shlind,
I am doing something similar to you and also seeking to improve my workflow wherever I can.

In my process of learning/interpreting basslines for covers I
1. Listen to the track several times and focus in on the bass to get a feel of what's being played.
2. Then I'll have Studio One display the chords and I'll play along with the track on my bass and experiment with different motifs and complexities. After a few days of this I'll have 2 or 3 candidate/preliminary basslines in my head. Sometimes I'll briefly notate my ideas with pen and paper..
3. In Studio One I'll then create 2 separated stems from the original track; a bass stem (Stem 1) and a stem with everything except the bass (Stem 2).
4. I'll then mute the original track, increase the volume of Stem 1, decrease the volume of Stem 2 and gain a better understanding of what the original bassist is doing in the song. This may result in an additional preliminary bassline or at least some new ideas.
5. I'll then take elements of each of my prelim basslines and combine them into my final interpretation bassline.
6. Next I'll mute the original track and Stem 1 and practice my interpretation against Stem 2. When I feel I'm ready to record, I'll produce my bass overlay interpretation and send to friends for feed back.

My goal is to do this for 100 classic (mainly rock) songs from the 60s/70s and also for 100 contemporary smooth jazz songs. Progress is slow (I record a new song about every month), but I'm growing with each recording I make.

I too have SMP and like it, but the "holy grail" for me would be a program that can decompose and analyze the bassline from any song and produce an accurate bass tab with the option to select 3 options; a beginner tab, a moderately difficult tab and an advanced tab. If I could ask for the moon, 5 tabs in each category would be nice. I've tried messing around with MIDI, Melodyne and importing into GuitarPro but I find too much clean-up is required, resulting in much wasted time. One day someone will configure an AI to do this but by that time I may not even need or want it.

If you'd like to be on my mailing list or just want to share notes at a deeper level, send a PM.
--Steve

https://soundcloud.com/user-646279677
BiaB 2025 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.