iBassist

What it does

A virtual bass player that builds a part from a style, a timing, a bass line and a chord progression, with finger, pick, muted, slap, thumb mute and double bass tones. Lines can be redrawn note by note with velocity and saved back into the library, progressions edited or randomized chord by chord, and arrangements assembled in song mode. Loaded as a MIDI plugin it plays nothing itself and instead sends the bass line plus two accompaniment channels out to other instruments. A later update added two-way traffic with Lumbeat’s Pop Drummer, so bass and drums can follow each other.

In the demo

Jade opens it both ways in AUM, first as MIDI only feeding a piano, strings and a jazz guitar from one line, then as an instrument for the bass sounds themselves. She runs it against Funk Drummer and Rock Drummer over Ableton Link, drives its chords from Scaler, and records it into Logic.

Worth knowing

It runs on iPad and Apple silicon Macs only. The other Lumbeat drummers were still Inter-App Audio, so they connect over Ableton Link rather than loading beside it. The randomize button crashed once during the demo.