tips for my bassline

[Blast BLaster]

hey guys i need some advice for my basslines what should i automate ,how can i make my wobblez more dense or thicker
BTW U'm usin' reason 4.
thanx in advance

[GRAYSKALE]

chorus/phaser/flanger is always good for basslines - in thor just route LFO to Filter frequency then you can automate the LFO sync speed to change LFO rates - also I find automating the filter frequency on top of that adds a bit of flavour - try experimenting with band pass filters and notch filters I recon rather than the standard low pass filter sound - don't forget to have a healthy amount of sub - probably best to use a seperate track for that - lot people use subtractor for subs (i think, couldn't say cause I don't use reason) - - also alot of the frequency response of your bass (frequencies which are gonna pad out your mix) - is gonna be down to the oscillators you choose - think thor and subtractor have FM which is always a good choice for creating harmonically rich stuff. also check the production bible,some invaluable tips and tricks in there - now go forth and start wobblin'!!

[SesG]

Read up on reasampling, as above phasers/chorus/detuning/flanging will add that subtel movement to your sound

[Blast BLaster]

10 m8's
other sugestions?

[GRAYSKALE]

yeah, stop postin' on here and start workin' on your basslines also scream will add unruly amounts of awesomeness to your basses

[SesG]

yeah, stop postin' on here and start workin' on your basslines also scream will add unruly amounts of awesomeness to your basses

If you kidnap Skream that is....

[GRAYSKALE]

yeah, stop postin' on here and start workin' on your basslines also scream will add unruly amounts of awesomeness to your basses

If you kidnap Skream that is....

[Blast BLaster]

i'm fukken my basslines everyday cuz idunno how to build some barz
i only know sound design
fukk me

[daft cunt]

What I like to do is make the raw bass sound as fat as I can before adding any movement to it :
1 - choose waveforms that complement each other and make the whole patch sound as nasty as you can.
2 - use whatever options your synth has to add some harshness. In Massive, the phase modulation osc can make a drastic difference. You can also use filters without automation to make it even more gritty (for instance with a comb filter).
3 - apply a bit of distortion before and after your filter to bring out the harmonics but do it gently, you don't want to fuck up your sound.
A nice trick a learnt recently is to set your effect to 100% wet, make it sound the way you want then adjust the wet/dry knob. And always A/B your effect to make sure it sounds better with it.
4 - apply more post filter effects. Again in Massive, the dimension expander works great on bass sounds.
Basicly the idea is to use all parameters in your synth to make your patch sound better without yet giving movement to the sound.

If you followed all that carefully, you should have a nice bass already and very few options left to add anything to it to the sound.
At this point :
5 - I always apply some external multiband distortion. No distortion below 150 Hz, then 2 bands separated at whatever frequency works with the sound (1500 Hz is a good one tho).
6 - you also want to EQ the sound to remove any mud or harsh frequencies. Narrow Q, boost, sweep until your reach a frequency that sounds particularly unpleasant, then cut. Repeat as necessary.
7 - time to resample (long note, low octave) and use your sampler.
8 - now you can start giving movement. Phaser, flanger, chorus, vowel filters, automated notch or double notch filter, ... whatever sounds good.
Something to keep in mind when it comes to effects (distortion in particular) : "the best sounds aren't made by turning one dial up to 11, but by turning eleven dials up to 1" (found on the grid).

Some people say they resample many times. Personaly, after resampling a couple of times I do more harm than good to the sound. I guess I still have to learn about the art of resampling.

Anyway, now you should have a big fat moving sound ready for wobble and I'm sure you know how to do that but for the love of dubstep, plz do not use lfo automation. There are so many possibilities to make interesting and original bass sounds, don't restrain yourself to that.
What's important now is to bring out the harmonics after the filter. There are several ways to do this : blatantly using an EQ but I prefer to apply multiband distortion first and boost the high frequencies by increasing the volume level of the uppper band. If you want to sound like everybody else you can use a bitcrusher instead.
If you didn't yet, you want to EQ now to make your bassline fit with the other elements.

Now you have a solid bassline but with only one sound which might be boring after a while. Time to add more tracks, repeat all these steps and alternate your sounds and filter automation to make the bassline more interesting.
Last but not least. You can use a send bus to regroup all your bass tracks and HP the whole lot and make a proper sub bass track and LP it at the same frequency you HPed the others. That'll make the whole thing much more solid.

Hope this helps.

[GRAYSKALE]

What I like to do is make the raw bass sound as fat as I can before adding any movement to it :
1 - choose waveforms that complement each other and make the whole patch sound as nasty as you can.
2 - use whatever options your synth has to add some harshness. In Massive, the phase modulation osc can make a drastic difference. You can also use filters without automation to make it even more gritty (for instance with a comb filter).
3 - apply a bit of distortion before and after your filter to bring out the harmonics but do it gently, you don't want to fuck up your sound.
A nice trick a learnt recently is to set your effect to 100% wet, make it sound the way you want then adjust the wet/dry knob. And always A/B your effect to make sure it sounds better with it.
4 - apply more post filter effects. Again in Massive, the dimension expander works great on bass sounds.
Basicly the idea is to use all parameters in your synth to make your patch sound better without yet giving movement to the sound.

If you followed all that carefully, you should have a nice bass already and very few options left to add anything to it to the sound.
At this point :
5 - I always apply some external multiband distortion. No distortion below 150 Hz, then 2 bands separated at whatever frequency works with the sound (1500 Hz is a good one tho).
6 - you also want to EQ the sound to remove any mud or harsh frequencies. Narrow Q, boost, sweep until your reach a frequency that sounds particularly unpleasant, then cut. Repeat as necessary.
7 - time to resample (long note, low octave) and use your sampler.
8 - now you can start giving movement. Phaser, flanger, chorus, vowel filters, automated notch or double notch filter, ... whatever sounds good.
Something to keep in mind when it comes to effects (distortion in particular) : "the best sounds aren't made by turning one dial up to 11, but by turning eleven dials up to 1" (found on the grid).

Some people say they resample many times. Personaly, after resampling a couple of times I do more harm than good to the sound. I guess I still have to learn about the art of resampling.

Anyway, now you should have a big fat moving sound ready for wobble and I'm sure you know how to do that but for the love of dubstep, plz do not use lfo automation. There are so many possibilities to make interesting and original bass sounds, don't restrain yourself to that.
What's important now is to bring out the harmonics after the filter. There are several ways to do this : blatantly using an EQ but I prefer to apply multiband distortion first and boost the high frequencies by increasing the volume level of the uppper band. If you want to sound like everybody else you can use a bitcrusher instead.
If you didn't yet, you want to EQ now to make your bassline fit with the other elements.

Now you have a solid bassline but with only one sound which might be boring after a while. Time to add more tracks, repeat all these steps and alternate your sounds and filter automation to make the bassline more interesting.
Last but not least. You can use a send bus to regroup all your bass tracks and HP the whole lot and make a proper sub bass track and LP it at the same frequency you HPed the others. That'll make the whole thing much more solid.

Hope this helps.

+1

Great advice daftcunt, though instead of HP and LP at the same point I read somewhere (think macc wrote it) that it' sgood to leave a bit of space between the two - like say hp at 200hz (ish) and lp at like 100hz (ish) then you don't have all the muddyness that 100-200hz tends to bring to a track and you leave some space for the kick to breath =D
At the end of the day though, it's all about what works best for your sound!!

[Blast BLaster]

thanks a lot daft tnuc

[airlabam]

What I like to do is make the raw bass sound as fat as I can before adding any movement to it :
1 - choose waveforms that complement each other and make the whole patch sound as nasty as you can.
2 - use whatever options your synth has to add some harshness. In Massive, the phase modulation osc can make a drastic difference. You can also use filters without automation to make it even more gritty (for instance with a comb filter).
3 - apply a bit of distortion before and after your filter to bring out the harmonics but do it gently, you don't want to fuck up your sound.
A nice trick a learnt recently is to set your effect to 100% wet, make it sound the way you want then adjust the wet/dry knob. And always A/B your effect to make sure it sounds better with it.
4 - apply more post filter effects. Again in Massive, the dimension expander works great on bass sounds.
Basicly the idea is to use all parameters in your synth to make your patch sound better without yet giving movement to the sound.

If you followed all that carefully, you should have a nice bass already and very few options left to add anything to it to the sound.
At this point :
5 - I always apply some external multiband distortion. No distortion below 150 Hz, then 2 bands separated at whatever frequency works with the sound (1500 Hz is a good one tho).
6 - you also want to EQ the sound to remove any mud or harsh frequencies. Narrow Q, boost, sweep until your reach a frequency that sounds particularly unpleasant, then cut. Repeat as necessary.
7 - time to resample (long note, low octave) and use your sampler.
8 - now you can start giving movement. Phaser, flanger, chorus, vowel filters, automated notch or double notch filter, ... whatever sounds good.
Something to keep in mind when it comes to effects (distortion in particular) : "the best sounds aren't made by turning one dial up to 11, but by turning eleven dials up to 1" (found on the grid).

Some people say they resample many times. Personaly, after resampling a couple of times I do more harm than good to the sound. I guess I still have to learn about the art of resampling.

Anyway, now you should have a big fat moving sound ready for wobble and I'm sure you know how to do that but for the love of dubstep, plz do not use lfo automation. There are so many possibilities to make interesting and original bass sounds, don't restrain yourself to that.
What's important now is to bring out the harmonics after the filter. There are several ways to do this : blatantly using an EQ but I prefer to apply multiband distortion first and boost the high frequencies by increasing the volume level of the uppper band. If you want to sound like everybody else you can use a bitcrusher instead.
If you didn't yet, you want to EQ now to make your bassline fit with the other elements.

Now you have a solid bassline but with only one sound which might be boring after a while. Time to add more tracks, repeat all these steps and alternate your sounds and filter automation to make the bassline more interesting.
Last but not least. You can use a send bus to regroup all your bass tracks and HP the whole lot and make a proper sub bass track and LP it at the same frequency you HPed the others. That'll make the whole thing much more solid.

Hope this helps.

+1

Great advice daftcunt, though instead of HP and LP at the same point I read somewhere (think macc wrote it) that it' sgood to leave a bit of space between the two - like say hp at 200hz (ish) and lp at like 100hz (ish) then you don't have all the muddyness that 100-200hz tends to bring to a track and you leave some space for the kick to breath =D
At the end of the day though, it's all about what works best for your sound!!

Agreed, EXCELLENT tips, daftcunt. Sometimes, I like doing the bass design process in parallel with my sub so that psychologically, I'm more aware of the space the sub will take up and the way it will have to combine with my bassline. I've made some decent basslines before by themselves, then scrapped them because they didn't fit with my sub. However, this might just be due to the way I work more than anything else but perhaps it holds for others!

[SesG]

What I like to do is make the raw bass sound as fat as I can before adding any movement to it :
1 - choose waveforms that complement each other and make the whole patch sound as nasty as you can.
2 - use whatever options your synth has to add some harshness. In Massive, the phase modulation osc can make a drastic difference. You can also use filters without automation to make it even more gritty (for instance with a comb filter).
3 - apply a bit of distortion before and after your filter to bring out the harmonics but do it gently, you don't want to fuck up your sound.
A nice trick a learnt recently is to set your effect to 100% wet, make it sound the way you want then adjust the wet/dry knob. And always A/B your effect to make sure it sounds better with it.
4 - apply more post filter effects. Again in Massive, the dimension expander works great on bass sounds.
Basicly the idea is to use all parameters in your synth to make your patch sound better without yet giving movement to the sound.

If you followed all that carefully, you should have a nice bass already and very few options left to add anything to it to the sound.
At this point :
5 - I always apply some external multiband distortion. No distortion below 150 Hz, then 2 bands separated at whatever frequency works with the sound (1500 Hz is a good one tho).
6 - you also want to EQ the sound to remove any mud or harsh frequencies. Narrow Q, boost, sweep until your reach a frequency that sounds particularly unpleasant, then cut. Repeat as necessary.
7 - time to resample (long note, low octave) and use your sampler.
8 - now you can start giving movement. Phaser, flanger, chorus, vowel filters, automated notch or double notch filter, ... whatever sounds good.
Something to keep in mind when it comes to effects (distortion in particular) : "the best sounds aren't made by turning one dial up to 11, but by turning eleven dials up to 1" (found on the grid).

Some people say they resample many times. Personaly, after resampling a couple of times I do more harm than good to the sound. I guess I still have to learn about the art of resampling.

Anyway, now you should have a big fat moving sound ready for wobble and I'm sure you know how to do that but for the love of dubstep, plz do not use lfo automation. There are so many possibilities to make interesting and original bass sounds, don't restrain yourself to that.
What's important now is to bring out the harmonics after the filter. There are several ways to do this : blatantly using an EQ but I prefer to apply multiband distortion first and boost the high frequencies by increasing the volume level of the uppper band. If you want to sound like everybody else you can use a bitcrusher instead.
If you didn't yet, you want to EQ now to make your bassline fit with the other elements.

Now you have a solid bassline but with only one sound which might be boring after a while. Time to add more tracks, repeat all these steps and alternate your sounds and filter automation to make the bassline more interesting.
Last but not least. You can use a send bus to regroup all your bass tracks and HP the whole lot and make a proper sub bass track and LP it at the same frequency you HPed the others. That'll make the whole thing much more solid.

Hope this helps.

That should go in the production bible

[faust.dtc]

Should a bassline always be mono and if so does theis only apply only to the sub or any mid range bass too???

[SesG]

Should a bassline always be mono and if so does theis only apply only to the sub or any mid range bass too???

My understanding was:

Sub - mono, ear cant distinguish, can wreck vinyl if your cutting if in stereo

Mids - equally panned (i.e. no destructive when they maybe get squished by a clubs sound system)

High end - pretty free to do what you want

[GRAYSKALE]

Should a bassline always be mono and if so does theis only apply only to the sub or any mid range bass too???

My understanding was:

Sub - mono, ear cant distinguish, can wreck vinyl if your cutting if in stereo

Mids - equally panned (i.e. no destructive when they maybe get squished by a clubs sound system)

High end - pretty free to do what you want

might experiment with this actually - I've always found my basslines - whilst sounding pretty tight - tend to take up less of the mix than I'd like - defo gonna experiment wit this technique - cheers on the advice bro - also can't believe how far this thread has come without being flamed

[Recessive Trait]

can't believe how far this thread has come without being flamed

seriously. and here i was salivating about the steaming carcass of a thread that must be inside. sigh.