Free Hollowbody Bass Samples by Karoryfer
Karoryfer Samples recently released a new sample library called Big Little Bass. It’s free and open-source, which is pretty cool. The library has sounds from a big hollowbody bass guitar. But here’s the thing—the bass has thick strings and is played primarily high up on the neck. Because of this, the part of the strings played is about as long as the strings on a bass ukulele. The string length is more like a regular guitar on the lowest notes.
So, even though it’s a big bass, it sounds like a little one. Isn’t that wild? The same bass was sampled before, more generally, for a different library called Black And Blue Basses. That one was Karoryfer’s entry into a competition called KVRDC in 2023.
The Big Little Bass library has some neat features. Each note was recorded at two different levels of loudness, and each of those has five slightly different versions, making it sound more natural. There’s also simulated vibrato that adds a bit of wobble to the sound, but in a way that sounds like a person playing the bass.
You can control how the notes swell in, how much they wobble, and how they fade out. A filter effect can make the sound brighter or darker, and you can have that filter move around in different ways. You can layer the same note on top of itself to get a thicker sound.
All in all, it’s a pretty sweet little library—or should I say a pretty sweet BIG little library? It’s got 440 samples, which take up about 299 MB of space. That’s not too big, but it’s still a decent amount of bass for your buck—or, in this case, for no bucks at all since it’s free!
