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Chapter 13 Sculpture 317
Program a fretless bass sound with Sculpture
With the exception of shared playing techniques, the fretless bass diers from a normal bass
through its buzzing, singing sound. Because the frets on the ngerboard of a standard bass
function as a collection of mini-bridges and allow the string to vibrate in an unobstructed
fashion, the direct collision of the string’s antinode with the ngerboard on a fretless bass is
responsible for its typical sound. The string length on a fretless bass is markedly shorter than
the string length on an acoustic double bass. The upshot of this is that a controlled buzzing
is produced, even when a fretless bass is played with a weak attack. This buzzing can be
consistently reproduced in the high register, even on fretless basses that have very short string
lengths. The use of the comparatively soft tip of your nger—instead of a hard, metallic fret—to
divide or shorten the string also plays a role.
Program a fretless bass
1 Load the E-Bass Fingered Basic EQ1 setting.
2 Turn o Object 3. You’ll come back to it later.
3 Choose Disturb from the Object 2 Type pop-up menu.
Tip: In the Disturb model, the Timbre parameter determines how far the string is deected from
its resting position by the obstacle. Positive values precipitate no deection of the vibration from
its resting position. Variation denes the length of the string section that is disturbed—positive
values correspond to a longer section of string, negative values to a correspondingly shorter
section of string.
4 Adjust Object 2’s parameters to the following values: Strength 0.14, Timbre −0.05, Variation −1.00.
5 Drag the Object 2 slider, which remains at the far right in the Pickup display, to see its value of
0.99. You’ll note that the range between C2 and C3 already sounds quite acceptable, but the
buzzing in the lower notes is still too strong. It is somewhat sitar-like, so keep this disturb model
in mind when it comes to creating a home-spun sitar.
6 Try dierent settings for the Strength parameter for both the higher and lower playing ranges.
You’ll see that, at best, only a compromise is possible. The buzzing is either too loud in the low
range or not present enough in the high range.
Obviously, the eect needs to be scaled over the relevant tonal range. Unlike the parameters for
the string, Objects 1 to 3 don’t have a directly addressable key scaling function. There’s a clever
way around this: Both LFOs oer a key scaling function. As you probably don’t want the buzzing
to be modulated by a periodic oscillation, you need to reduce the LFO speed to innitely slow or
0. In this way, you can deactivate the LFO itself, but still use its modulation matrix.
7 Activate LFO2 by clicking the LFO2 button at the bottom left, and set the Rate knob to a value of
0.00 Hz.
8 Click the 1 button (next to the RateMod slider, to the upper right) to activate the rst
modulation target.
9 Choose Object2 Strength from the Target pop-up menu.
10 Choose KeyScale from the via pop-up menu.