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My focus for this was only the bass separation and to be able to hear the notes played in the bass line clearly, I did not not check any of the other stems. I mainly wanted to show the gaps in the bass stem from SMP for som older recordings.
I got a response from SMP they are aware of the issue and are working for an improvement in a future release (appear for some older mono recordings and in stereo recordings where the bass or drums are panned more severely to one side)
I also use EZBass for creating bass lines, but I have not yet tried it with midi from SMP, I will try that.
What I am trying do now, is to learn to play bass, I like to be able to hear the original bass line played for a song in the mix as well as in isolation and then practice against the mix with the bass line muted.
BIAB 2026, Studio One 7 Pro, 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.
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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-646279677BiaB 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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Not 100% sure, but I think SMP BIAB uses a custom version of DEMUCS for stem separation, whereas BIAB uses Zplane's Stems Pro, which I suspect it's a fork from the original, open source project, Spleeter.
Nowadays, there are only a very small handful of stem separation algorithm, and every program on the market offering that feature use one of them (sometimes, a customized version).
The point is that currently, no stem separation model is perfect, all of them depend on the dataset they have been trained with, so, for certain songs one algorithm may work better than other, and viceversa. If you find a song where your preferred program fails to separate the track you need, just try another model, you may be luckier (or not). It's just the way it currently works.
Latest BIAB version, latest build.
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What I am trying do now, is to learn to play bass, I like to be able to hear the original bass line played for a song and then practice against it. I honestly don't think this is helping your learning process, training your ears to hear and identify bass notes and articulations in the context of a mix is an essential aspect of being a proficient bass player. In this sense, stem separation tools are, in my opinion, way more useful for bass students for their ability to remove the original bass line (allowing you to play with the rest of the band) rather than for allowing the isolation of bass tracks.
Latest BIAB version, latest build.
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I fully agree, that is what I am doing. I expressed myself a bit unclear.
I mute the bass track and play along with the whole mix excluding (muting) the bass.
I can hear and identify the bass notes and articulations in the context of the whole mix very well, but I also find it a bit easier to also listen to the bass stem in isolation to get familiar and analyze the patterns or rhythm patterns that are used over the chord changes for the song in its original.
I may then try to learn to play it as the original but mostly I start of with a very simple version and build it up from there.
BIAB 2026, Studio One 7 Pro, 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.
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Absolutely. I wish these amazing tools had existed 35 years ago 
Latest BIAB version, latest build.
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Absolutely. I wish these amazing tools had existed 35 years ago Same here. I can't tell you how many vinyl albums I ruined trying to copy the guitar parts. Play a section, pick up the needle, play guitar, then put the needle back down on the record, many times scratching the record so after take after take the record was no longer playable! Darn you Chuck Berry!
I'm in a fitness protection program. I'm been hiding from exercise.
64 bit Win 10 Pro, the latest BiaB/RB, Roland Octa-Capture audio interface, a ton of software/hardware
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No doubt about it. Today's modern computer-based tools make it much easier to learn music. But I have to believe that folks that learned music "the old way" benefited more neurologically because of the mental strain and struggles involved made those synaptic connections good and strong. Nonetheless, I do like my modern music tools in the same way that I like the conveience of a grocery store compared to the chore of harvesting my food every day
https://soundcloud.com/user-646279677BiaB 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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Joined: Aug 2025
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I just downloaded SMP today. I’m a bassist, and for the funk band I play with I often have to learn lots of songs in a short time. I generally transcribe “by hand”, using amazing Slowdowner and notate in MuseScore. I’m hoping I can save loads of time by quickly generating a reasonably accurate bass part in traditional notation.
What’s the best way to do that? Everything I see is geared toward generating chord charts. I can split out a bass “stem” and then from that I guess I can see a piano roll representation of the part. How do I get that into MuseScore so I can clean it up and put it into my band book.
Thanks!
Apple iMac 27”, Logic/Amazing Slowdowner/MuseScore/Forscore/SongMaster Pro
Focal Solo6 Be powered monitors
RME Babyface Pro fs
Basses, amps, cabinets, and pedals galore.
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If you only want the bass: After you have split the stems, Go to Pitches, Select Bass Midi, then Go to Midi parameters-Options and select Bass Midi. Then use the Drag MIDI to take the bass track to a file or just drop it into Muscore. As this post indicated (if not here I read it somewhere), there remains some "issues" with Bass in SMP which the developer is working on. You can use the Pitch view along with the midi parameters and you will notice there is often missing bass notes in the midi. But with a bit of effort the midi file can be fixed. In my current project the bass groove midi is captured well in sections of the song. ![[Linked Image - Only viewable when logged in]](https://www.pgmusic.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=download&Number=31291&filename=Screenshot 2025-08-27 075307.jpg)
BIAB – 2026, Reaper (current), i7-12700F Processor, 32GB DDR4-3200MHz RAM, Motu Audio Express 6x6 - My SoundCloud.
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What Dan said. There are other sounds sometimes in the bass range that can confuse software: bass drum, guitar, synth.
I find Song Master Pro invaluable in my work, and I think it is either first or second in performance to extract the bass line. On some recordings, Studio One Pro (a DAW) does better at that specifically, but it's not predictable which will be better so it's wise to try a few programs to be sure on any given recording.
Studio One Pro, as I've said here before, is also a joy to work with. Every time I want to do something, it works the way you would expect - it's that intuitive.
BIAB 2025 Win Audiophile. Software: Studio One 7 Pro, Swam horns, Acoustica-7, Notion 6, Song Master Pro, Win 11 Home. Hardware: Intel i9, 32 Gb; Presonus 192 & Faderport 8, Royer 121, Slate VSX, Adam Sub8 & Neumann 120 monitors.
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Dan and Matt thank you! I don’t mind inaccuracies, if I can get 80% plus the form of the song, that will be amazing!
Apple iMac 27”, Logic/Amazing Slowdowner/MuseScore/Forscore/SongMaster Pro
Focal Solo6 Be powered monitors
RME Babyface Pro fs
Basses, amps, cabinets, and pedals galore.
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Also if working in MuseScore4 - it can load midi but does not have any midi quantification controls. But MuseScore3 has midi quantification controls.
So if that is needed, it might be useful to have both versions installed (to do the quantification in MuseSCore3 then move over to 4).
Edit:
(It might also be useful to check out some other scoring software with some additional features e.g. the free Steinberg Darico 6, it can load midi and in addition to the ordinary editing functions for the score it also has a midi editor with midi view where one can edit the notes directly in the midi and it will be reflected directly in the score notation. Also GuitarPro8 can load midi and has midi quantification controls, but it also has another feature one can drop an audio file (eg bass stem) and gets an audio wave window were one can add sync points to the notes in the audio, and then manually add the corresponding notation in the score to match the sync points.)
BIAB 2026, Studio One 7 Pro, 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.
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Dan and Matt thank you! I don’t mind inaccuracies, if I can get 80% plus the form of the song, that will be amazing! I would like to clarify, my comments were about the quality of the audio / what you hear as the extracted stem. I haven’t had any trouble getting accurate MIDI, but I leave open the possibility that it might be a problem if any particular song had the bass buried by other instruments or mixed very low.
BIAB 2025 Win Audiophile. Software: Studio One 7 Pro, Swam horns, Acoustica-7, Notion 6, Song Master Pro, Win 11 Home. Hardware: Intel i9, 32 Gb; Presonus 192 & Faderport 8, Royer 121, Slate VSX, Adam Sub8 & Neumann 120 monitors.
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Yes, the last versions do a great job in extracting bass lines and exporting them in midi format.
If you want a full transcription of any song, Tthis is what I recommend:
1. Identify parts and chords for the whole song using SMP tools. With experience, that shouldnt take more than 10 minutes on a typical pop / rock song.
2. Export the song to music xml format. Open the musicxml file with Musescore. You will have a nice chordsheet with all parts clearly identifieed.
3. In SMP play with the midi parameters, until you get good results, then export the bass line to a midi file.
4. Open the midi file with Reaper (or any other Daw) and quantize it. Save it with another name.
5. Open that midi file with musescore, select all notes, copy them.
6. Paste into your first project in musescore. Correct mistakes. That's all.
This way you should have a complete transcription with notes, chords, parts and even lyrics in a fraction of the time you need to do the same in a traditional way.
Latest BIAB version, latest build.
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