The Official Growl Bass Thread

[Method]

Posted this in another threas but it might be more relevent here:

Soundcloud

Done in fm8 with minimal experience

[Impresario]

Had a fair amount of feedback about those KTN/Xkore noises, thank you kindly bros

Here's some good shit in .ksd form for ya
http://www40.zippyshare.com/v/60852682/file.html

Happy new year

PS. Use Camelcrusher lightly on the 'Tube Warmth' setting for that initial beef
PPS. PERFORMER LFO - USE IT
PPPS. PM me if you need
PPPPS. If you make something cool with it please give us a listen!

[IamDroid]

Had a fair amount of feedback about those KTN/Xkore noises, thank you kindly bros

Here's some good shit in .ksd form for ya
http://www40.zippyshare.com/v/60852682/file.html

Happy new year

PS. Use Camelcrusher lightly on the 'Tube Warmth' setting for that initial beef
PPS. PERFORMER LFO - USE IT
PPPS. PM me if you need anything else

Wow really, cheers man. Will deff check these out

[mromgwtf]

>mfw massive 1.01
>mfw massive can't load these patches

[SpaceInvader]

Impresario, You Rock Man

[Impresario]

>mfw massive 1.01
>mfw massive can't load these patches

[ephyks]

Can't tell if what I just made is really awesome, or really annoying.

Soundcloud

[Augment]

It certainly sounds thin. A bit more fat and I think it could be pretty cool

[mromgwtf]

fm8talkwah.exe

[ephyks]

fm8talkwah.exe

Actuallynot.jpg

[mromgwtf]

fm8talkwah.exe

Actuallynot.jpg

dun lie

[ephyks]

fm8talkwah.exe

Actuallynot.jpg

dun lie

bifilter

[PhotonOfficial]

First attempt at the sort of wet kinda growl Kill the Noise uses. Think it turned out pretty good:D

Soundcloud

I'll tell you how i made it tomorrow but it's late at the moment sorry

EDIT: Oh and i forgot to add sub bass i'll do that later

[mthrfnk]

Needs moar disto

[Method]

First attempt at the sort of wet kinda growl Kill the Noise uses. Think it turned out pretty good:D

Soundcloud

I'll tell you how i made it tomorrow but it's late at the moment sorry

EDIT: Oh and i forgot to add sub bass i'll do that later

Could I get a screenshot of this patch? Ive been trying to achieve that wetness for a while now.

[PhotonOfficial]

Needs moar disto

From my experiments so far, distortion has just basically killed the wetness and movement of the growl. I might just be using the wrong kind of distortion though. I'll play around tomorrow:D

[mthrfnk]

Needs moar disto

From my experiments so far, distortion has just basically killed the wetness and movement of the growl. I might just be using the wrong kind of distortion though. I'll play around tomorrow:D

Try stacking 2 maybe 3 disto units at like a maximum of 5% wet each, tweak the settings to be slightly different on each too. I do this a lot to get away from the "sounds like you used guitar distortion" sound where you end up with someothing that sounds like you're trying to emulate a guitar or just making a gritty mess of noise. By adding harmonics incrementally in small amounts it can sound a lot nicer than just slapping one distortion 100% across the whole sound.

[Impresario]

Needs moar disto

From my experiments so far, distortion has just basically killed the wetness and movement of the growl. I might just be using the wrong kind of distortion though. I'll play around tomorrow:D

Try stacking 2 maybe 3 disto units at like a maximum of 5% wet each, tweak the settings to be slightly different on each too. I do this a lot to get away from the "sounds like you used guitar distortion" sound where you end up with someothing that sounds like you're trying to emulate a guitar or just making a gritty mess of noise. By adding harmonics incrementally in small amounts it can sound a lot nicer than just slapping one distortion 100% across the whole sound.

I agree with this, KTN himself tweeted he uses a lot LESS distortion than people think, that its about distortion in the right places... and I'd like to add EQ THAT BITCH ON THE REG U LAR

[MrMush]

HOW I USED TO MAKE GROWLS.

Soundcloud

literally all this patch is, is a sin modulated by another sine modulated by a formant 10 wave in fm8. after that i automated a eq with a large spike to make it more vowelly.
after that very very minimal effects. a little bit of high end reverb and maybe a mostly dry vocoder.

BRING ON THE IDEAS BRETHREN!!!!!

this is dope

[shim]

hey guys! i'm going to really try to make a good post right now so please read it!!!

About Growling

OK, so i am not a scientist or a doctor in the least, so don't try to call me out on the physiology of the throat, but with my very basic knowledge of the human body i can tell you that all the tones that our voice can produce come from our vocal chords, and while the anatomy of the vocal chords are irrelevant their function is important when discussing voice synthesis. when air is pressed through the voice box it creates tones that when pushed through the throat, look similar to something like this:



also if you have Native Instruments's fm8, the formant waves are a good demonstration of voice synthesis.

but we have all heard these waveforms and they kinda suck. they sound nothing like a growl which is ultimately what this thread is about. so the difference between these briefly mentioned voice waves, and a growl, is when we growl we stress and put pressure on the throat and vocal chords making a relatively hard path for air to escape. this necessitates that the air build up, and then release, and this ultimately is where we will find growls, in these short, strained bursts of tone.

as an exercise, if you are are alone in your room, take your favorite skrillex growl bass line and thinking about the voice ideas mentioned above, try recreating it without straining your throat at all. sounds really fucking dumb, like you are basically trying to sing what should be growled. now try to recreate the sound as accurately as possible with your voice. notice how much strain this requires you to put on your throat and voice.

TL;DR Our vocal chords make tones, and when strained by our throat creates sharper bursts of tone, rather than the smooth tones we create when the throat is open (growling vs humming)

Skrillex Growl Basses

now upon listening to a lot of skrillex basses back to back, they are all very similar in timbre and i think its safe to assume for his main growl basses aside from SMANS (wtf was that shit for real???) are the same, or a very similar initial patch with different FX added on.

just for analysis i threw some back to back to prove this point
Soundcloud

we also know for a fact that skrillex made these basses including in his chain fm8 and ohmicide, although probably not exclusively. in an interview with DJ Times, he is quoted saying,

I use Native Instruments Massive, I use a lot of NI's FM8, actually, and even Operator. I've actually been using the Ableton Operator FM Synth just because Massive is great. Gear it towards a certain sound, whereas you can do so much with very simple sine waves. A lot of my signature monster bass sounds are FM8 and even Operator......

... There are always different strategies for different sounds. But basically, the whole idea is you have some waveform and the whole sonic spectrum is, depending on what frequencies are spiked and what frequencies are there or not there, will cause different formants. I've taken very simple waveforms that aren't wave-table waveforms, like a modern talking oscillator or whatever in that synth, and actually done similar things where I'm actually automating an EQ to actually create different vowels manually. So taking a simple sine wave in Operator, in FM8 and starting with that, you can get some different effects that you might not get in just automating the wave-table on the Massive thing, even though I like that as well.

so with this we can assume skrillex makes his growl basses starting with a sin wave and modulating it.

it is also interesting to examine the wave forms from an open skrillex growl that i found a long time ago from an early version of "Syndicate" or the second growl in the sound cloud link.


upon examining the waveforms i made a couple of observations and i encourage you all to also make your own and post what your see and how you try to recreate them, but what i saw is a series of "Nuggets" of sound emulating (probably by accident) pressure on the throat. the sound comes in bursts rather then a flat waveform. also i think its very important to notice that at the beginning of each burst of sound or "nuggets" as i always think about them is a little click of a high pitched noise which is where the growl gets its harshness and its illusion of being very mid heavy as everyone calls it. it simply accentuates the bursts of a more mid heavy frequency.


What a Growl Bass Requires

so this is completely subjective, but to me a growl bass requires only a couple things to growl and i encourage you all to try to make a bass or two like this to learn your synth better.

1. the growl needs a very low bass frequency in which the mid heavy frequencies are contained. what i mean by this is you should be aiming to make these sound "nuggets" or bursts of sound or a mid heavy frequency at a much lower frequency. this is a tough concept to put into words, but i like to think of it like the kick in this video


2. a click before this aforementioned sound nugget to emphasize the mid frequencies dependence on its fundamental low frequency. i achieve this with ohmicide at the end of my effects chain with a band of distortion only on the high end.

3. EQ modulation. really no rules apply hear, but for my i like to have one EQ controlling the boosted frequencies, and one EQ with a notch filter sweeping out frequencies to make more interesting vowels.

3.5 dont drench that shit with FX. try to get the best sound with as little as possible

4. dont tell anyone about fight club.

5. there are no rules

6. pleaase post results so we can learn from each other and finally crack this mystery of skrillex growl basses, as in my opinion it is the only growl bass that people are yet to accurately recreate.