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Bass Engineer Manual

Introduction

Note Boxes

Controls

Menu

Settings

Custom samples

Introduction

Bass Engineer helps you composing bass guitar grooves and solos. No matter if you are a professional musician or just music enthusiast it will help you think out of the box and unlock your creativity.
Using the app you can create your own grooves and solos, hear them over the harmony chords and easily tweak them. The melodies can be saved in midi and text format.

You can select different bass instruments and create your own using your own samples.

Note boxes

In the right side of the screen are the note boxes. Every box represents one musical note. You can choose note using upper drop down box and choose accompanying chord using lower drop down box. You can change note articulation (muted, accented, thumb, pop, slide, natural harmonica) using the drop down menu on the bottom of the note box. Also you can select note using the check box.

Controls

On left side of the screen are the app controls:

Mode – select if you want to compose guitar riff or guitar solo.
Note type – select note type per note box – full/half/quarter/eight…
Tempo – select tempo in beats per minute
Scale – select root scale note and scale type. When scale is selected the possible notes in note box scroll are changed with notes of this scale
Composer – select the type of Auto Composer.
Button [Compose notes] – if no note is selected composes new melody from scratch. If some notes are checked composes only selected notes..
Button PLAY – plays/stops the melody. In the mix melody, harmony and rhythm is included depending if corresponding check boxes are checked.
Here is a video demo of play controls – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94EJzS3xmkM

Swing – switch to swing mode
Swing back switch to swing back mode
Slap bass – switch to slap bass mode


Here is a video demo of edit controls – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BypNdXy3Jso

To open the menu click on three points button in upper right corner.

COMPOSE ALL – creates new melody and accompanying harmony from scratch.
COMPOSE NOTES – if no note is selected composes new melody from scratch. If some notes are checked composes only selected notes.
COMPOSE CHORDS– if no note is selected composes new harmonyfrom scratch. If some notes are checked composes only selected chords.
Start AUTO MODE – starts auto mode for automatic melody/harmony composition
Open melody – open melody text file. When you select to open a song a file browser is opened. Browse to app folder and select song xml file to open. The app folder is sdcard/Bass_Engineer. For android devices with Android>Android 10 the app folder is sdcard/Android/data/com.gyokovsolutions.bassengineer/files/Bass_Engineer
Save as – saves melody as file with specified name
Transpose up – transposes checked notes one step up on selected scale
Transpose down – transposes checked notes one step down on selected scale
Settings – opens Settings page
Manual – opens the manual on website

Settings

– Notes number – number of notes in melody.
– Notes number in row – the number of notes per row on the screen.

SOUNDS

  • BASS instrument – select instrument
  • Melody volume – select leading bass melody volume
  • Harmony volume – select accompanying harmony chords volume
  • Rhythm volume – select click volume
  • Use muted notes – enable muted notes articulation
  • Use harmonics – enable harmonics articulation
  • Use slide – enable slide articulation
  • Use slap – enable slap articulation
  • Use pop – enable pop articulation

CUSTOM SOUNDS

Custom samples type – select type of audio files – ogg, mp3 or wav.

TUNING

  • 4th string – select note for 4th string
  • 3rd string – select note for 3rd string
  • 2nd string – select note for 2nd string
  • 1th string – select note for 1th string

Keep screen on – keeps the screen on while the app is in foreground.

Play melody in background – keep melody playing while app is in background

COMPOSERS SETTINGS

  • Melody rhythm repetition – bigger values will produce more rhythm repetition in composed melody
  • Bass groove lowest note – lowest note when composing bass groove
  • Bass groove highest note – highest note when composing bass groove
  • Bass solo lowest note – lowest note when composing bass solo
  • Bass solo highest note – highest note when composing bass solo
  • Number of cycles in AUTO MODE – number of times the melody is played in AUTO MODE before being recomposed
  • Auto compose groove articulation
  • Auto compose solo articulation

Midi note number adjustment – select number of octave transposition steps when exporting to midi

Use old sounds – activate it if your phone has latency issues

Timing correction – timing correction in milliseconds

End of loop timing correction – timing correction at the end of loop.

Harmony chords in file name – put harmony chords in saved file name.

Custom samples

You can use custom samples and create your custom instruments. In order to do this you have to create your own samples for each note and articulation and put it into app folder Bass_Engineer/samples. On devices with android 10 and more the samples folder is Android\data\com.gyokovsolutions.bassengineer\files\Guitar_Engineer\samples

Sample files must be in mono wav format.

Naming of sample files is:

[note][octave]_[instrument number]_[articulation]

[note] – c, cs, d, ds, e, f, fs, g, gs, a, as, b – “s” means sharp. For example A=a, A# = as, G=g, G#=g
[octave] – 1, 2, 3, 4
[instrument number] – 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
[articulation] – m(muted), t(thumb, slap), p(pop), s(slide), nh(natural harmonic)

For example files for bass open E string are:

e1_1.wav- normal sound
e1_1_m.wav- muted sound
e1_1_t.wav- thumb(slap) sound
e1_1_p.wav- pop sound
e1_1_s.wav- slide sound
e1_1_nh.wav- natural harmonics sound

and for F#2 – fourth fret on D string:

fs2_1.wav- normal sound
fs2_1_m.wav- muted sound
fs2_1_t.wav- thumb(slap) sound
fs2_1_p.wav- pop sound
fs2_1_s.wav- slide sound
fs2_1_nh.wav- natural harmonics sound

You can download custom samples here.

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