SubMission Audio – NocturnalBass

NOCTURNALBASS

A longtime fan of SubMission Audio virtual basses, the compositional prodigy Nik Nocturnal asked for a custom virtual bass, perfectly tailored to his workflow – and we answered.

NocturnalBass is a meticulously-sampled virtual model of the legendary Ernie Ball Music Man Stingray. A studio staple, and perfectly suited to Nik – an official Ernie Ball endorsee.

The Stingray is a remarkably versatile instrument – equally at home plugging away at punk music as it is metalcore. Sampled in quasi J-Bass configuration, NocturnalBass has an extremely distinct and pleasant midrange character, with an almost unbelievably pleasant bottom end.

NocturnalBass is one of our personal favourites, simply because it’s so easy to use across such a wide variety of music. This, coincidentally, is perfect for Nik, who built his social empire by recreating a variety of genres in 30 seconds.

Now you too can get the bass tone of your dreams in less than a minute. We present: NocturnalBass.

DI: The raw sound of the instrument, captured directly via high end, studio-grade recording hardware. Process as you would any other bass – using your favourite plugins, pedals or amps. This allows ultimate flexibility; mix the bass on your own terms.

CLN: An enviable classic clean tone, shaped by our custom impulses of a legendary Ampeg Heritage 8×10 cabinet, as captured by premium Neumann U47 and U87 microphones.

Perfect from funk all the way through to metal, the ‘Drive’ control allows you to blend a distortion stage in parallel for that classic rock bass tone.

DIST: If you believe that a heavy bass tone should live in the midrange, this is the tone for you. Combining two amp stages, the DIST sound channels a remarkably textured midrange for that perfect glue between your bass and rhythm guitars. Like the CLN tone, it’s shaped by premium Ampeg and Neumann gear for a timeless sound.

In our usual style, both tones are premixed for your convenience – so you can get straight to the art of being creative.

The Drive, Tone, Compression and Girth controls further allow you to perfectly match the bass to your music.

FEATURES

NocturnalBass is a meticulously sampled virtual instrument, based on the sound of an Ernie Ball Music Man Stingray.

THE TUNING RANGE

The tuning range of NocturnalBass is C0 up to D4. It’s been tuned perfectly across the entire note range, so it can act as a tuning reference whenever you’re recording guitars.

THE DOOM BUTTON

Intentionally shrinks the round robin, giving you the most powerful, direct samples for reduced realism and greater consistency – for those times where variance is undesirable.

HUMANIZE

The Humanization control injects natural variance into the playback, for adjustable realism.

The Position control is a convenient way to select where on the virtual fretboard you’d like the performance to take place.

For absolute control, our Force String articulation can select exactly which string each note is performed on, giving you the ability to tonally match your guitar riffs 1 to 1.

Use the Configuration menu to rebind keyswitches, set the tuning of the bass, and adjust the pitch bend range for ultimate customization to your personal workflow.

NATIVE INSTRUMENTS – KONTAKT

As an official Native Instruments partner, NocturnalBass runs in the industry standard free Kontakt Player, meaning you don’t have to worry about any additional hidden costs.Kontakt is the most widely used and widely compatible sampler in the industry, meaning there is a robust team of professionals available to make it work perfectly for you.

TRUBASS TECHNOLOGY

Based on our next generation truBass technology, NocturnalBass features a ridiculously robust collection of articulations, including: Alternate Picking, Ghost Notes, Slap Bass, Natural Harmonics, Hammer On/Pull Off, Tapping, truSlides and Palm Mutes.

MULTI-SAMPLING

The entire fretboard of the instrument is multi-sampled so that your virtual riffs sound exactly as intended. Ie. Playing an open D string sounds vastly different to playing that same D note on the B-string.

TRUSLIDES

Our truSlide algorithm can slide from any note on the virtual fretboard, to any other note, at whatever speed or velocity curve you desire, to perfectly match the slides of your real guitars.

INTELLIGENT ALTERNATE PICKING

Our proprietary tempo-synced alternate picking algorithm has a robust round robin that never sounds like samples are repeating, no matter the speed of your music.

PACKET FRESH’ TONE

NocturnalBass was sampled with brand new steel strings, meaning that you always get that lovely ‘packet fresh’ tone, with no wear down. The average professional bass recording session often costs several times the price of NocturnalBass in string packets alone.

HEAR IT IN ACTION