Scarbee Rickenbacker unwanted hammer-ons and pull-offs

Just loaded Scarbee Rickenbacker bass.

Alas, this thing interprets all legato style playing to be hammer ons and pull offs. I am very disappointed about this. I am thinking that if there is no way round this, it will make the bass unplayable in a live situation? - especially when playing faster passages. It is natural for a keyboard player to have his notes slightly overlapping when smoothly playing a run or phrase, this shouldn't mean he triggers hammers and pull-offs for all these notes. Please say that I have overlooked some option, or that there is a way around this, otherwise I will be spending days editing the length of notes so that they are chopped a microsecond before the new note comes in (to avoid staccato effect). Unfortunately, too, there is a significant volume drop when the hammers and pull-offs engage, so runs don’t sound right in this aspect either.

 

I need staccato as well as a legato, I need each note picked with attack, but when I do a run, I get hammer-ons, pull-offs & slurs. It would be the best bass ever if you could just turn off hammer-ons and pull-offs and have a individual note picked mode with attack level... You could then have a keyswitch for hammer-ons and pull-offs for when you want them.

Brilliant bass, but no one thought of this... I should of been involved in the product development.

 

Perfection is hard to find. It is generally aspired towards by improving upon the shortcomings of previous endeavours. In the innovative field of virtual instruments one expects this learning curve to continue in the upward direction. But so often we see new improvements in some areas emerge alongside new shortcomings. This is Scarbee Rickenbacker. A huge array of keyswitch controlled articulations for bass playing realism and a great sound. But some quirky little oversight that renders it inferior to standard sampled basses that were produced years ago.

Load a standard Kontakt bass and play a bass line on your keyboard and it plays as it should: every note smoothly picked (or fingered). Hit record and you have a bass track. But not Scarbee Rick. The very first notes I played of Scarbee Rickenbacker had me screwing my face up with confusion: “What’s going on here? The first note sounds fine, then all the others drop to half volume and have no pick attack! What the heck!” Confusion followed by disbelief: “This thing is interpreting every note as a hammer-on or a pull-off!” Then follows desperate hope: “There must be a way to turn off the hammer-on/pull-off articulations.” Then follows reading the PDF manual . . . “Nothing here”. Then follows experimentation and inquiry . . . Then follows surrender: “There ain’t no way to turn off these automatic hammer-ons and pull-offs!” Then follows decision: “Should I now throw this thing in the bin?”

Scarbee Rickenbacker almost touched perfection. Had the package included fingered samples alongside the picked samples, and had there been included a keyswitch to turn off the automatic hammer-ons/pull-offs, it would be near enough to perfect (assuming the slide articulations intermittently not working will be a bug fix in an update).

 

I wonder if it's something we could talk to Nils Liberg( the script writer) about. I'm sure he could come up with something.

 

five years later....

did anyone in this thread ever solve this problem?

 

Honestly the hammer-ons/pull-offs wouldn't be such a problem if the volume didn't immediately go to near-zero. If I'm playing bass and I hammer-on or pull-off, then the volume is going to stay mostly consistent, not just fade instantly away.

This should be written up as a bug.

 

The volume doesn't go immediately near-zero after a hammer-on over here. Eventually it gets there because samples are just faded into one another rather than completely starting them over, which would not be realistic since you would hear a re-plucking of the string, which is not what HO/PO is about. Even on a real (bass) guitar if you just HO/PO the string eventually loses momentum and dies out to silence unless you pluck it again.

What you're talking about is not a bug. This is very much intended behavior. If you need more sustain in the sound, by all means use a compressor, that's why it's there.

 

If you use Ableton, you can use the M4L device "MIDI Monopoly"

This solves it for me

https://maxforlive.com/library/device/1627/midi-monopoly

 

Has nobody from NI sorted this hammer on pull off problem yet, the plugin really is unusable with this limitation built in. How am i ever going to play in real time Steve Harris (Iron Maiden) galloping bass runs and Lemmy fast bass runs with the level of the bass notes getting softer and quieter with each press of the key?

YOU CANNOT TURN THIS OFF... PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE MAKE THIS HAPPEN OR THIS IS $99 WASTED ON A FLAWED PRODUCT.

Also the key switches are not re assignable so even with a 61 key keyboard I cannot get all the required playable keys and key switches all available at once, (I could fit them JUST on my 61 key keyboard) and also it would be handy if some of the key switches could latch so you could play the keyboard with both hands and not be having to hold down a key switch for a specific effect or string. Surly with Komplete Kontrol and their associated keyboards the knobs on the keyboard could be assigned to switch these functions now?

No mention in the sales spiel that you need an 88 key keyboard to use this plug in fully and properly.

This has been out since 2013, can't Scarbee sort it?

Evil Dragon, how do you suggest then that this plug in can play fast bass runs, I've had this plug in for a week now and am starting to pull my hair out with its short commings!! The bass sounds are awesome, the interface is pretty, but useless!

If it does not get to be made useable, I will be requesting a refund or credit to buy another plug in from NI. Are the other 3 Scarbee bass plug ins as unusable as this one for fast runs and key switch assignments?

Can anyone enlighten me please.

 

As far as I know there is no way to bypass the HO/PO behavior for intervals of 1 or 2 semitones playing overlapped. That's how it is in all Scarbee basses. It seems like a pretty set in stone design decision.

However, the manual lists all the keyswitches and doesn't mention any KS reassignment either, and it is available on the product page to download and read before the purchase...

 

I feel ya. You’d think a simple velocity sensitivity or on/off Keyswitch would address this? To be fair, I guess the developers can’t do everything all the time, but…

https://www.toontrack.com/product/ezbass/. This is an incredibly flexible instrument with the ability to deep dive into virtually any articulation you want (or more importantly here, don’t). And it offers both fingered and picked stylings. The core libraries sampling a modern and vintage bass are wide-ranging. They just came out with a Rick 4001 expansion pack.https://www.toontrack.com/product/hard-rock-ebx/

Solid internal amp tones/effects, or you can come out of the plug DI and use external effects. Check out the vids. Too much to talk about here regarding what it can do. P Bass, Fretless, Upright expansion packs avail.

I have the Scarbee Rick and P Bass Amped, and I dig all the NI VSTi I have (guitars, keys, bass) but this thing is amazing. Yeah, it’s more pricey, but think this should get you where you want to go and is probably the last bass VSTi I’ll ever invest in.

 

Cheers BILLY86 for passing on the link to this cracking line of bass products. I just find it poor on NI's part that they are still selling and plugging an outdated NI instrument (now 9 years old!) that was flawed from the start and to boot including in the software package with their S series keyboard as a 'go to' bass...

I was taken in by the wonderful Rickenbacker sound it has, and purchased recently it based on this to my detriment. How can they still market as a 'Rock Bass' simulation when it is impossible to play fast rock riffs with it on a keyboard when the volume and attack of notes fades after one note ?????

Cheers Again for pointing in the direction of EZBASS bass.

 

Well, you could also try playing a bit more detached instead of legato and then it would play fine...

Not saying that an option wouldn't have been nice, but it's still a perfectly usable and playable bass library. It's far from outdated as it's been used by thousands upon thousands of people still today.