Hey Bud, it would take an "act of congress" for me to migrate from Windows to macOS but for grins if you need a song to split, You've Got Your Troubles is a good test case; it has lots of low-end brass.
SongMaster Pro will separate the bass but it's wobbly and full of static. This, maybe, could be cleaned-up with some EQ attention but it loses its mind around 0:42 and produces no bass at all, which I see no way to fix.
https://soundcloud.com/user-646279677 BiaB 2026 Windows For me there’s no better place in the band than to have one leg in the harmony world and the other in the percussive. Thank you Paul Tutmarc and Leo Fender.
My experience with SongMaster Pro (ver 2.1) has so far, been lackluster in this regard. When separating the bass I have found the resulting audio often sounds warbly and squishy and even has regions of no music at all when I know music should be there.
(...)
Eventually, my final goal here is to produce quality bass tabs of songs I want to learn. Bass separation would be step #1 followed by (a different?) software to produce a tab from the stem. For me, a great solution would be if my DAW (Studio One) had this capability built-in but I'm not holding my breath.
I find Some Master Pro quite good isolating bass with most styles, of course, the better the source is, the better results you'll get.
Moises works also very well, IMO, not 100% sure, but I think both (and many others) are based on the (open source) Spleeter code.
I use stem separation mostly to remove the original bass line, so it works pretty well for me. I guess you know SMP can export Midi from stems, a couple of versions ago that feature didn't work really well, but the last version seems to be considerably better on this regard (I've only experimented a little bit with that feature). Did you try it?
A classic tune. I can image it would take an enormous effort to pick a clean bass line from that.
Separately, I wonder what AI could do? Maybe it could intelligently(?) determine the bass notes based on multiple other factors within the song?
BIAB & RB2026 Win.(Audiophile), Windows 10 Pro & Windows 11, Cakewalk Bandlab, Izotope Prod.Bundle, Roland RD-1000, Synthogy Ivory, Session Keys Grand S & Electric R, Kontakt, Focusrite 18i20, KetronSD2, NS40M, Pioneer Active Monitors.
Absolutely! I'm telling ya, it's all about the newspaper ink
From Wikipedia: The Fortunes are an English harmony beat group. Formed in Birmingham, . . .
https://soundcloud.com/user-646279677 BiaB 2026 Windows For me there’s no better place in the band than to have one leg in the harmony world and the other in the percussive. Thank you Paul Tutmarc and Leo Fender.
A classic tune. I can image it would take an enormous effort to pick a clean bass line from that.
Why would anyone need stem separation, AI or anything else to hear the bass in You've Got Your Troubles, I've Got Mine? It's quite easy to hear every note in that bass line.
BIAB 2026 Audiophile Mac 24Core/60CoreGPU M2 MacStudioUltra/8TB/192GB Sequoia/Tahoe, M1 & M5 MBAir, 2012 MBP Digital Performer11, Logic, Finale27/Dorico/Encore/SmartScore/Notion/Overture
Why would anyone need stem separation, AI or anything else to hear the bass in You've Got Your Troubles, I've Got Mine? It's quite easy to hear every note in that bass line.
Yes, it is easy to hear the bass line. But you are missing the entire point. This is about 1. Progressing towards software that can separate bass stems and then produce tab. Did you not read the initial post? And 2. Finding an effective stem separation tool for all songs not just You've Got Your Troubles, and 3. Establishing a common song to use as a test case. Without a common song, it's difficult to compare apples-to-apples.
These are not hard concepts to understand. Do you get it now or do you still need teaching?
https://soundcloud.com/user-646279677 BiaB 2026 Windows For me there’s no better place in the band than to have one leg in the harmony world and the other in the percussive. Thank you Paul Tutmarc and Leo Fender.
Forgetting the exact song for a moment, at what point will software try to use AI to make a guess at what the bass was playing, when the stem separator isn’t sure?
BIAB 2026 Win Audiophile. Software: Fender Studio One 8, Swam horns, Acoustica-7, Notion 6, Song Master Pro, Win 11 Home. Hardware: Intel i9, 32 Gb; Fender Quantom HD8 & Faderport 8, Royer 121, Adam Sub8 & Neumann 120 monitors.
Forgetting the exact song for a moment, at what point will software try to use AI to make a guess at what the bass was playing, when the stem separator isn’t sure?
Forgetting the exact song for a moment, at what point will software try to use AI to make a guess at what the bass was playing, when the stem separator isn’t sure?
I am not really sure how and if AI could achieve anything. However, presumably it could be used to interpret many other melodic components of the music, including the surrounding song structure, and from that establish what would potentially work along with the stem separation that had been interpreted, including suggested corrections to stem separation where there is a lower degree of confidence. In essence, could it smarten up / value add to the stem separation process?
(Disclaimer: I have no idea if this is really feasible, I was just throwing ideas around, but I think the concept has some merit.)
BIAB & RB2026 Win.(Audiophile), Windows 10 Pro & Windows 11, Cakewalk Bandlab, Izotope Prod.Bundle, Roland RD-1000, Synthogy Ivory, Session Keys Grand S & Electric R, Kontakt, Focusrite 18i20, KetronSD2, NS40M, Pioneer Active Monitors.
In essence, could it smarten up / value add to the stem separation process?
My answer is "yes".
Before the pandemic really took hold, my wifey and I enrolled in a music theory course at a local college. Three other couples were also middle-aged; everyone else was a twenty-something. The class was subsequently cancelled but we had already purchased the textbook; a massive, densely-written tome of some 800+ pages; Music Theory Remixed by Kevin Holm-Hudson.
My point is, a music AI could be trained on this book and every other music related book ever written. Those that are formally trained in music can appreciate just how much knowledge this would represent. Combine this with another (or the same) AI that has been trained on thousands or millions of songs and the result will meet every bass separation and tab generation task I could dream up. One down-side however, is that authors of music theory books may no longer be required. Simultaneous progress and anti-progress?
In the meantime, I'll use bass tabs that happen to be readily available and construct my own bass lines when they aren't.
https://soundcloud.com/user-646279677 BiaB 2026 Windows For me there’s no better place in the band than to have one leg in the harmony world and the other in the percussive. Thank you Paul Tutmarc and Leo Fender.
My take on this is a little less optomistic, though I'm pretty sure it will improve.
The reason I'm less optimistic is that what the software is doing is identifying all the little nuances of the sound and attributing those nuances to a particular sound source, e.g., a bass guitar. How well it isolates depends on how well it does that attribution. It can attibute by frequency, phase, time and articulations. But if any other source supplies nuances that fit close-enough to the bass, nuances will likely be wrongly attributed. A solid electric bass is probably a fairly predictable sound, so relatively easy, but even then, slaps and percussive effects may sometimes be difficult to attribute to bass, rather than percussion. I presently hear quite noticable 'fails' between vocals and strings and synths and whilst I anticipate that will improve, I do wonder how much it realistically can improve, particularly when the audio processing perhaps interferes, e.g., by ducking, chorus and so on.
Jazz relative beginner, starting at a much older age than was helpful. AVL:MXE Linux; Windows 11 BIAB2026 Audiophile, a bunch of other software. Kawai MP6, Ui24R, Focusrite Saffire Pro40 and Scarletts .
The way I'm thinking about using AI is that it might be able to work much more closely to how a human thinks and acts.
A skilled human could more easily hear through the surrounding noise clutter and determine that the bass note was obviously (for example) an Eb. Whereas using software or hardware to identify the required separation will be often clouded by all of those adjacent articulations and intonations, including the undesirable sonic variances that are present in lower resolution recordings.
But, bring AI into the picture, and you've introduced a more superior 'human-like' intelligent thinking into interpreting exactly what that note is, the same way that a skilled musician's ear could achieve a better result than some software separation applications might.
If a skilled musician could determine that the note is definitely an Eb, then I'm convinced that AI could deliver the same or better.
Just my thoughts on other ways to achieve a successful result. Perhaps premature at this stage, but give it time... it will happen.
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My take on this is a little less optomistic, though I'm pretty sure it will improve.
A solid electric bass is probably a fairly predictable sound, so relatively easy, but even then, slaps and percussive effects may sometimes be difficult to attribute to bass, rather than percussion.
It's so refreshing to read the perspectives of intelligent people who can actually comprehend this thread and converse at an adult level. You and AudioTrack are among those that have a strong set of healthy brain cells, keep using them
Yes, percussive slaps and other musical elements (including musical "liberties" taken by the musicians) can certainly make it challenging for an AI to "properly" separate the bass stem. But remember, it doesn't have to be perfect, just good enough.
Google DeepMind founder Demis Hassabis has won a joint Nobel Prize for Chemistry for using AI to predict the structures of proteins. The potential impact of this research is enormous. Proteins are fundamental to life, but understanding what they do involves figuring out their structure—a very hard puzzle that once took months or years to crack for each type of protein.
So if the difficult protein-structure problem has largely been cracked, how hard can it be to extract the bass stem from a song by The Fortunes, especially if it has a knowledge of how good bass players play bass?
https://soundcloud.com/user-646279677 BiaB 2026 Windows For me there’s no better place in the band than to have one leg in the harmony world and the other in the percussive. Thank you Paul Tutmarc and Leo Fender.
If a skilled musician could determine that the note is definitely an Eb, then I'm convinced that AI could deliver the same or better.
That sounds more like extracting the notes, e.g., as MIDI, rather than isolating the stems, which is what BassThumper was asking. For me, "the stems" means the actual sound of the bass extracted from the audio. I suppose one way to get a clean stem might be to identify all of the notes and articulations and convert that to MIDI and identify a suitable-sounding instrument and creat a MIDI+VST track that does a good emulation of the stem. I.e., creating a new stem that sounds very like the one from the song. One would certainly get a clean output.
How far it could go with other sound sources is another question. If one extracts the voice, translates that to MIDI and allies that to a vocal VSTi, how close can one get to a clone of the original. I guess if the original singer has good voice samples out there, possibly pretty close.
Originally Posted by Bass Thumper
... an AI to "properly" separate the bass stem. But remember, it doesn't have to be perfect, just good enough.
... and rebuilding would satisfy that.
When does an extracted stem become a straight forgery?
Suppressing the original bass in the remainder of the recording remains an issue due to artifacts from the bass that 'look' to the software like articafts of some other sound.
Jazz relative beginner, starting at a much older age than was helpful. AVL:MXE Linux; Windows 11 BIAB2026 Audiophile, a bunch of other software. Kawai MP6, Ui24R, Focusrite Saffire Pro40 and Scarletts .
The way I'm thinking about using AI is that it might be able to work much more closely to how a human thinks and acts.
+1
https://soundcloud.com/user-646279677 BiaB 2026 Windows For me there’s no better place in the band than to have one leg in the harmony world and the other in the percussive. Thank you Paul Tutmarc and Leo Fender.
How far it could go with other sound sources is another question. If one extracts the voice, translates that to MIDI . . .
Hmmm, now there's some unique thinking. My thought on this from the beginning was to keep everything in audio format, like how SongMaster does it. But if the separated stem were to be pushed into MIDI, now you have a much cleaner, note-by-note representation of the bass . . . added complexity in doing it but a much cleaner output.
Lately I've been thinking about a more hybrid approach. Rather than have an AI do everything from beginning to end, why not have a human in the loop? As I mentioned, SongMaster produced a bass stem with a gaping hole in the middle of the song. What if there was a checkbox: Are there gaps in the music? If "no", then it would know to prevent any gaps from occuring in the stem. If "yes", you'd be prompted to specify where in the timeline the gaps ocurr. This approach could be extended to deal with other areas of ambiguity thereby guiding it to do its job.
I wonder if such human guidance was built into the protein-structure code.
https://soundcloud.com/user-646279677 BiaB 2026 Windows For me there’s no better place in the band than to have one leg in the harmony world and the other in the percussive. Thank you Paul Tutmarc and Leo Fender.
It seems that AI powered Stem Separation will be available directly in the new release of Studio One Pro 7 as released today.
Well Jimmny Cricket and Jumpin' Bullfrogs!!! Look at my original post . . . ask and ye shall recieve
The fact that it has the same 4 stem categories as SongMaster kind of tells me that it uses similar underlying AI code which will result in similar limitations, but hey, it's a start and they can only build on this to hopefully reach my final vision:
Audio -> Bass Stem Separation -> Bass Tab
You must have special-early-bird-backstage-access to their products. Thanks for sharing.
https://soundcloud.com/user-646279677 BiaB 2026 Windows For me there’s no better place in the band than to have one leg in the harmony world and the other in the percussive. Thank you Paul Tutmarc and Leo Fender.
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