Double Bass

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The new VST Bass Amp offers six different models and plenty of effects and processing options but not, unfortunately, an ‘octave up’ facility in its Octaver effect.The new VST Bass Amp offers six different models and plenty of effects and processing options but not, unfortunately, an ‘octave up’ facility in its Octaver effect.



Use Cubase’s new VST Bass Amp to recreate the sound of Royal Blood’s doubled electric bass.



John Walden



Ever since the likes of Jimi Hendrix and Cream graced the charts, it’s been obvious just how much noise a ‘power trio’ can make, and many bands have followed in their footsteps. But in recent years, some artists have taken the concept further, stripping the line-up back to two while still delivering ‘big’ sounds. The most obvious example is perhaps the White Stripes, whose guitarist Jack White often applied a bit of pitch-shifting to his guitar sound to fill out the bottom end of some of the riff-based songs. The latest such ‘power duo’ to hit the charts is Royal Blood, who play only electric bass and drums, and yet manage to make a very impressive amount of sound.



Cubase 8 brought with it the new VST Bass Amp plug-in, which, along with a few other of Cubase’s in-built tools, can easily be used to create something in the style of Royal Blood’s bass-driven riffs. Here’s how...

All Tooled Up



The band are understandably a little secretive about the exact details of the setup they used to create their sound, but in essence the bass output is split and sent to two amplifiers: one a bass amp, as you’d expect, but the other a guitar amp. Both amps are tube-based, and the feed to the guitar amp is passed through some sort of pitch-processor, to shift the part up an octave. And for their live performances at least, the setup allows the player to mute the feed to either amp as and when required.



Cubase Pro 8 has all the tools required to create a similar setup — and while we might not be able to copy the sound exactly, we can certainly capture the key features. Note, though, that if you want to emulate the setup using a single bass instrument, whether a ‘real’ one or something MIDI-based, it requires careful configuration.      


Published in SOS August 2015