Bassliner Beta by Dreamwave

August 29, 2024

Bassliner is a new MIDI-generating plugin from Dreamwave, with some coding support from us at Cableguys. The plugin is currently in a free open beta stage.

As musicians, we all have our patterns, our approach to writing music – and while we all enjoy that, it's often good to have a companion, someone who brings in new perspectives.

Bassliner by Dreamwave brings you that: it's a brand-new plugin that writes you unique MIDI basslines for electronic music.

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Alex — aka Dreamwave — did an internship with us at Cableguys some time ago. Before that, he had already spent years of work on algorithms that create basslines, starting in 2016 – long before AI was a widespread topic. Alex did not train an AI model with thousands of songs, but instead uses algorithms based on his scientific research, with a focus on modern dance music production.

“Bassliner is optimised to deliver patterns for modern dance music production. It's designed to help people of all skill levels create music, without relying on premade samples and MIDI packs, or AI-trained models with unclear copyright status. Whether you need to sketch out ideas fast, tackle writer’s block, or get access to exciting basslines out of the box, this plugin is tailored to cover your needs and elevate your workflow.” — Alex / Dreamwave

“I can tell straight away this is going to be used. First couple of patterns it generated were great. I was doing studio sessions, we made a track with it straight away” — Alex Metric (Grammy Winner, Dua Lipa, Silk City)


Supported by Cableguys

When Alex first showed us his algorithms, they were embedded in scripts that you had to run from the command line, outputting MIDI files. We at Cableguys supplied a basic plugin UI for the Beta and have set up the plugin to communicate with his server that runs his algorithms.

When we played with it, every few clicks we got something that inspired us for a new song. And we hope you’ll like it just as much as we do! So while Bassliner is a Dreamwave and not a Cableguys product, we're more than happy to support Alex, because it’s such an interesting project.


How Bassliner works

Simply register your email address in the form below and download the fully working beta version.

The easiest way to use Bassliner is to press one of the generation buttons, and drag-and-drop the bassline into your instrument channel.

For faster workflow, connect Bassliner to a virtual instrument via MIDI in order to hear its output. To do this, put Bassliner on a track in your DAW, and your virtual instrument on another track. Set the instrument track’s MIDI Input to receive from the Bassliner plugin. How this is done varies a little from DAW to DAW, so consult your DAW’s manual on MIDI routing if you are not sure. Now hit play in your DAW and Bassliner automatically plays along, outputting MIDI to your instrument.

Don't forget to have a kick loop playing while you test basslines, as this will notably affect how you perceive the basslines themselves.


Apple Logic

If you're using Logic, you'll find Bassliner in "MIDI FX" section in Logic's plugin menu, under "Dreamwave". Please load Bassliner in the MIDI FX slot on your software instrument track. In the channel strip on the left side, find the section labeled MIDI FX above the instrument slot.


Generating patterns

If you generate patterns by clicking "Just for you", they're exactly that: Uniquely created just for you. We won't share this pattern with anyone else.

If you click the "From the pool" button, you get a pattern that other users will receive too. The benefit here is that the more a pattern is liked, the more we will share it – so while the pattern won't be unique, there's a higher chance you get a pattern that many people will like.

And it’s great if you sometimes use the "Like" and "Dislike" buttons at the bottom of the UI — this will help Alex improve the algorithms.

…And Bassliner is also often great at creating riffs for non-bass instruments – just saying, we hope you agree!

We hope you enjoy the beta — if you have any feedback for us, please let us know!


Terms & Conditions

By entering your email address, you understand and agree to these terms:

  • Bassliner Beta will be registered to your email address, and a Cableguys user account will be created. You can access your license key, beta download and latest updates in your user account.
  • Bassliner Beta is currently free to use, but we may end this free period at some point, and we might put a (high) upper limit on the number of basslines that you can create. We won't end the beta before November, though, certainly.
  • Bassliner is in an early beta stage and the UI is just done in a way that is “good enough”.
  • Cableguys and Dreamwave/Alex track when you generate patterns and when you like/dislike a pattern, drag it to your DAW and how often you loop a pattern before you create a new one. This helps Alex improve the algorithms.
  • We want to assure you that this software is not designed to provide pre-made or otherwise copyrighted basslines. But even though the algorithms are not dependent or trained on specific pre-existing music, due to the nature of music generation, the output could unintentionally match copyrighted material. For that reason, you need to ensure they do not infringe any copyrights before using them in published works.
  • If a pattern does not infringe any copyright, then we give you the permission / license to use it in your songs, but we don't allow you to use them for MIDI or audio libraries, or for the development of or use inside competing products.
  • We'll sign you up to a Bassliner newsletter and to the Cableguys newsletter, and you can unsubscribe at any time.
  • The plugin requires an Internet connection to generate basslines.


Already registered?

Please log in to your account if you have already registered Bassliner.