Using a Roland GR-55 Guitar Synth with a Bass

I always wanted to experiment with synth sounds on my bass. When the Roland GR-55 came out and the GK-3B divided pickup for 6-string bass. I knew I had to try it out.

This video is actually an effort from very early on in my Roland GR-55 use. However, when I listen to it now I really like it, and it’s proved popular on Youtube with nearly 20,000 views. That’s a lot for an instrumental bass video. All the sounds in the video apart from drums are made using the bass played through the Roland GR-55. I programmed the drums in Protools. You can make drum sounds with the bass and the Roland GR-55, but that doesn’t interest me so I didn’t.

For a long time I’ve wanted to try out playing my bass through a Roland guitar synth. And having looked at the Roland GR-55 I was convinced that the technology was good enough. So, I installed a Roland GK-3B divided MIDI pickup onto my new Warwick “Steve Bailey” Artist Series bass a few weeks ago and bought the GR-55. Here’s a video of what I’ve come up with so far, hopefully there will be plenty more from me using this in the near future. So far I’m extremely impressed with the potential of the GR-55 and I love the Warwick as well.

I hope you like my compositions and I hope you have as much fun watching this as I had making it!