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Chapter 24 Sculpture 433
When playing, you’ll recognize the smooth transition that takes place between the
wiry, overtone-rich sound at the bottom end and the extremely dampened sound in
the upper register. This (exaggerated) setting was chosen to clearly demonstrate the
scaling principle in stringed instruments. In order to achieve an authentic sound and
timbre, we recommend the following setting:
In basses in particular, low notes sustain far longer than the high notes. Sculpture
allows you to authentically and convincingly simulate this behavior with the Media Loss
parameter.
To use the Media Loss parameter to scale the fading phase of the note, depen-
dent on pitch:
1 Play a few held notes in the range around C2 and above. You’ll hear that these notes
die out much too slowly. Move the Media Loss slider up until this range begins to fade
out quickly enough. The downside is that the lower notes now die out too quickly!
2 Pull the green Media Loss Key Scale slider down until the fade-out phase of the lower
range is sufficiently long enough.
3 Compare your results with these recommended values:
We’ve now completed our task for this section, and created a basic bass that’s articula-
ted with your fingers. Save this as “E-Bass Fingered Basic”. In the following sections we’ll
be using this basic bass as a foundation for the construction of further basses.