Is This a Real Bass?

[loungesurfer]

I'd like your opinion on whether this is a real bass, keyboard bass/synth. If a real bass any ideas on how to get the sound or is it all technique?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPUiaJ3jUCE

I love this track and I know it's done by a trained pianist and cello player - now turned DJ. I suspect it's a synth but unsure and would like to learn to play it myself.

Thanks for listening and your feedback - loungesurfer.

[bongomania]

I'm almost positive it's a keyboard. The main thing is the pitch bends, which sound much more like what you get from a pitch-bend wheel on a synth, than like bending on a fretless bass. Even the best bassist will have some tonal changes when they bend like that, but the tone of this recorded bass is constant, unchanging. And even if somebody posited that this was such an amazingly skilled bassist that he could get that sound with no tone changes--there is so much "pitchiness", failure to land on the note at the "held" moments of those bends, that it couldn't be such an amazing pro bassist.

Anyway though, to get that sound, you need a fretless bass--one that sustains especially well. Then just roll off some treble, and you should be there.

[Ubersheist]

Beyond what bongomania said, I think the bass was produced with a computer program like Fruity Loops (FL), Reason, or some other music sequencing program. I can almost visualize how the programing in FL might be...

[loungesurfer]

Thanks for the reply - clear and to the point!