Fluffy Audio / Jazz Bass

[Piet De Ridder]

Fluffy Audio have released Jazz Bass, a newly recorded upright bass and thus completely different from their previous library 'Simple Bass'.

"Expanding the concepts we’ve introduced with Simple Jazz Bass, we decided to make a more deep-sampled instrument that covers every nuance of the instrument, sampled in a professional studio and with up to 5 different microphone positions.

The instrument features 4 articulations: Pizzicato, Pizzicato Vibrato, Legato and Glissando. Moreover, we sampled two “special” articulations:
Slap, very useful for bluesy, percussive passages and rockabilly;
Ghost Notes, like slap notes, ghost notes are mostly used to give groove to the bass line."



Jazz Bass can also be purchased as part of the Jazz Trio Bundle along with Scoring Piano and Jazz Drums – Brushes. If you already have one of these libraries, you should have received a mail with a code that deducts the price of what you already have from the Jazz Trio Bundle price.

The Jazz Bass has an introductory price of €59. Regular price will be €79.
(Requires the full version of Kontakt 5.8.1 or later.)



The Jazz Trio Bundle is being introduced at a price of €239. Its regular price will be €287.



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[Guy Rowland]

Slap acoustic! Finally! Definitely tempting.

It was decades listening to Rock Around The Clock before I realised that's what that unplayable rim-shot was.

[paoling]

Thank you guys!
We had so much fun filming that "fake" performance. The players actually play that song and the piano part in the piece is performed by the pianist. The story of this instrument is that we were sampling it with our friend Flavio Cangialosi for a completely different project that needed the Pizzicato articulation. After placing all the microphones we wondered: why not doing a jazz bass library, since we've already sampled 80% of the stuff?

So we did it. I still find the raw sound of Simple Jazz Bass appealing, but this is another completely different instrument and has something that I find really lovely, in particular the vibrato articulation, which Flavio performs very well and lends itself to some lovely intimate music.

[Piet De Ridder]

Here's a little solo with the Fluffy Audio Jazz Bass.
No additional processing to speak of, except a hint of plate reverb (Fuse Audio Labs) a touch of delay (Echoboy), some dynamic EQ (DMG Audio)) and a limiter (also DMG Audio) on the StereoOut.

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[kpc]

Sounds wonderful as usual, Piet

[RobS]

lovely solo Piet

[Piet De Ridder]

Thanks, Kayle & Rob!

It’s a fine library. Spent quite a bit of time with it over the weekend and enjoyed it. Also found that its raw material — the samples — is capable of a lot more than the current release allows for in its default state. In my opinion anyway. I ended up separating the library out in several custom patches, so as to easily access the samples which, in the factory patches, are neglected a bit — I’m talking about the lowest dynamic layers: very useful samples to use for other purposes as well — and also to get round a few minor performance issues which bothered me a bit. Nothing serious, just little things that kept distracting me a little.
(I’ve informed Paolo of all of this, in more detail than described here. It’s entirely up to him of course what he does with my suggestions.)

Good library for walking bass too. Lots of energy in the pluck, which greatly helps to move things nicely along.

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[Lawrence]

Piet,

Listening to your improv (very nice, btw) the Fluffy sounds like it had much more dynamic interest and more velocity layers than another favorite of yours, the Premier. True, not true?

[Piet De Ridder]

The Fluffy bass has an impressive number of velocity layers:



That said, despite these many layers, it sounds to me more as if the instrument consists basically of four or maybe five dynamic ranges within which the velocity layers sound quite similar. (It even crossed my mind, but I could be wrong about this, that several of these velocity layers might have been created artificially for scripting purposes.)

I increased the feeling of dynamic variation quite a bit because, in a bass solo, you can't have fast phrase played at mezzoforte or forte without there being many less precisely articulated notes. The key notes of the phrase should sound well articulated, yes, but many of the 'in-between' notes should sound a lot less defined, in my opinion. Otherwise it'll sound totally unrealistic. Because it is physically impossible to pluck each note with equal precision, perfect intonation and strength. Which is why I did what I mentioned earlier, about using the lowest velocity samples to also function as 'in-between' notes in fast phrases at higher dynamics.

This is an edit I do with all my samples uprights, if they allow it. I don't know how it can be implemented as a fixture in a single Kontakt patch though because the choice between key notes and in-between notes depends entirely on the type and contents of the phrase, meaning that Kontakt has no way of knowing which note would be a key one and which an in-between one. I always solve the issue by having at least two Kontakt patches loaded, one with the regular patch (for 'key note' use) and another one with the edited samples (added instability to the tuning, less precise attack, timbre of lower velocity layers, ...) for all the 'in between' notes.

The bass solo was in fact done with three Kontakt patches cause I felt I needed a third one as well to circumvent other little performance problems I encountered.

For standard, non-soloistic use however, the factory patches are more than adequate.

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[Lawrence]

Interesting, and makes perfect sense.

When I do a bass solo, I generally make the in-between notes (the fast riffs) the quietist as you mentioned, because when you’re playing at speed on a bass, that’s the way it works. I’m assuming the third patch you used was the slap for the most impactful dynamics?

Thanks for the explanation.

[Piet De Ridder]

Actually, no. The slaps you hear are part of main patch. Slam the keys hard enough and the lower notes of the instrument will respond with that characteristic slapped, rattling sound. And if you want isolated slaps (say, for rockabilly bass playing), there’s a note available — C1 — that provides nothing but slaps. (The D1, next to it, makes the bass play ‘ghost notes’ for as long as you have the note pressed down. These ghost notes are a terrific, very useful feature of the library.)

No, the third instance was mostly for the slides and the vibrato articulation which, to my ears, are too loud compared to the rest of the articulations and they also don’t have the same dynamic range. (Meaning play softly and switch to vibrato and it’ll sound way too loud.) And since the current version of the Fluffy Jazz Bass doesn’t respond to CC#11, I felt it more convenient to have the slides and the vibrato articulation in a separate Kontakt instance, allowing me to get their levels just right.

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[Lawrence]

Makes sense. I believe I’ll be a customer tonight. I really enjoy the PSF upright but more dynamics would be helpful, and I like the tone of the Fluffy.

Another “I don’t need it but I want it” purchase.

[paoling]

Lawrence!
Wait

The main pizzicato articulation features basically 5 dynamic areas: when you play a note, the instrument randomizes the velocity a bit (in a way that is smart enought not to trigger the same sound two times in a row) to use the neighbouring velocities as round robins. So even if you see something like more than 25+ samples per note, these are more 5 dynamic layers x 5 round robins. Could it be nice if we may an additional articulation in the future to have no dynamic layers (or maybe borrowing note dynamic layers) and full 25 dynamic layer action?

To me what "sells" the library is the vibrato articulation, which is a kind of sounds that I've rarely heard in sampled instruments. This all thanks to our colleague Flavio Cangialosi from xperimentaproject.com

In any case thank you so much for your kind words and also thanks Piet for your comments and your awesome piece.