Bowie Bass

[Bison]

Word up my homies,
I'm doing some Bowie stuff with a new outfit I'm playing with, and was wondering what effect is used on the studio version of Let's Dance?
I've tried to get a similar sound with my ehx micro synth and with envelope filter's with no success.
Any idea's?

[Kiwi]

Carmine Rojas played bass on that track so its unlikely to be anything synthy. Maybe a fretless P-bass or something?

[thisnameistaken]

I imagine the Bass Micro Synth would be the closest you'll get with a cheap FX unit. Crank the first two voice sliders, turn the others off, trigger off, find the sweet spot on the Stop slider and that's about the best you'll manage. I don't think there's an envelope effect on there but there's definitely a bandy-sounding filter in the verses and an analogue octaver, so the BMS is a fairly good choice for it.

[Kiwi]

Now I've actually listened to it, I'd suggest a 70's jazz with a pizzicato upright bass synth patch played up an octave over the top of it which drops out for the 'if you say run' bit.

[Kiwi]

A live clip here, same bass patch. You can here the sounds more distinctly.

Useless piece of trivia: Nile Rogers and Bernard Edwards were the producers on the album.

[lowdown]

I think i remember reading somewhere that it was just a heavy compressed DI Jazz Bass with an
Envelope filter, which was quite common at the time.

Another trick of that time was a Moog Bass under the Bass Gtr.



Garry

[Bison]

Cheers guys.