help me make this sound: 80s bass

[Recessive Trait]

this is going to come off like a piss-take, but it's for real, i swear.

any thoughts on how to get that punchy 80s bass used by (for example) bananarama in venus?

anyone know the specific synth? more what i'm after though is an idea of how to create those fat punchy 80s basses and to be able to extrapolate from there.

[back2onett]

kind of hard to hear it clearly but it sounds like a ramped LFO/envelope with a little bit of resonance, kind of sounds like there's a white noise osc going through the same filter too,

EDIT sounds like a digital sound so maybe some FM going on

[Recessive Trait]

makes sense. what kind of waveform do you reckon?

[back2onett]

not too sure on the specifics but I'd say 3 sine oscs, osc 2 modulate osc 1 at about 50% then osc 3 modulate osc 2 quite a bit to get that metallic sound, really you need to have a play around with different sine on sine combinations until you find that point where it has that metallic sound without overdoing it. FM sounds awesome for stabs like this and going by the date of that song that's probably when digital synths were big

[narcissus]

definitely sounds like something along the lines of a DX7... many an 80s bassline was created with it

that kind of sound is basic FM synthesis.. not a question of how but WHY

[3za]

yeah that a classic FM/DX7 bass.

FM8 has lots of bass presets very simular to this i.e. bronx, and brop-bass.

to make this sounds yourself all you need is a fm synth. use sine waves, as these are the only waveform the DX7 had.

you need to set your amp envelope of your modulater so it has a fast attack, quick decay, and no sustain. this is to get the bite/pluck sound, set it amplitude fairly high, and ratio of about 4/1. you will also need another modulater with the same amp envelope as the carrier, this is used to introduce some harmonics and will only need a low amplitude and ratio about 2/1.

[In The Shadows]

makes sense. what kind of waveform do you reckon?

I cant be sure what exact wave is in that video but you can also get those sort of sounds from triangles. In reason if you load a subtractor, first patch it starts on is a mock bass guitar patch, turn up the res a little and up the filter env amount slightly and youre 85% there. Theyre sort of going for a slap bass sound there, the reason patch has a little bit of fm, if you slightly turn up the fm the sound becomes more percussive so fiddle to suit. So if you have reason or fm8 then you know where to look. If you dont have either, look for bass guitar style patches on whatever synths you have and fiddle from there. Alternatively if you have an actual bass guitar and a zoom bass pedal theres a setting in there called 'synth' I think it was that is pretty close

[Recessive Trait]

not a question of how but WHY

because of this:

the bite/pluck sound

i'm always looking for punchy basses, as i make pretty techy stuff. was reminded of this tune recently by american dad and dug the bass tone for its deep punchiness.

i used to own a dx7, many many moons ago. wish i still did.

hey here's a b-sound question: a 90s punchy bass. any ideas on how to get this type of sound?

[bananaspy]

Wait a minute, is this the song from that women's hygiene commercial?!

[In The Shadows]

Wait a minute, is this the song from that women's hygiene commercial?!

Theres no shame in that sound though, its not that big a tweek to get to some pretty cold Photek/Kryptic Minds style stabs out of those type of sounds. Its also not a million miles from the much adored donk

[narcissus]

ahh, to each their own of course. i used to be all about housey bass stabs n 303 basses.. these days the filter moves the other direction.. i'm all about the organic bass swells..

if you have ableton.. here's a tip.. operator has a waveform called 8bit sine... just for creating the special nuances of a vintage synth.. also 4bit gets quite nasty

yeah.. fm can create lots of interesting sounds just with sine waves. an interesting one is to keep one oscillator's pitch steady... then modulate heavily with another osc and sweep its pitch up or down slowly by a few octaves... cosmic..

[jaydot]

There's a preset in Ableton called 80s bass, I shit you not (I know because I've used it recently)

[tavravlavish]

not a question of how but WHY

Get the hell out of here, 80s attack basses are awesome.


I guess I should expect a comment like this on dsf...

[tavravlavish]

I forgive u