Rayzoon Technologies LLC

andy_camb · Jam Meister Joined: 21 Apr 2011 Posts: 72

Anybody looking at Toontracks upcoming Ezbass? May 19th it is being released.
Could be a great complement to Jamstix?

What are your thoughts ?

Azimuth · Moderator & Beta Team Joined: 19 Nov 2010 Posts: 2131

Yes I'm interested in it but I plan on waiting for a few reports from the field before I consider a purchase. I'm not crazy about it being midi based but any options are limited in that regard.

andy_camb · Jam Meister Joined: 21 Apr 2011 Posts: 72

It looks pretty good from the few videos I've seen.
Raphs Jambassist seems to have been put on hold indefinitely, this might be the next best thing. Especially the convert guitar audio to bass midi function and from midi keyboard, choosing left hand or chords..

MPDmike · Posted: Sat May 16, 2020 12:08 pm Post subject:

I raised this on 22nd April in a post further down.

I could use a virtual bassist myself and I think that EZbass might have some useful features. I can imagine importing some of the bass lines from BIAB RealTracks, editing them in EZbass, and then using the result to drive another bass instrument like Amplesound upright bass My need is for an acoustic bass that sounds like a real player.

It's a pity that Jambassist got put on the backburner, but I can imagine that there are a lot of technical issues in creating software that works like Jamstix and covers all the different styles of a bass player.

Jae.Thomas · Grand Master Jam Joined: 06 Jun 2006 Posts: 280

I still REALLY wish we had "JamBass" haha, I need a bassist haha

although I admit I've been getting better at laying bass down

d_steinschneider · Jam Meister Joined: 13 Feb 2017 Posts: 78

I just watched their EZbass - Introduction video on YouTube.

My primary instrument is bass so I could nitpick a few things like the demo using a beat up "vintage" Precision bass - with 5 strings??? Very Happy

The product is nothing like Jam Bassist - there is no "AI" - you have direct this bass player in just about every detail. Where the product shines is that the user interface is extremely efficient for doing so. If anyone has ever looked at the grid editor for Superior Drummer 3, the EZbass editor is very similar.

The two basses that come with EZbass (vintage and modern) are multi-sampled with tremendous detail. In the grid editor you easily raise or lower all velocities in relation to each other or just pull a few notes louder or softer. You can apply most finger styles, slap, picking, slides, ghost notes etc.

There is a chord picker that makes it easy to apply the chord changes to the song. I could go on but if you've read this far just head over to the video:

https://youtu.be/md5CJtDCy6o

andy_camb · Jam Meister Joined: 21 Apr 2011 Posts: 72

I have been watching lots of the first look videos on this software. It's the best bass vst I have seen yet.
So easy to alter articulations and add them to groups or individual notes. Not the AI Jambass Ralph could come up with but the nearest thing so far.. With the midi drum input, you could create bass tracks from Jamstix grooves..
Sounds fantastic as well.

sonicviz · Grand Master Jam Joined: 24 Feb 2007 Posts: 287

EzBass works really well with EZKeys and Jamstix. I made a quick jam test the other night with it https://hearthis.at/sonicviz/nocountryforboldmen/

That bass line was generated with the audio to midi, which is even more accurate than Jam2Midi bass.

For actual jamming along the lines of Jamstix dynamic responsiveness uJamm bass is more versatile. You can drive uJam bass with trigger midi notes similar to Jamstix live mode to switch parts, and you can control it's sound and complexity in real time by modulating the pitch and mod wheels via audio to cc similar to audiomate. This also works to some extent with uJam drummer, but Jamstix is much more versatile here.

jimgue_77 · Jammer Joined: 30 May 2009 Posts: 25

Jae.Thomas · Grand Master Jam Joined: 06 Jun 2006 Posts: 280

thats a fantastic question

sonicviz · Grand Master Jam Joined: 24 Feb 2007 Posts: 287

Trilian can do articulations/slides/fx etc but in this case I just used the midi files directly generated from EZBass audio to midi. The only reason I used Trilian is because that was a project I was already working on and just threw EZBass into it to test, so routed the output to Trilian.

EZBass sounds great as well. I should run a comparison render just using that.

Jae.Thomas · Grand Master Jam Joined: 06 Jun 2006 Posts: 280

id like that

sonicviz · Grand Master Jam Joined: 24 Feb 2007 Posts: 287

uJam bass also dynamically creates articulations on the fly, depending on the intensity of the input, which combined with round robin samples and line switching gives variation of the lines.

Tbh this is more than enough. It's not realistic to expect a virtual Jaco with current technology imho (I do a fair bit of AI music development related stuff too)