The sequenced sampled bass line plays an important part in much pop and rock recording nowadays. John Harris discovers the sampled delights of the MIDI Bass.

Achieving that all-important bass sound for your recording can sometimes be a real chore. How many times have the Fairlights and PPGs of this world been cursed for the ease with which they can produce the most wonderful bass sound to give a song a tight and punchy bottom end. The DX7 went a long way towards alleviating the problem but it's still a relatively expensive tool to buy. But now to our rescue comes a new unit: the 360 Systems Midi Bass.

Basically, this unit is capable of housing four bass sound chips, each of which may be selected by switches or via MIDI patch receive information. The sounds are multisampled which basically means that different samples were taken of a real instrument at different pitches resulting in a more natural sound, unlike the one-shot sampling method where the notes shorten as you go higher in pitch and lengthen as you go lower.

It's monophonic, but as the MIDI Bass is designed to be used simply for sequenced or played bass lines and not as a polyphonic sampler (especially at this price!) this comes as no surprise and is not really a problem, unless you're Jonas Hellborg. Also a catalogue of different sounds are available so that you can build up a library of bass samples which, with a little skill and ingenuity, can sound appropriate for whatever style of music you require.

Controls

The unit is about the size of a modestly priced box of chocolates and sports a blue panel with white legend. One of the things I immediately liked was the control layout. Everything has space because there are few controls and a fair amount of room. There are two pots, one for volume and one for pitch, both of which could do with some type of legend to indicate their position as these are the sort of things that can get knocked just as you're about to do a take. In between and slightly below both pots are the grey EPROM selector switches with attendant red status LEDs allowing easy access to the bass sample of your choice.

Underneath the pitch pot is a similar grey switch called Set which has a multiple function. Patch change receive and touch sensitivity can be set with this switch alone but it also works in conjunction with two other controls on the MIDI Bass to select MIDI channel In information and to set the note limit point. The latter is determined by a 3-position switch with a dual function. As regards setting the limit point, you select upper or lower, press the Set key below and then the key on the synth that you wish the sample to play up or down to. The second function of the switch is for key note priority and can be set to Low, Last or High.

The final control on the top panel is the 8-position MIDI channel switch labelled All-7 above, and All-14 below. Selection of top or bottom number is determined by the Set switch. MIDI In, MIDI Thru and Audio Out are found on the rear panel along with the easy access fuse holder and the power on/off switch is located on the front panel.

In the Open

Easy access to the guts of the machine is necessary to change the EPROMs should you decide to go ahead and purchase any more from the large range available from 360 Systems. Basically the box is constructed in two pieces with the floor and side cheeks being screwed to the top which houses the electronics. Once the four screws are removed you simply lift the top off and turn it upside down to discover the EPROMs sat in their zero insertion force sockets above the single circuit board. These sockets are optional for people who wish to change the sound chips regularly and they plug direct into the ordinary sockets. The EPROMs are held in place by lever-style clips and are a piece of cake to remove although care must still be exercised in this process to avoid the tragedy of bent legs. Incidentally, I was relieved to notice that all the mains connections were securely sleeved to reduce the risk of electrocution. Strictly speaking however, the mains should be off before one attempts to change the sound chips to prevent possible corruption of the stored data!

In Use

Setting up of upper and lower limit was initially a little confusing because the samples have different ranges. For instance, the DX7 samples went up to over an octave above middle C where others only went as far as E above middle C, although to be fair, when the sample was selected it seemed to default to its maximum upper limit setting. I also found that last note key priority was the easiest one to use if you're a bit clumsy with the keys and don't remember to take your finger off the last key you played before moving to the next one. Perhaps it should have been called next key, or new key.

When examining the sound quality I found that there was a fair amount of quantisation noise on the samples, though it appeared insignificant once the bass was mixed into a track, and certainly no worse than you get on the DX range of keyboards. The sound dies away naturally but on some of the samples a fair amount of noise is left hanging on. I feel that the manufacturers could have done a little more to clean this up. After all, it's nothing that a good gate or dynamic noise filter couldn't have rectified.

We had 20 sounds to play with and I was particularly impressed with the Stand-up Fizz which sounded like a upright bass and had a lovely acoustic timbre. For those of you who want the classic DX7 bass sounds, these are all available with the addition of a very impressive aggressive DX 'Metal' sound. In fact, the whole gamut of bass sounds is there: fretless, twangy Steinberger, slap bass, and for DX owners a Mini Moog/Oberheim classic. The only disappointment was the Rickenbacker which sounded good as an impersonation of the bottom end of a piano but had none of the rasp that I associate with the classic Chris Squire sound.

Strangely enough, given the name of the product, a timpani sample was included and it sounded great, especially with pitchbend. Hopefully we will see 360 Systems extending their range of sounds even further in the future!

Conclusions

The MIDI Bass really is all things to all men (and women). It offers an interesting option to people who have a MIDI sequencer or analogue keyboard, who would like to have access to the sort of digital bass sounds that seem to be so common these days, but can't afford. For the people with a DX who want the good old MiniMoog sound, bass guitar or upright bass sound and can't afford a sampler, the same applies. There's no doubt about it; the sounds are good and there's a variety to choose from, ranging from the rich and twangy Steinberger through to fretless and upright bass samples on which the control of pitchbend and touch sensitivity is a big plus. The ease of changing the samples and the general ease of operation of the unit itself was another asset.

On the negative side it was disappointing to find that on a couple of the samples you could hear the change in tone where in the multisampling process a new pitch had been taken. Another point is purely personal: why not have an EPROM of the bass end of a good piano? However these points apart the MIDI Bass is certainly worth looking into if you're into a wide variety of good, solid bass sounds, whether they're sequenced or played.

And the price? Well, it's not that cheap at £299 for the 2-sound version and £360 for the 4-sound version. With extra voice chips working out at £35 each you're going to have to dip into the pocket a bit, but if you want quality and variation it's worth the extra.

Further information is available from: Rod Argents, (Contact Details).