I was asked to put down a bass line for a friend's song so I recorded, in audio, a bass track which I sent back to him for mixing into his song.

Simply not enough information to give you an answer.

Recorded it “in audio” unfortunately tells us nothing. Narrow it down a bit.
To a USB stick?
To Cubase?
To a handheld recorder?
Direct from the analog outputs?
Microphone in front of speakers?

What format did you deliver 24-bit/44.1kHz?
How did you deal with tempo, and clock?
There could be several reasons they turned you down — we couldn’t possibly know
Did you compress it?

straight clear tone

Wow… given the number of sounds that fit that description is too, too broad. As you know there is no one Bass sound that defines a ‘straight clear tone’ — that covers everything from Jaco to James Jameson to Ron Carter to Will Lee…

Remember this in the future — it’s a retake of a famous Miles Davis quote… Miles said about jazz critics, they criticize because they are paid to criticize…

Engineers are paid to engineer… if you're asked to deliver a stem (a recording from start to finish) leave all processing to them… Engineers are paid to engineer. So even if they wind up doing exactly what you did to the sound, they want to do it. Human nature.

Don’t lose sleep over it… get paid for submitting… then let it go! (If it’s a friend then just let it go).

This is all just friendly advice.

What velocities did you use? Because if you normalized the velocities to a single value - then that alone will cause the sound to "appear" compressed due to lack of dynamic range.

Sound is subjective so I'm going to ignore that a bit. It's easy to take a MIDI recording and cycle through sounds - so you can do that if you want. Give 3 different basses to choose from. That'd never really happen with a "real" bass.

OK :

Recorded into Cubase via USB, used audio mixdown which says 44.1kHz/32 bit float.

Songwriter had sent me guitar/voice audio as an mp3 file, which he had recorded to a defined bpm.

I inserted his track into cubase then created a 2nd audio track for my bass, recorded, then mixed down only the bass track.

I didn't add any compression or other effects - just the original performance (which I guess might have some compression?)

Hope this gives you enough information. I am only interested because in the future he may ask me for more bass lines and I'm wondering what the difference is between the MODX sound and a real bass in terms of studio recording? From demos, Youtube, etc.
Seinfield and many other songs even bass players have not been able at times to tell the difference?

While the 32-bit floating point is awesome sound… was the engineer using Cubase as well? - not all DAWs can handle that. You should check to see if they could even play it back properly.

This is complicated but Cubase has 32-bit floating as the standard because it gives so much headroom. (They introduced 64-bit floating, a few years ago, yikes).

Recognizing many musicians are not engineers… musicians take going into the red as a suggestion - rather than the actual problem it is… Recording at 32-bit float allows you SO MUCH headroom, you can actually fix clips after the fact, before rendering the final mix (which is usually 16-bit or 24-bit)

If you clip a 16-bit or 24-bit recording… it is basically trashed. The clipped top is flat as a board.
If you clip while recording 32-bit floating point… you get a second chance to lower the gain and recover quality sound before committing to the final mix.

In other words, if you CLIP recording at 24-bit, no amount of lowering the level later will fix the CLIP. It’s toast.

However, why you want record in 32-bit float is that, that same clipped audio can be reduced in level before mixdown and you will be able to use that audio… when I say it has more headroom — it’s humongous!

It’s technical but here’s a good article: Link — 32-bit Float Files Explained

Video explanation (easy): https://youtu.be/B_Sq0k-3TCE

You may want to check with Steinberg on what happens when 32-bit float is played back on a system fixed at 24-bit or 16-bit… And what happens if you play it back without reducing the gain, not sure it would sound “compressed” necessarily but…

I didn't add any compression or other effects - just the original performance (which I guess might have some compression?)

No Compressor on “ActiveP”… active pickups changes how this bass plays. It is not the most dynamic (soft-to-loud). Perhaps that is what they are referring to - not the presence of an actual Compressor.

Hope this gives you enough information. I am only interested because in the future he may ask me for more bass lines and I'm wondering what the difference is between the MODX sound and a real bass in terms of studio recording? From demos, Youtube, etc.
Seinfield and many other songs even bass players have not been able at times to tell the difference?

It is virtually impossible to always tell the difference between a so-called “real” Bass and a sampled bass on the sound alone. After all, when you playback a recording of a bass it is “sampled” — meaning a Sample is a Recording… and a recording is not a “real” bass - as confusing as that sounds.

Where/when you can always tell is when the dialect is different. Keyboard players who are sensitive to the bass vocabulary will imitate/mimic *how* bass players play. So the difference is in how well you pick up their accent. It’s the subtleties- the more you get correct the more it’s accepted as the real thing.

Keyboard players have certain giveaways… the ‘ghost notes’, the dynamics, bass players don’t hit every note perfectly. Open strings can give you away.

I learned so much from listening closely to Anthony Jackson on records… I was doing a soundalike MIDI File of Steely Dan’s “Glamour Profession”. That was like going to school. Attitude, note placement, feel…

One of the baddest bass players I was privileged to play with (taught me something about Bass every time he picked up the instrument) Bernard Edwards— I’ve said this before, but when he was showing the band a new song he’d naturally do so playing the bass. The way he could play and leave the spaces between notes to setup their own rhythm. It was so precisely orchestrated…so naturally Bass. You could “hear” where you belonged.

As a keyboard player the more bass-isms you are able to emulate the better it will sound. It is not the Sample that gives it all away — it’s the keyboard player’s ability to understand bass playing.

Simple: if you play six note chords with the flute sound your not going to fool anyone! Heck as a keyboard player we pay way too little attention to other instruments. Try transcribing a favorite bass line getting all the nuances… double stops, mutes, etc. it’s a great way to pick up and expand your bass vocabulary.

Check the work those Yamaha programmers did on some of the MegaBass Arps… it’s the details that make it happen.

Thanks BM!

It's obviously something that could be discussed for as long as you like/have time for. I have (tried) to play bass LH / keys RH in a covers band but the leader ended up wanting a dedicated bass player - it's hard to get all those nuances and style while playing a keys part as well (and maybe also doing vocals) as well as balancing levels as the MODX doesn't have the second assignable output.
Personally I like doing bass/keys as when I am learning a new tune I find tracking/transcribing the bass helps me pick up the song quicker and I like to explore the bass end possibilities of the MODX.

Thanks for the references - I'll look them up...

I didn't learn much about the range of velocity you used to generate the bass sound. Lack of velocity variation will sound lifeless and one could call it "compressed" although there is no compression at all. It will just lack dynamic range because that's what was recorded. A bass line with no dynamic variance at all by design.

Thanks BM!

It's obviously something that could be discussed for as long as you like/have time for. I have (tried) to play bass LH / keys RH in a covers band but the leader ended up wanting a dedicated bass player - it's hard to get all those nuances and style while playing a keys part as well (and maybe also doing vocals) as well as balancing levels as the MODX doesn't have the second assignable output.
Personally I like doing bass/keys as when I am learning a new tune I find tracking/transcribing the bass helps me pick up the song quicker and I like to explore the bass end possibilities of the MODX.

Thanks for the references - I'll look them up...

Left hand alone doing bass will limit what you are able to accomplish, because you have really only Velocity to expand your articulation vocabulary. Example would be slap bass, you can assign the slap to a velocity above a set point. If you are also tasked with right hand duties, as well, plus singing… it become quite a feat to pull it off.

The additional Assignable Outputs on the MONTAGE would, indeed, be useful. By assigning your Bass Part(s) to their own analog output allows you to feed them to a separate amplification system. This naturally makes a huge difference. Expensive but a huge difference