Steinberg’s Virtual Bassist is the latest addition to their virtual band lineup, which already includes Groove Agent and Virtual Guitarist. I’d like to see them expand this. How about Virtual Harpist or Horn Agent? Anyway, the first two received good reviews, and Virtual Bassist sounds pretty interesting too.

The website has many details. Here’s the executive summary: Using dynamic phrases based on real performances by top studio bass players in 30 styles, Virtual Bassist covers almost every conceivable music genre, delivering top class bass sounds and phrases for rock, pop, reggae, metal and hip hop to name just a few. The innovative GrooveMatch Technology allows users to mould the Virtual Bassist bass line performance to existing drum grooves either by flexibly editing notes or shifting the overall groove of any phrase. Owners of Groove Agent, Virtual Guitarist or Virtual Guitarist Electric Edition will find pre-matched grooves for phrases and patterns in those instruments, creating a tightly integrated drum, bass and guitar rhythm section.

Virtual Bassist comes with a full range of outstanding sound-shaping features, including six high-quality virtual stomp box effects optimized for bass guitar, a choice of tube or solid state amp head, bass cabinets and microphones as well as mic positioning options to build ideal bass guitar parts. The included effects can also be used on any other audio channel in music production environments such as Steinberg’s Cubase SX3.

Other features:

• Fast and easy to use thanks to extensive keyboard control
• Realtime performance controls (Complexity, Swing, Tempo a.s.o)
• Two basic operation modes: Chord (fully automatic) or Note (automatic patterns, manual note pitch)
• Amp section with tube or solid state amp selector, speaker/mic selector, EQ
• High-quality virtual stomp box effects such as Wah, Octaver, Overdrive, Chorus/Flanger, Tremolo, Compressor
• Compatible to any VST, DXi, AU or ReWire host application under OSX and PC.

Buy Virtual Bassist at SameDayMusic.com