Micro BR Bass

[ayan0815]

Can you make your electric guitar sound like a bass guitar using Boss Micro BR built in effects/patches?

[Halem]

I used three last effects(clean bass, solo bass etc) to record a bass with a guitar. Those just twist equalizer boosting bass, no magic there, as far as i know. May be there are other ways.

[veli_joza]

You can make it sound close, but there's no way to drop the pitch. All Roland recorders in BR family except Micro BR have pitch shifter effect. The best option would be to borrow bass guitar from a friend, or perhaps play bass line on a keyboard (if you have one handy).

EDIT: Also try lowering TONE knob on your guitar and play with fingers to take away the high harmonics specific to guitar sound.

[Red62]

Yeah.. there isn't really a way with the MBR... a slight disappointment for me with the MBR compared to my BR-600.

[64Guitars]

The Micro BR doesn't have any way to change the pitch of your guitar. But you can do that in Audacity.

For example, here's a short bass line I recorded on my BR-864 using an ordinary electric guitar with the BR's insert effects turned off:

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 Stop   Play   Pause   Vol   Vol   Mute   Repeat   Download

I exported that track to a WAV file using the BR Wave Converter program. Then I imported the WAV file into Audacity and used its Change Pitch effect to drop the pitch one octave. Here is the result:

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 Stop   Play   Pause   Vol   Vol   Mute   Repeat   Download

This could be a useful technique for the Songcrafters.org "Unplugged" festival. You should be able to create a decent simulation of an acoustic upright bass by recording a bass line on an acoustic guitar, then dropping it an octave in Audacity. Might be worth a try for anyone who feels they need some bass in their song but they don't want to "cheat" by using an electric bass.

[ayan0815]

thanks 64Guitars. i think thats the best solution for me. it doesnt sound bad for doing demo songs. downloaded audacity and applied "change pitch" effect but there were too many settings. care to share yours? thanks again.

[64Guitars]

The simplest way is to enter -12 for Semitones. All of the other options will automatically update accordingly. An octave is 12 semitones and the minus sign indicates that you want the octave below rather than the one above. So a -12 semitone pitch change means you're lowering the pitch by one octave.

[Ted]

That Audacity trick sounds surprisingly good.  Better than the any of the real-time octave-shift effects I've heard.

[64Guitars]

Yeah, it works pretty good. I'd like to hear somebody give this technique a try with an acoustic guitar for the unplugged festival. It could be a great way to add bass to an unplugged song without resorting to an electric bass or keyboard. My only acoustic has a broken neck so I can't do it.

[Vanncad]

My only acoustic has a broken neck so I can't do it.

- Does that mean you're gonna have to put "ole Yeller" down?