frustrated making bass

[VirtualMark]

hey, i've read the midrange bass threads, been through all the links. so far i'm using massive, albino and z3ta for my sounds, and trying to split the bass up into low mid high. well actually its more low/mid, mid and high as i high pass the bass and put a sine wave sub underneath. been reading a lot about resampling, but all i seem to do is make noise. i've literally been trying to come up with something for weeks now but finding it a bit frustrating.

is there something i'm missing? i've watched dozens of tutorials, and am quite familiar with how to make wobble. a lot of the threads say to split the bass then filter them differently. all this seems to do is to make different parts louder and quieter, say if i high pass the mid band it just comes in and out of the bassline. i've also tried adding different effects to each band, but it seems to be quite hard to get a good sound. i usually use a combination of saw and square waves and have experimented with fm synthesis on albino and z3ta, and tried the different waveforms on massive.

the other thing is that a lto of the threads say to resample. i take it this means to record the sound from the synth into a sampler? what i don't understand is how this is different from just adding more effects channels. i'm not running out of cpu so don't see the need to resample, unless theres something i'm missing? i'm aware that its possible to process audio in different ways(pitch up/down, reverse etc).

any advice would be appreciated!

[legend4ry]

Resampling is Basically, making a sample and changing it, then resample it (add more changes, if needed) till you get something usable.


And its something whats technical knowledge 20% of the time and pure luck 80% of the time.

The only real advice is to keep doing it till you get the results you want, you also don't need all those synths - most resampled bass sounds come from a simple reese bass.

[LordBid]

Well assuming you pirated those programs, I suggest you actually learn about synthesis. Just because you have the latest and greatest synth doesn't mean its gonna burp out magic uberwobbles. Go watch some tutorials on youtube and read some books might I recommend the dance music manual. You won;t be able to make the sounds you want until you learn how a synth works and what needs to be manipulated to make your noise. It takes a while and there are no instant results It took me like 3 months of trial and error before I could make a sound that I envisioned in my mind and I still have trouble a year later.

also frankly splitting the channels I don;t really find to be that beneficial. Any drastic changes will make it sound weird but meh to each his own.

[steeze]

Not sure if you're doing this already, but one thing I find really helps is rather than just having one or two effects on your basic synth sound and having these affecting the sound quite a lot, add a number of different effects (distortion, dimension expander, bitcrusher etc.) and have each just affecting the sound a little bit. Also the voicing tab in massive is great for getting your bass sounding a lot thicker and putting lfos on things other than filter cutoff such as wavetable position can also give good results. Just keep practicing you'll get it eventually, trust

[lightshapers]

i usally find laying down a knarly mid range sound thats fairly thick is a good place to start, get a riff down. then mirror it with a simple deep sine playing the same pattern for the sub. beef up the sine with some compression/eq/saturation.

then go back to your knarly lead sound, cut a little low end out with eq to give the sub some room and just experiment. theres loads of sick presets for you to play with on all those synths just experiment/tweak them. youll learn as much form that as you will any tutorial imo, and youll learn a lot about synthesis too for deconstructing those sounds

once your happy bounce as audio and then keep fucking with it. also not everytinhg you do has to be turned into a tune as well, you can learn a lot from just fucking stuff up,moving on and taking that technique with you, if that makes sense


worse case just keep clicking the randomize tab in massive until it makes something crazy

[paravrais]

Learn how to make sick basslines using just one channel for PURE SINE SUB and one channel for the high passed midrange section and once you've nailed that, THEN move on to splitting the frequencies more and resampling etc. Right now your trying to swim the channel when your still in arm bands...

[shaneynclan]

hello op
i'd just grab one synth that has at least 3 osc's a mod matrix, and a decent amount of waveforms and filters and learn EVERY single quirk and knob of the thing until you can sculpt your sound perfectly.
And when i say that i mean it. Learn what every single knob does to the sound and each frequency.
Yes, it takes months of dedication and using it every day, but this shit doesn't happen overnight ya know?
Be careful to not overdose your bass with FM and crazy waveforms, and too much distortion, as at that point, yes it will sound like noise, it's a light combination of all three in sequence that makes it interesting.
here's a basic formula:
(osc one (-24)or(-12) crazy waveform) + light FM + (osc two (anywhere from -24 to +36 depending on bass style) square, sine wave, triangle or saw depending on flavor.
sync osc two to osc one if needed.
osc 3 (pretty much can go anywhere from -12 to +12 or even higher or lower) use any kind of waveform to keep it interesting and add harmonics, >50% mix
ring mod +-45 depending on sound
i've been really into heavy waveshaping lately, and i think it sounds tight so add some if you feel the sound is lacking harmonics +-50%
a vocal filter sounds nice if you want it to yoy a bit.
bitcrush IF absolutely required, that shit is rinsed nowadays, so I wouldn't do it.
remember that really dirty basses sound the cleanest at first.

That's pretty much all I do, with a few things routed to the LFO's, hope this helps.

[amphibian]

Resampling is Basically, making a sample and changing it, then resample it (add more changes, if needed) till you get something usable.


And its something whats technical knowledge 20% of the time and pure luck 80% of the time.

The only real advice is to keep doing it till you get the results you want, you also don't need all those synths - most resampled bass sounds come from a simple reese bass.

I can't agree with Leged4ry's point about it being luck 80% of the time. This simply comes down to a lack of knowledge of what you're doing.

To the OP: I would tell you that to start off with - start really, really small. Like, 10% wet on all effects so you're only adding a little at a time. Noise ends up happening when you're trying to do too much and you're just dirtying up the signal. Get the bass as close as you can WITHOUT resampling. Then resample, and do it again, 10% wet. This is especially important for distortion.

Also remember that it's quite possible to get great bass sounds without any resampling at all.

[Wrigzilla]

The trick I've found is to create a huge sounding a patch as you can just in the synth you're using (at this point I've found I prefer not to do the whole LP -> lfo/env thing yet). Then you split it into bands and distort the bands to taste (keep it subtle). Now to add some spice to things add effects that will add some movement to the sound (chorus, ringmod, flanger, that sort of thing) again KEEP IT SUBTLE. Once I'm fairly happy with the sound I'll group the multiband channels to one group and do a bit of notch/peak filtering then bounce the resultant sound.

If you're happy with the sound, load it up into a sampler of choice, if you aren't try multibanding the file again (if it's not fat/moving enough) or start the whole process again.

Once you're happy with the sound and you've loaded it into the sampler NOW is the time to do some lowpassing and sweep through this fat/moving bass sound you've got.

You're right, it is hard to get right, but that comes with practice. I mean I've been trying to get that neurofunk mids sound down for the last year and I'm finally getting there. What you've got to do is really be prepared to listen to the detail in audio and if you've made the sound better or worse by processing, so be prepared to a/b A LOT. Really learn your synths, what your effects do to signals and you'll get there.

[corpu5]

you'll find that a lot of the craziest riffs are made from bouncing down a few basslines with differing lfo's then chopped up and mixed around (pitched up or down) to suit the melody, and yea most of the time it is luck, it's always hard trying to create the sounds you can hear in your head but it's always worth experimenting!

[daft cunt]

Pretty solid advices here. Should get you going with hope

I don't agree with Legend4ry about not using several synths tho. They all have a distinct sound so you will want to use one rather than another depending on the sound you're after so it's good to have the choice. Plus I always found that using different synths widens the understanding of each other. 3 is a good set of synths imo, particularly these 3.

Like said above, it's better to focus on the synthesis part at first before getting into resampling. Resampling will not compensate for a weak bass sound and may lead to more frustration.

In Massive, you said you tried the various wavetables, did you try using the bend modes at various intensity & wt-positions ? Write down the wavetables that have potential for bass sounds so you don't waste time looking for them each and every time.
* The 1st step is then to find the right set of oscs. Having 3 good sounding oscs won't be of much help if they share too much the same frequency content. They have to complement each other. For instance, one will provide the bass part, another will be more midrange and the last one perhaps an octave higher or at least will have higher frequency content than the others.
* Then what I like to do for bass is tick the restart via gate in the osc panel and try different phase positions. Adjust until it sounds better with than without (A/B is your friend).
If done well you should already have a promising sound.
* Now you can add some grit with the mod osc. Start with the phase modulation, try each osc, decide which one fits better, then adjust the amount of modulation.
* You can also add some feedback. Used carefully (10 o'clock) it pumps the low-end nicely.
* Time for some filter action. Perhaps stick with just one filter until your confident with what you're doing -> route all oscs to filter 1.
For the usual dubstep bass sounds, the LP2, daft & scream will be your filters of choice but go ahead and experiment.
Try the different LFO shapes for LP filters and the performer LFO for the BP filter.
* Now the sound is nicely modulated but it's a bit dry, innit ? Route the insert 1 to the output of filter 1 and try the 3 last effects which are distortions. Go 100% wet, adjust the amount of distortion, then adjust the wet/dry knob. A/B to make sure you're not overdoing it because there are still tube distortions in the FX 1 menu.
* Then for the 2nd effect, perhaps some chorus or dimension expander ? See what works for you.
* Finally, turn on the EQ, pump up the low-end if necessary, possibly the high-end as well and see if removing/boosting a couple of dBs here or there with the 2 knobs in the middle does help.

You can make quite nasty patches that way but there are lots more possibilities using enveloppes & lfos to automate the wt-position or intensity knobs for instance.
Practice, get confident, make dozens of patches, save all of them, then listen to them all again and remove the shit ones.
Later, you can try using parallel/serial/crossfading filtering and more experimental routing.

There are plenty of quality tutorials for Massive on youtube.
Even tho I'm not always keen on the sound the guys come up with, there are lots of nice tips.
Here are a few :
http://www.youtube.com/user/thesoundtut ... 26FA49A855
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0f18uFhcvY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJaIh0U3Vik
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SK1ocGVDibg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HIEvLP7a4c8
http://www.youtube.com/user/MadRespek#p/u/8/CZLUtq8_Brk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pOgo7RXla5g

[daft cunt]

the other thing is that a lto of the threads say to resample. i take it this means to record the sound from the synth into a sampler? what i don't understand is how this is different from just adding more effects channels. i'm not running out of cpu so don't see the need to resample, unless theres something i'm missing? i'm aware that its possible to process audio in different ways(pitch up/down, reverse etc).

Resampling explained

[CBK81]

You don't need to resample to make your basses sound great. I also find that resampling is best when done sparingly. If you over due it, your sound will be drowned out in fx and mud. The best advice I can give is to only use one synth to get started. Study everything you can about synthesis. Be sure to buy your vst, because that will make you use it more often. It's easy to be a vst hopper and not really learn anything if you just crack everything.

[Ldizzy]

^ in my very opinon theres nothing to add to that thread... read all the way thru.. u have anything u need to get there... now turn on that goddamn webbrowser and tweak stuff

autofeedback ur work everytime u tweak a knob... does it make it sound more like i want, no .. cancel.

[filthy_]

make sounds first, than worry about resampling to make more sounds.

[VirtualMark]

Hey, thanks for all the replies! Believe it or not i've tried most of the stuff above... i think maybe i just need to practice more and read a few books. Already read 'how to make a noise' which showed some basic synthesis techniques. I know the synths i'm using pretty well but not well enough to be able to tell you what every wave sounds like, so as suggested i'll get to know them better. i'll also try deconstructing a few patches to get to know how they work.

I've already made some pretty good wobbles using a bit of fm synthesis on z3ta and albino. for some reason i find it hard to get a really filthy sound from massive, although it is the easiest to use out of the 3 synths. I've also mastered the 'yoy' bass using wobble and a bitcrusher. so i've got some of the basic techniques nailed, i just need to take it to the next level - none of my wobbles are 'ear candy', they're just pretty average really.

Thanks for the link to the resampling, i think i get it now. The reason i was interested in resampling and splitting bass into frequencies is because datsik and excision have recommended it on some of the threads. The thing i'm stuck on is what does this actually achieve? If i apply different filters to the three bands, all that happens is that i get a phasey thinner sound as frequencies from each band cut out. There seems to be little point in even keeping the bass band, as i usually put a pure sine underneath anyway.

Thanks again everyone for your advice, theres lots of interesting points there!

[lostcosmonaut]

With regards to your problems with frequency splitting using filters, I'd recommend using a multiband compressor to do this instead - put an instance on each channel and solo the lows/mids/highs (although I'd agree with you on just keeping the lows as a straight sine). Someone else can do the science bit but all I know is that it sounds a lot better.

I can totally sympathise with you on this one cos I've had the exact same problem, and as such became pretty burnt out trying to produce heavy, midrange focused tunes. I would however reiterate other people's points about subletly - you don't really need lots and lots of effects, resampling and splitting, experiment with small amounts and figure out exactly what they're doing to your sound. I'm a big fan of modulating all sorts of effects parameters over time to create a morphing sort of sound, that can be a fun thing to experiment with. Also had a bit of a facepalm moment when I realised that the reason my bass sounded shit was because it had so much midrange and highs in it that it stopped actually being bass so keep it reigned in and you'll get the power back

Hope this helps, good luck to you!

[daft cunt]

A few more thoughts even though I'm sure you're aware of that :
* slight detuning and unison are great ways to beef up your sound
* layering the same patch an octave higher too
* EQ is very important to get rid of the unwanted frequencies -> parametric EQ -> narrow Q -> boost by 6 to 9 dBs -> sweep until you hear unpleasant frequencies -> cut by x dBs (like 2 to 4) -> repeat as many times as necessary
Personally I always put an EQ at the beginning of the effects chain then after each distortion plug.
* external multi-band distortion is a must when it comes to gritty bass sounds. Particularly with the shit built-in distortion of Massive & z3ta. Ohmicide is a personal fav.

Perhaps you could post a couple of audio clips so we can see where you're at and tell what could be improved.

[district]

i used to spend ages looking on threads like these to try and nail bass sounds, i think the best advice i can offer is try and keep it simple!

use the envelopes for the movement (if your distorting, just a little bit of depth in the movement so it opens a little bit rather than all the way is enough)

as for what wave shapes to use, the traditional sine, saws, squares and triangle still sound miles better for bass than some of the custom ones you get imo (leave those for pads or higher bits)

you dont always need to split a bass line up into three bands either, last few things i've done i've just had 1 group which the bass is sent to just distorting the higher mids a bit more. it saves time mucking about in the sequencer and you can play with the sounds a bit more and audition them with a rough idea of how its gonna sound.

that last sentence is crucial, trying not to faff around on one sound for too long is key. if its not working and you have a bit of cpu, why not duplicate the track, mute the first one and change the envelopes on your new sound? sometimes that method helps me build up a series of different bass stabs that can be arranged together to make one riff.

knowing what sort of envelope shapes to use comes with practice not posting!

[Ldizzy]

hey, i just double thought about this thread today!

and im pretty sure about the answer : practice, practice, practice, practice, and then practice again