Cheap bass for demo recordings in drop C

You could use a 5 string for drop A. Then, tune up a half step to drop A# and put a capo on the 2nd fret for dropC stuff.
Or drop C on the first 4 strings, but the spaghetti effect comes into play there. Sometimes works well anyway.
Eventually I just bought a 2nd bass- one for dropC (Epi TBird) and a 5string for dropA.

 

If you're just looking for cheap, you can do what I do and just use the Kontakt free player because it comes with a couple sampled basses, run that through the free Ignite bass amp, and program all the MIDI.

...and I do have a bass, I too am just lazy about the thought of buying new strings every time I need to record, or laying down all the bass tracks at once for all the projects I'm working on just to take advantage of fresh new strings.

edit: anyway, you can plug straight into your interface and use this free bass amp VST:
https://www.kvraudio.com/product/shb-1-by-ignite-amps

There's also this emulation of the Sansamp Bass Driver from TSE:
https://www.tseaudio.com/software/tseBOD

also, for those tunings, make sure you are getting a bass with a 35" scale length, not traditional 34"

 

Will you be programming the drum parts? Programming the bass parts isn't any more difficult than that. If you have any familiarity with tab programs like GuitarPro/Powertab/TabIt it's pretty much the same, just on a piano roll instead. I can knock them out pretty fast for demos now, and I find that I like having them as a reference alongside drums to track guitars to, instead of just a click track. I can always go back in one day and re-record the parts with an actual bass too.

It's a bit of a learning curve sure, but I think it's a handy skill to add to the recording toolbox.

 

you would simply just extend the length of the note

programming bass is super easy and honestly sounds so good that most people won't notice programmed bass. for example, Brian Hood (ERRA, Invent Animate, Gideon, Sworn In, Memphis May Fire) uses programmed bass for quite a few of his releases yet it's pretty hard to tell because metalcore bass is already so artificial sounding.

 

Check this video out. This is exactly what I do lol. Only difference is now i use a second bass track thats just clean sine-wave sub-bass to bolster the bass fundamental.
I used it in this recording I did a couple weeks ago.

https://soundcloud.com/incasinoout-1/misery-signals-5-years-instrumental-cover

I've even experimented with turning off the cabinet, EQ, and reverb in the Kontakt sample and treating that dry bass signal like a DI track, then running that through those other bass amp VSTs I posted above. Totally works in a pinch for metal.

 

As someone who really enjoys playing bass I hate to say this, but the programming idea sounds like it might be a good solution for you. You won't have to worry about finding a cheap bass that sounds even ok down to A, you won't have to worry about finding strings suitable for your tunings (or the expense of bass strings in general), and you won't have to learn how to adapt your technique to a larger instrument. Yeah, there would be a learning curve associated with programming, but it's going to be smaller than learning how to play an actual bass, which you don't seem super invested in. There's nothing wrong with that, by the way - we each only have so much time.

Were you to get an actual bass, I would definitely go used (even thoroughly used) - the increase in overall quality over a comparably priced new bass could be considerable, and more than offset the price of a new set of strings. For your tunings, I would probably get a 5 string bass and a four string pack that's a little heavy for standard. That would probably go down to drop C decently... Then get a single .145 for the low A (or heavier if available) and tune the others back up. The thought of trying to make this work even decently for ~$100 makes me nervous though...

 

No prob dude, happy to help with a free solution! As the video mentioned though, the Kontakt samples only go down to B, so you'd have to go around that by programming everything transposed up to B, then render that as a wav so you can pitch shift it back down to A. There should be no problem with any drop C stuff, but as far as I know that's the only workaround for drop A with this option.

 

By that I mean the Kontakt bass samples can't play a note lower than the B on a 5 string bass, so if you're working on the bass lines for a drop A song, you'd have to program the whole bass line up by 2 semitones to make up for that shortcoming. Once you have the whole thing sequenced, you can then take that MIDI track and render it as a .wav file, where you can then pitch that rendered bass line file 2 semitones back down, putting it in A. For drop C songs, Kontakt can go as low as C, so you don't have to do that.

You can, and should record your drop A songs with the guitars already in that tuning, but to get the Kontakt bass to go that low, you have to work around it.

Or you can can just switch to B so you don't have to do any of that

 

Did you scan for new vsts?

 

Weird, because the loading screen popping up for a second means it was found and installed. You're not seeing it under VSTi?