Review of
Spectrasonics Trilogy
The Total Bass Module
A good bass player is hard to find. Isn't
that always the case? Especially when we get into making our own
productions where there never seems to be a decent bass player around. Not
that bass is rocket science, though. Of all the instruments, it is one of
the easiest to pick up an learn. If you already know guitar, its a cinch.
Just go get one of those $149 Squires and lay it down bro! Oh, and don't forget
an amp, and a mic...and not the crappy ones. And don't forget, you gotta
play fretless sometimes so you may as well get two basses. What... an
upright? Wasszat, some kinda Piano? Oh you mean those big wooden
things, like a monster cello? No, I don't think you can do a technoid
filter sweep on a Squire. Those guys don't play real basses, they use
Reason, right?
Lol. I'm messing with you, if you haven't
guessed. Every instrument out there is a craft unto itself and has it's
virtuosos and ground breakers. The bass is no exception. Just try to
do Jaco on a Fantom, Triton or whatever other synth you may have. You can
get the tone pretty close, you can work the sequence till its note-perfect, add
some wheel, but still something lacks. It's the same with standup bass and
even electric bass. When its got to be real, get a really good bass
player. When there are no players you are stuck with samples and synths
and, if you are lucky, this product called Trilogy, which we are about to talk
about..
Is it a soft synth or a soft sampler?
Trilogy is sample-based. There are 3GB of
samples that come on 5 cd rom disks. Yet Trilogy has familiar synthesizer
controls, based on the same UVI (Universal Virtual Instrument) technology used
in Atmosphere, and Stylus (and many other software synths). You
can't import or export your own samples, modify keymaps or do any softsampler
chores. You can tweak each instrument with filters, envelopes, LFOs and
the usual synth parameters. Though the analog sounds are coming from
samples, they sound about as close as samples can get to the sound of real
synths in their bass ranges.
| True Staccato See
the video
to watch Eric demonstrate it. Basically the preset has two ranges of
samples, an upper and a lower. By alternating keystrokes bewteen
upper and lower you can do authentic sounding staccato bass runs, to avoid
the monotonous "machine gun" effect. It really works! |
Trilogy is designed for composers who can roll
their own basslines. There's no loops or automatic groove creation here.
To get the best out of Trilogy you need to learn how it works. There's a
perfect little video at the Spectrasonics site that shows optimal playing
techniques to get the most realism out of the instruments. See the sidebar
on "True Staccato". on the left. It's not too hard to figure this out, and
if you have trouble playing keyboard with 2 hands at once you can always
sequence it.
Covering the Basses
I could spend a lot of time telling you about
each instrument in the set, but there are quite a few. So lets do
highlights. There are 3 basic categories of basses--Acoustic, Electric
and Synth. There's 2 acoustic basses, an acoustic upright and a martin
Acoustic Bass Guitar. For Electric there are Fingered, Fretless, Muted, Picked and Slapped. For Synths there are
Patches in these categories: Acidic, Bender, Clicky, Deep and Warm, Dirty
Filthy Noisey, Drones, Euro, Hip-Hop and Funky, Hybrid, Mean and Nasty,
Modular, Moog and Oberheim Classic, Shorties, Snappy, Solid, Square Basses, Sweepy,
X-Mod Complex. Finally there is a category of bass waveforms for making
your own, 176 total.. I'll list those cause it shows the synths involved
in Trilogy. As you see its an impressive list. Go look at the whole
Patch List.
I didn't get trilogy for the synth basses but
for the standup bass. A good standup bass that has good bottom even
in the sampled realm is hard to find. The one's in trilogy are as good as
they get, and with the fret noise, squeaks, and scrapes added in it sounds quite
authentic. Or if you really want more bottom you can add a second layer to
it, from one of the synth waveforms to beef it up.
The electric basses are quite nice too.
The Jaco Fretless is a wonder, and I love the picked basses too. Lots of
classic basses that will sound right in any rock, jazz, hip hop piece of music.
Many of them offer instant 'ear recognition" that you have heard them before.
Exactly what a professional may want for their bass track if there is no bassist
around. Overall, the basses are clean and solid. There's enough
control to shape them to fit into the track if they don't automatically.
There's no fluff in this bag, just good stuff.
The samples are really of high quality, just like they were in atmosphere (which
has a share of tasty basses too). The programming is excellent, and the
instruments respond to your touch as one wants.
Oh a a special word of warning to Mac
users--the CD does not have an OS X version on it. The Mac installer for
the disk ins OS9. Once you register, you have to download the OSX joiner
application, which lets you install Trilogy on your system.
Who needs Trilogy?
Those that are
tired of using wimpy synth and sampled basses on synth modules. Those that
want the convenience of having all the basses they need in one plugin rather
than having to hunt through lots of other softsynths or midi synths for them. A
useful software plugin. I can see why it is so popular.
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