................................................	27
	9.2	FX Presets .................................................................................................	28
	9.3	EQ ............................................................................................................	29
	9.4	Vibrato.......................................................................................................	29
	9.5	Pickup Hit..................................................................................................	30
	9.6	Release ....................................................................................................	31
	9.7	Chords.......................................................................................................	32
	9.8	Alternation .................................................................................................	33
	9.9	Noise Levels ...............................................................................................	34
	9.10	Controllers .................................................................................................	34
	9.11	Help..........................................................................................................	35
10	Differences between Pre-Bass, Red Bass and Black Bass .................................................		36
11	Production Credits & Thank You’s ....................................................................................		37

SCARBEE PRE-BASS – V

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Scarbee Pre-Bass was recorded with round-wound strings to get the fat and dirty sound heard

RQ QXPHURXV URFN IXQN SRS DQG FRXQWU\ DOEXPV DQG XVLQJ ' , WR JLYH PD[LPXP ƃH[LELOLW\ in the sound production. It features an extensive set of playing techniques, for example:

ŘSustains

ŘMutes

ŘHarmonics

ŘHammer-on & pull-off

ŘFast grace notes

ŘSlides (in most any speed you could want)

ŘTrills

ŘBuzz-trills

ŘCross hammering

ŘChords

ŘChord slides

ŘPercussive slides

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ŘMultiple sets of release samples: loose, tighter and tight.

Pre-Bass was designed to make it very easy to use all these while playing live. Except for the trills and cross hammering you can trigger all of the articulations and techniques above without the need for any key switches.

The full strings of the bass have been sampled in order to reproduce the timbre changes that occur when you move between low and high frets on the string of a real bass. This results in a very rich sound with all the natural overtones.

It should be noted that Pre-Bass is much more than just a collection of samples. It features a sophisticated script which takes care of many things automatically for you, for example:

SCARBEE PRE-BASS – 6

ŘString selection

ŘA fretboard display updated dynamically as you play

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ŘChord recognition1

ŘRandom alternation between three different types of release samples

ŘRandom insertion of pickup hits2

)XUWKHUPRUH WKH VFULSW HQDEOHV \RX WR FRQƂJXUH DOO VHWWLQJV LQFOXGLQJ (4 ORDG DQG VWRUH ); presets, and access documentation covering every aspect of the instrument directly through the instrument performance view.

1 Ensures correct string selection even if the chord notes don’t arrive at exactly the same time, and that the

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2 Not completely random because it is intelligent enough to take into account on which strings/frets and for which velocities pickup hits are most likely to occur.

SCARBEE PRE-BASS – 7

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I spent a lot of time on getting the bass in perfect shape, driving my luthier half crazy, but the result is great and the bass sounds and feels perfect to me. To get the sound that I was looking for I tried almost any string brand, both steel and nickel versions, and various gauges. Then weeks of test on how long I should play strings until they sounded right—that was time consuming! Finally I tested different bridges but ended up using the original and at some point I even experimented with a replacement pickup, but again I chose with the original.

What I love about this bass is the fat and dirty sound of it—and I can’t wait to record the slap version and get the woody, hollow sound of that! It is so expressive and that is probably why it is the most recorded bass sound in the world.

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Pre-Bass shares many features of its siblings Black Bass and Red Bass. If you already own and know how to use either of these two other products you may want to skip ahead to the section

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SCARBEE PRE-BASS – 8

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When I was a boy, I wanted to be a great Magician—I wanted to amaze the audience and leave them wondering, how did he do that?“. Years later, I am still very fond of „illusions“ in any media. I watch almost every movie that raises the bar of Special Effects and I share true interest in computer and console games with my sons—for the same reason. These days my magic wand and top hat are the Scarbee Sample Libraries.

I have played in various funk bands as a bassist during my younger years, but started soon

WR FRPSRVH PXVLF IRU 79 GRFXPHQWDULHV DQG DLPHG IRU D FDUHHU DV D ƂOP FRPSRVHU $IWHU composing, producing music on more than 150 commercials for TV and Cinema (even working with Oscar winning director Bille August), I began to create Sample Libraries and Virtual Instruments as I wanted better sounds to use for my productions. These products are used by top artists around the world on albums and live.

'XH WR ŕ&DUSDO 7XQQHO 6\QGURPHœ ZHDN ZULVWV , LQYHQWHG DQ DUWLƂFLDO ZD\ RI SOD\LQJ EDVV using software in 1998 and released the Scarbee J-Slap & J-Fingered in 2000.

Originally planning a fretless bass release, I instead decided to take a break from the basses and do some „easy“ vintage keyboard sounds to use in my productions. Ironically it took me 5 years to complete the Vintage Keyboard Collection and the Vintage Keyboard FX plugin! Not exactly an easy job as I expected, but this is me in a nutshell; I go into something, dig deeper and deeper and slowly revealing the secrets and soul of the instrument and can not stop until the job is done.

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SCARBEE PRE-BASS – 9

At this point I need someone who could turn my ideas into KONTAKT 2 script programming and I met Nils Liberg, a brilliant programmer. Soon I realized that our co-work was getting us much further than any of us ever had hoped for.

Personally I prefer to play hard on it to get the growl and aggressive tone, but it can also play gentle and soft. The amount of expression is the reason why this sound is one of my favorites.

As with Black Bass, the Pre-Bass is my personal tool, that I use in my work for other artists and in my own productions, so I will keep on updating it for the time to come—making extra

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Please enjoy our bass, we sure put a lot of love in it!

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I was contacted by Thomas in the autumn of 2006 to create a KONTAKT 2 script for what would later become Black Bass. The same technology was then later successfully applied to both Red Bass and now Pre-Bass.

My goal with the script has been to make the instrument so easy to play that the user will never feel it‘s too much trouble to use any of the articulations. It feels doubly rewarding to

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Nils Liberg is an experienced script developer and is the author of a widely used script development environment for Mac/PC.

SCARBEE PRE-BASS – 10

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With stringed instruments a certain note can often be played on multiple strings, and so the player has to choose. For example, G2 can be played on all four strings of the bass with each string having its own very distinctive sound. Many sample libraries and virtual instruments take the simplistic route of recording only one sample per note (from the lower playing positions), which means that the user gets a very limited instrument.

Pre-Bass on the other hand includes samples of all the different strings each note can be played on, thus capturing the sound of the whole instrument. In our view the samples at higher frets is an integral part of the instrument and adds spice and variation to the sound.

When a real bass player is about to play a note he/she typically chooses the string on which the note can be played with minimum effort. That is, without moving the left hand too much.

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7KH ƂJXUH EHORZ VKRZV WKH PDLQ YLHZ RI WKH LQVWUXPHQW XVHU LQWHUIDFH 1RWH WKH ZKLWH GRWWHG line above the fretboard. It represents the position of the left hand on the bass neck—the playing position. When you play a note on the keyboard, Pre-Bass automatically chooses a string that minimizes the need to move the playing position (the left hand), similar to a real bass player. This way you can get the full sound of the bass with minimum effort. I.e. if you play an octave interval, the correct strings will automatically be used.

That’s the basic operation, but the automatic string selection also takes many other things into account such as when to use open strings and what special rules to use for each articulation.

SCARBEE PRE-BASS – 11

Playing position (left hand)					Main menu

Name of last triggered articulation

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$UWLFXODWLRQ VSHFLƂF V\PEROV DUH GLVSOD\HG RQ WKH IUHWERDUG RQ WKH VHOHFWHG VWULQJ IUHW DV VKRZQ above, and the text label below the fretboard shows the name of the last used articulation. Each string is monophonic so a new note interrupts any earlier one on the same string—just like on a real bass. Simply trying out Pre-Bass oneself is perhaps the best way to understand how it works.

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It is also possible to control the string selection manually. Each string has an associated key switch: E0, A0, D0, G0—picked to be easy to remember. In Pre-Bass a key switch affects the following note or remains active for as long as you hold it pressed. To return to the normal mode of operation just release the key switch. It is possible to combine more than one string key switch. For example you can hold A0 and D0 pressed simultaneously to make A and D be the preferred strings.

Another way of controlling the string choice is by using key switches F5-B6 to specify which

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To make it easier to learn we made the fret key switches match the corresponding note on

WKH ( VWULQJ RI D EDVV ) LV WKH ƂUVW IUHW RQ WKLV VWULQJ ) WKH VHFRQG DQG VR RQ %\ SUHVVLQJ and releasing one of these key switches you move the playing position and at the same time trigger a fret noise sample (different noises are used depending on how far you move). You can also lock the playing position by holding one of these key switch pressed while playing. As will be shown later it is also possible to use a Midi Controller for fret selection.

SCARBEE PRE-BASS – 12