How you process bass?

[decklyn]

I'm using iether kontakt or massive, more recently.

For Kontakt, I'm grabbing most samples out of a little program called muon tau, cause it's fat sounding and free. But I'll grab sounds out of anything, grit em up a bit and then just record one long sample. Then I process it in kontakt.

Usually I'm using just the shit in kontakt. LFOs connect to cutoff points, and then the modwheel connected to the rate. Or if I'm feeling extra inspired, just the modwheel connected to the filter cutoff point. Then EQ and a little plugin called "mixbass" by PSP is often applied.

Massive is fucking fantastic tho, and has brought serious new life to the creative process of making basses. Often I'll grab a sine-square or two detuned and apply that lovely parallel filtering offerd. Have one BP modulated by an LFO and then have the LFO iether modulated by stepper, performer, or the modwheel. Then for the other filter I'll have something like the "daft" filter or an lp filter or one of the other filters going with a slow lfo hooked up to give it some life. YEAO. massive is hot.

I"m getting unhappy with the sounds of my basses tho, so I'm just wondering what you guys are up to, specifically on the processing front, but, I'm sure other people would be interested in the processes you're using as well.

[thump rat]

I tried to use Massive but i really hate the interface, like most NI products its not user friendly and gets to complicated (not to mention it is MASSIVE on the CPU front aswell), it does however have a namesake sound. But i'd much rather use a simple synth like Z3ta, which is my weapon of choice.

As for processing i normally like clean basses, lots of resonance and a wee bit of reverb, maybe a touch of distortion to give it warmth. Thing is i have a crap computer so too much processing rinses my CPU and i get scared when bouncing down.

If i'm working with a sample tho i usually split it into 3-5 parts and split i by eq, run the hi's and mids through NI Guitar Rig, can get some lovely distortion and reverby effects.

[b-lam]

i tend to use a really basic sine wave for the subby bit, filter it so it doesnt have much goin on above or below the notes i'm usin for the bassline. then to give it the character i make a midbass either out of a distorted version of the original sine, or a lowpassed reese, then muck around with chorus, compression, eq, distort, bitcrush, and resample it.

i always keep the sub seperate tho, keep it unprocessed (apart from the filtering and occasionally compression tho it often doesn't need it) and cleean.

[Sharmaji]

^ +1 almost exactly

as little compression on the sub as possible; lots of filtering, though, and working to get an even, balanced sound out of the synth. sub SHOULD go a bit up and down in volume; that translates as emotion in the club.

i'll squash it more in a d&b tune where there's a lot more going on, otherwise, in dubstep-- leave that sub alone! let it breathe.

[decklyn]

Just a quick note on massive - you can turn the quality down to cut CPU usage by apx half.

The tutorial video on NI's site will get you up and running with it in maybe 30 mins. It's about as complex as Z3ta I find. It's very simple once you know what the different sections do and has a "drag and drop" interface which is very very friendly. It's the simples, easiest and most fun NI product to use that I've found. Even more straightforward than Kontakt, and has some great features like being able to move the startpoint of the LFOs and creating new wave forms for them.

[osk]

^ +1 almost exactly

as little compression on the sub as possible; lots of filtering, though, and working to get an even, balanced sound out of the synth. sub SHOULD go a bit up and down in volume; that translates as emotion in the club.

i'll squash it more in a d&b tune where there's a lot more going on, otherwise, in dubstep-- leave that sub alone! let it breathe.

I tend to agree. But sometimes when you want a really tight sub sound rather than a warmer 'enveloping' sound doesn't it help to compress a little. I find it does and it helps the bassline to pull a little harder. Otherwise I find it can get a little limp.

Then again, I'm no pro. Thoughts?

[gravious]

^ +1 almost exactly

as little compression on the sub as possible; lots of filtering, though, and working to get an even, balanced sound out of the synth. sub SHOULD go a bit up and down in volume; that translates as emotion in the club.

i'll squash it more in a d&b tune where there's a lot more going on, otherwise, in dubstep-- leave that sub alone! let it breathe.

I tend to agree. But sometimes when you want a really tight sub sound rather than a warmer 'enveloping' sound doesn't it help to compress a little. I find it does and it helps the bassline to pull a little harder. Otherwise I find it can get a little limp.

Then again, I'm no pro. Thoughts?

I sometimes find that compression cuts out the really subby low frequencies a bit. However, something like mild tape compression/distortion can add a good warmth and chunkiness to bass.

Sometimes I just split the bass channel, and run the two separately into the mixer - one clean/filtered, and one a bit compressed/distorted and filtered. Then just EQ them a bit so they sit over each other. That way you get the sub and the punch

[de-cho]

i found interesting way to produce bass from a bass kick. i'm takin' one booming kick and proccess it trough reason's rv7000 with delay algoritm/i've started from the darkdelay preset/. the interesting point here is that at some point where its stars to overlap, the kick actually transforms into fat echoish bass line wich i seemed to enjoy, BUT from one point on its starting to premodulate, so i've cum up seting a pre-delay..then i'm ading sum scream, eq the shit , compress it and voalaaaa--->basss'em up nicely

[batfink]

the only hard and fast rule is never put reverb on a bass track. By all means seperate the subs from the mids and then reverb the mids, but NEVER THE SUB.

apart from that, i;d do whatever sounds good. Adhering to rules is unnecessarily limiting so try anything and everything and work out what sounds best for yourself.

I find getting subs hitting hard enough without using compression v v difficult to be honest... as long as you;re not killing the bass totally losing a bit of the low end just won;t matter, you want most of the sub energy centered around 40-60 hz anyway imo.....Use a good compressor though, i use URS ones which are nice.