When trying to pick out a bass line when trying to learn to play it I find SongMaster Pro especially useful for analyzing Bass lines.
Although it can be done in various DAWs (eg Studio One Pro), I find SongMaster Pro really simplifies the process with its clarity and straight on work flow.
When playing the Bass stem solo in isolation from the Midi view it shows the bass line very clearly with timing and all the note names for all notes, quite helpful since the screen is adjustable for large midi notes and names etc (can cover the whole screen if necessary).
If some notes are missing in the midi it can be extracted from the pitch view and included in the midi view by adjustment of the midi sensitivity controls.
And the spectrogram view shows were it all sits in the spectrogram.
It is a very clear view, easy to follow and play along with or to write down in music notation.
BIAB 2026, Studio Pro 8, Song Master Pro, Win11 Home. i7-9700K CPU, 32GB, ESI MAYA44eX, ZOOM UAC-2, Guitar Pro 8, Transcribe, (EZKeys2, EZD3, SD3, EZBass, EZMix3) Amateur: fiddle, guitar, vocal, beginner on bass.
I am a big SMP fan! The developer just started a FB page which is interesting to see. https://www.facebook.com/groups/songmastercommunity They just put up a video on this exact topic of Bass Midi Extraction. It is a bit older. I can only say it gets better with the newer version since they added Midi Chord block extraction.
When ever I hear a new Youtube audio I download it with free "4K youtube to MP3" and open it in SMP. There I immediately see tempo, time signature, tempo map, stems, chord sequence, block midi chords, song sections, midi, audio... printed charts, xml export, ... even the abily to export all the chords into BIAB with a cut and paste.
This is the starting point for may of the covers I like to sing over.
Been using SMP for about a year now with positive results. Just joined the group. Thanks
Brian Cadoret BIAB 2025 Pro build 1125e with BIAB2023 UltraPAK . Samplitude Pro X4 Suite. Mixcraft 10.5 Pro Studio Focusrite 2i2 Scarlett Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-3470 CPU @ 3.20GHz 3.20 GHz Installed RAM 8.00 GB
I am a big SMP fan! The developer just started a FB page which is interesting to see. https://www.facebook.com/groups/songmastercommunity They just put up a video on this exact topic of Bass Midi Extraction. It is a bit older. I can only say it gets better with the newer version since they added Midi Chord block extraction.
When ever I hear a new Youtube audio I download it with free "4K youtube to MP3" and open it in SMP. There I immediately see tempo, time signature, tempo map, stems, chord sequence, block midi chords, song sections, midi, audio... printed charts, xml export, ... even the abily to export all the chords into BIAB with a cut and paste.
This is the starting point for may of the covers I like to sing over.
Just sayin
Thanks for the heads-up on this app. The Personal permanent license fee of 18 € gets you a bunch of additional features, but I went with the Pro permanent license because it supports the higher quality audio (if it exists) I get with my YouTube Premium subscription. The Pro license is on a 25% sale for the next 4 days (from Sunday 27 July). I paid 43,20 €. 4K YouTube to MP3 licenses (Lite, Personal, Pro) I've been using SMP for years. This will be a nice addition to it.
Last edited by TheMaartian; 07/27/2507:58 AM.
ThinkPad i9 32GB RAM 7TB SSD; Win11 Pro; RME Fireface UCX II; BiaB 2026 Ultra Studio Pro 8; Tonalic Studio 1; Reaper v7; Bitwig Studio 6; Melodyne Studio 5 Gig Performer 5; NI S61 MK3; Focal Shape 65; Beyerdynamic DT 880 & 770
Glad to point folks in this direction. I stumbled upon this 4K Youtube, a year or two back. I had used several other options prior to this but it just seamed these would stop working or just became too complicated to keep working. Of couse you can use your DAW to record what you hear - but that is really not always very simple and I hate messing with my configurations for routine work to do something like this. I would be glad to spend a few bucks on this capability but the fact is the free version just does everything I have wanted to do with it. It tells me it will expire, but it never has. But I will go and take another look. And yes this is a perfect combo for SMP.
I've been using the free version for years and find it works quite well. I then open the videos in QuickTime to extract the audio in the lossless m4a format that I prefer to mp3 unless emailing files.
BIAB 2025 Audiophile Mac 24Core/60CoreGPU M2 MacStudioUltra/8TB/192GB Sequoia/Tahoe, M1 MBAir, 2012 MBP Digital Performer11, Logic, Finale27/Dorico/Encore/SmartScorePro/Notion6/Overture5
It sometimes might be worth checking different stem generation engines to see which one gives the best result.
I mostly doing my stem separation in SMP especially when trying to analyze and learn a bass line (see post above).
I am generally very happy with the stem quality produced with SMP but sometimes especially when trying to analyze some old recordings in compressed mp3 from YouTube I find that BIAB and SO7 give a better Bass stem.
The good thing is that it is very easy to line them up in SMP and audit them one by one to compare them as well as for the corresponding produced midi. In addition to generate stems one can also load up external stems into SMP and handle them as any of the other stems (to take advantage of the pure and clear GUI).
In this example I have loaded up 2 external stems of the same song produced by Studio One Pro 7 and BIAB and 2 internal stems produced by SMP, the 4 stem version and the 6 stem version all into SMP. So I have 4 differently generated BASS stems of the same song in SMP
The example is the song “You Better Move On – Arthur Alexander” on YT.
When comparing the different Bass lines it is easy to see that the SMP versions both have several gaps in the audio but the BIAB and SO7 have no gaps (continuous audio)
For this song it seems that BIAB and SO7 are very similar but when listening, I think BIAB comes out slightly on top for the bass stem for this particular song.
Edit: These comments are only for the bass stem, did not check any other stems. My main focus was to be able to hear the notes in the bass line clearly.
BIAB 2026, Studio Pro 8, Song Master Pro, Win11 Home. i7-9700K CPU, 32GB, ESI MAYA44eX, ZOOM UAC-2, Guitar Pro 8, Transcribe, (EZKeys2, EZD3, SD3, EZBass, EZMix3) Amateur: fiddle, guitar, vocal, beginner on bass.
First you need to generate the stems and export them as audio. Then collect all the stems you are interested to open with SMP into one folder (as well as the SMP stem files). In SMP you go to the upper right hand corner "side panel". In the side panel select audio and navigate down to the folder with stems but don't open the folder, right click on the folder and there will be an option "open as stems", and they will all come up as stems in SMP. There may be some more information in the help documentation.
The thing I find easy with SMP is that it aligns all stems correctly (one can do the same in a DAW but when I try it in SO they are all aligned wrongly)
BIAB 2026, Studio Pro 8, Song Master Pro, Win11 Home. i7-9700K CPU, 32GB, ESI MAYA44eX, ZOOM UAC-2, Guitar Pro 8, Transcribe, (EZKeys2, EZD3, SD3, EZBass, EZMix3) Amateur: fiddle, guitar, vocal, beginner on bass.
I agree with you, alignment is crucial expecially when their is a Midi Map being generated. AND I agree, SMP is dropping and/or not fully splitting the stems too often. Or I should say it is doing a good job, but there is room for improvement. Expecially as you have illustrated it is being done better with different apps. Have you shown this picture to Jonathan at SMP? Send him an email or drop it into their FB page to get his opinion.
Shlind, I just spent the morning following your path. I have never used BIAB to split stems. I just never needed to. I have tried other splitters and found SMP to be comparable with nothing else being superior. But you Bass track made me try BIAB since I am just off a project where the bass was a real challenge. So here is what I have concluded: 1) BIAB splitter was not as difficult to operate as I thought it would be, my bad (I found the 2025 Simon Video). But once I got the Bass Audio stem from BIAB on my current project, I did not continue on for tempo mapping and chords - this process still looks too difficult and at this time I don't need it since I have other workflows. 2) The resulting bass stem from BIAB was not good! While there were no significant drop outs, the bleed over from other stems was way to obvious. 4) Even the vocals in BIAB had bleed from the strings. Which was the same issue in SMP. 3) So I don't doubt what you showed when you compared BIAB with SMP. I am just concluding that every track has its own challenges. 4) By the way, I have not been able to "combine" the stems from BIAB into SMP as you did (Otherwise, I would have pasted the pic). I am still missing something which I may figure out in time. I must have to due with the "settings for folders". the defaults seems to be a mess using "a network drive" which I avoid. 5) I have solved the Bass problem in past projects by using the midi chords from SMP and sending the midi to EZBass where I isolated the bass notes from the chords. That worked great.
Thanks for suggesting this workflow. I am always looking for how to improve my music making.
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