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Sponge Bass by Sound Dust

Sponge Bass is “Hofner President Bass + flat-wound strings x bathroom sponge”. The name gives it away it is a Bass instrument, as you would expect from Sound Dust it is a unique one.

Sound Dust is the brainchild of Pendle Poucher, a Brighton UK based composer, sound designer and lover of funny noises. See also our Ships Piano³ by Sound Dust Review, INFUNDIBULUM#1 by Sound Dust Review, Modular Chaos Engine Vol 1-4 by Sound Dust Review, Cloud Viola2 by Sound Dust Review, pendleonium³, ODDular by Sound Dust Review, and FRICTION (DIVA presets) by Sound Dust Review.

Pendle has written, produced and performed soundtracks for every significant UK TV station and much more all over the world. Pendle worked for ten years as sound designer and composer for award-winning theatre company DreamThinkSpeak devising amongst others a 32 channel soundtrack for their radical reworking of Hamlet “The Rest is Silence” in 2012.

Installation

After purchase, you receive a download link, download the library, unpack the library. You need the FULL version of Kontakt 5.8.1 by Native Instruments or above is to use Sponge Bass. There are no snapshots to install this time. It is a 567MB download ( 1.4GB uncompressed) and comes with one Kontakt .nki instrument.

Sound

Sponge Bass was sampled from a Hofner President Bass which was modified to produce that lovely woodiness sound. Paul McCartney in the early days and most famously Carol Kaye, the bass player on all the great Beach Boys recordings used the damped bass in tracks. SPONGE BASS remodels in a particular Sound Dust way the classically rounded thud dampened bass strings.

Back in the old days, a Fender Precision bass came with a plate over the bridge with a dampener built in the bass. Leo Fender patented the bridge mute in 1966 with the intention of affecting the dampened thud of a double bass.

This library is excellent to produce the low and stubborn bass sound embraced by many musicians. Pendle aka Sound Dust used a semi-acoustic Hofner President equipped with flat string nets and placed a sponge under the bridge. All the notes of the four strings of the bass were played with the fingers and with a pick.

This unique Sponge Bass offers eight round robins per note. The velocity will allow you to choose between the finger game (0-119) or the pick (120-127). You can control the length of the notes with the modulation wheel, choose between two mono/poly modes per chord to prevent two notes from being played on the same string, and even stack up to eight notes.

You can drive your bass line or use it (with optional sound design) as a layer used for an ambient vibe.

User interface & Usability

Sound Dust has found a consistent way to present their Virtual Libraries which makes them extremely approachable.

Sponge Bass also includes a humanized sequencer/arpeggiator, speaker and amp modeling, transient processor, tape emulation, three-band EQ and room reverb. Everything supports automation.