Essential Bass Plugins and VSTi for Every Music Producer

There is no doubt in my mind that bass, while often overlooked, is fundamentally one of the most important elements in music. The sheer power that comes from a strong low end, combined with the driving rhythm it offers, is why music makes you want to move. For this, you need a good bass VSTi. I challenge you to find a song that, with the bass completely removed, still comes across as a convincing and energetic piece of music. Seriously, drop a comment below as I’d love to hear it!

Bass is important and is often difficult to replicate in a convincing fashion when it comes to VSTs. Today’s article aims to guide you through a few of the many options that are available. We will look into price range as well as quality while also assessing the various types of sounds you might want to have in your arsenal. For a long time, I held the opinion that bass always had to come from a bass guitar, not a bass VSTi. Let me tell you, the more options you have when it comes to making music, the better your music will be.

The Best Free Bass VSTi

Before I delve into some of the more pricey and intricate products available, it only seems fair that I offer you my best suggestion for freeware. 4Front Bass is what I believe to be the best free VST for bass available today. A combination of sampling and modeling, this bass VSTi offers what it promises. It might not be the most convincing sound, and the plugin itself has literally no adjustable parameters. However, getting a relatively convincing bass sound from such a simple plugin is truly amazing. If your current setup is lacking a real bass guitar sound, you absolutely want to grab this. At the end of the day, it’ll always be useful as a writing tool even if you move on to something else later.

The Best Synth Bass VSTi

Now we move on to some of the best bass VSTi plugins you can get your hands on. I want to start with the synths and look at three different options, each offering something unique. Hopefully, this wide range of choices will appeal to every reader!

Dope Kitz Substation

Did somebody say 808 basses? If you’re in need of some speaker shaking speaker-shaking 808s to shake things up up, then look no further than the Dope Kitz Substation. Coming . Coming in at a modest $49.99, this simple yet powerful bass VSTi is going to bring some serious power and rhythm to your music. With a variety of plugin preset tone types, each with adjustable volume, glide glide, and ADSR, this powerhouse bass VSTi is a one-stop-shop for all your 808 bass needs. My favourite favorite thing about this plugin is that it gives you more control. With normal 808 bass samples, you’re pretty much stuck with what you get. Spending too long scrolling through 808 samples is boring and messy. With Substation, you can start with a tone that fits your track and then mould mold the shape into something that blends perfectly with your track.

Native Instruments Monark

So maybe 808s aren’t your thing. Perhaps you’re more interested in a strong, retro analogue mono synth sound that you can manipulate to your heart’s content? Enter Monark. This iconic mono synth embodies raw power. With three adjustable oscillators and a dedicated filtering and amplification section, Monark captures the organic sound of audio synthesizers with ease. Whether you’re making dirty hip-hop, dancefloor-filling house music, or chart-topping Daft Punk-inspired pop-funk, Monark has you covered. You can seriously tinker with this for hours on end, building complex monophonic tones of epic proportions. At only around $115, it’s well worth the purchase.

Native Instruments Massive

Hands down, one of my favorite synths of all time, Massive is not only the best bass VSTi, but it’s genuinely one of the best VSTs for anything synth-related. This marvelously complex polyphonic synth plugin is crammed with so many controls and variations that you could make a sound a day every year for the rest of your life without repeating your ideas. In fact, Massive is so meticulously designed that it’s actually possible to create evolving synth patches that never repeat themselves. For any of you who like to experiment, you could have some serious fun with this.

Used by professional producers and engineers the world over, Massive truly is remarkable. You’re offered so many wave tones, each of which can be processed and adjusted through its own oscillator. On top of this, you’ve got various filter types, effects, macro controls, voicing, and sequencing controls that can all be used to affect each other. If you’ve ever seen those giant walls of modular synths that look insanely complex, this is basically a compact VST version. At only around $160, this could be the number one thing I recommend anyone invest in.

The Best VSTi Bass Libraries

So maybe you’re not a huge fan of synthesizers? Perhaps you want to keep things real, and you’re looking for a way to get a true bass guitar tone without needing to learn to play one? This next list of my favorite Bass VSTi libraries will help you out.

Native Instruments Scarbee Jay-Bass

Continuing my theme of fantastic Native Instruments products, I offer you the Scarbee Jay-Bass. NI makes a variety of Scarbee bass VSTi libraries for Kontakt, but my favorite (and the one I think will appeal the most here on MasteringBox) is the Jay-Bass. A beautifully sounding jazz bass available in both fingered and slap styles, this is the best VST library for hip-hop heads. It’s got that great funky tone reminiscent of 90’s sample-based music and blends into almost any track with very little work required. Equally, it sounds great layered with chunky synth sub-bass. The two combined can really help to fill out the low frequencies in anything from hip-hop to dance music. Coming in at around $75, it’s the cheapest of the Scarbee libraries and a great introduction to the world of sampled bass. Just remember, you will need a Kontakt player to make this work.

Orange Tree Samples Bass Guitars

I’ve been a fan of Orange Tree Samples for quite some time. You get tremendous quality for the cost, and the time spent building these libraries is inspiring. I’m not going to focus on any one particular bass type that they offer, as they are all great for their own particular specialties.

The Rickenbacker model delivers a mean mid-range as well as punchy low-end for those of you looking for some aggression in your mix. If you’re looking for more of a chilled-out vibe, try the cherry model. Similar to the Jay-Bass mentioned before, this is going to be super smooth and funky. The Jaco is similar in style except that it models a fretless jazz bass. This means you can achieve some awesome slides and real technical playing that sounds like you’re in the studio with Nile Rodgers. Finally, there is the Pear. If you’re in need of an upright bass to complement your library, look no further. Remember that an upright bass VSTi has a totally different tone than an electric bass VSTi. It’s great to have choices!