What helps create decent sub bass?

Jubz · Post by **Jubz** » Sun Aug 27, 2006 3:27 pm

what techniques do people use to give sub a punch is it mainly down to eq'ing it into its own space? Safe.

obiwan · Post by **obiwan** » Sun Aug 27, 2006 3:40 pm

1.turn the filter right down

2.turn the resonance slightly above the filter

3.Higher notes are sometimes more 'bassy' than low ones

ekaj · Post by **ekaj** » Sun Aug 27, 2006 4:04 pm

It's hard to get a sub punchy without a click. It depends what kind of sub you want.
If you want more of a wooop sub (sorry can't write sounds) then I usually cut out any high frequencies, like the guy above said - put a filter on it and turn the frequency down to about 50hz or something.
EQ is also a good thing.

What I like to do is make sub in a synth, EQ and filter it and then export that - load it into soundforge and put a little (and just a little) PSP Maximiser (if you don't have this - get it, it's fucking ace) on it, then load that back in. You might have to EQ it some more or whatever.

A tiny bit of tape distortion on you sub before you export sounds nice also. Just make sure that the 'final' product is mono

Take it ez

Jake

ekaj · Post by **ekaj** » Sun Aug 27, 2006 4:08 pm

Oh yeah - another thought - you can try layering kicks over your sub - make sure you cut out the low frequencies otherwise they will clash. This is like a 'pseudo' punchy sub - it makes it sound like it's punchy, but really it's the kick that makes it punchy. But getting kicks/subs to sit well together is another subject man, it takes a bit of fucking around to make it sound right with EQ.

Another thing I've learnt is using an 808 kick for bass and just EQing that. They have a nice click/punch at the beginning of them. You can also distort those and use them for cool mid range bass

Jubz · Post by **Jubz** » Sun Aug 27, 2006 8:04 pm

Safe for the tips. This production lark does my noggin but its fun

.

lord_qzuma · Post by **lord_qzuma** » Mon Aug 28, 2006 12:01 pm

Z3ita......its all about Z3ita.....

obiwan · Post by **obiwan** » Mon Aug 28, 2006 6:54 pm

Heinz beans

skrapes · Post by **skrapes** » Wed Aug 30, 2006 2:27 pm

Lord_Qzuma wrote:Z3ita......its all about Z3ita.....

Any chance you could expand on that please mate? I've got Z3ta and would love to know what you know. I spent about 3 hours last night trying to get nasty noises out of my sub patch. Tried Subtrator and Albino. I'll try the above sugestion with Soundforge, but If Z3ta is the daddy can you give me a bit more info.

Cheers in advance

skrapes · Post by **skrapes** » Wed Aug 30, 2006 2:35 pm

If you're lookin Jubz, there's some good tips here

http://dubstepforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=1611

will · Post by **will** » Mon Sep 04, 2006 9:30 pm

Skrapes wrote:
Lord_Qzuma wrote:Z3ita......its all about Z3ita.....
Any chance you could expand on that please mate? I've got Z3ta and would love to know what you know. I spent about 3 hours last night trying to get nasty noises out of my sub patch. Tried Subtrator and Albino. I'll try the above sugestion with Soundforge, but If Z3ta is the daddy can you give me a bit more info.

Cheers in advance

yeah am in the same boat as skrapes here so any tips on z3ta would be brilliant

decem · Post by **decem** » Mon Sep 04, 2006 10:42 pm

well this is useful for any synth i guess.. so my 2cts on making subs.

a sub consists mostly of one or more (detuned) sines, with additional overtones. for just a sub, use a sine. for a sub with some character (by using overtones), use square or saw (i prefer square) waves and detune them, then put them through a lowpass filter. you'll want a steep filter (24db) or use eq afterwards to make room for your kick. to get them wobblin you can use a sine lfo linked to the cutoff, but be careful to stay in the sub-range because you'll want a nicely defined kick with some meat and punch too, which will sit in the 80-120hz range. since hz*2 is the span of an octave, you'll want the ground-note of your sub (and thus your track) lying around 30-40 hz for maximum bass weight. then you have groundnotefrequency*2 as the room for your sub to accompany your mids or your melodies, which will be between 30-80hz. oh yeah, use some compression carefully (to avoid clicks) to pump it up.

grievous_angel · Post by **grievous_angel** » Tue Sep 05, 2006 4:44 pm

decem wrote:well this is useful for any synth i guess.. so my 2cts on making subs.

Excellent info. A few queries...

> for a sub with some character (by using overtones), use square or saw (i prefer square) waves and detune them,
Do you mean layering another square wave over the top of the sine? Played at the same pitch?

> since hz*2 is the span of an octave, you'll want the ground-note of your sub (and thus your track) lying around 30-40 hz for maximum bass weight.
You lost me there... What's a ground note? And do you mean that the frequency of a note, X2, gives you an octave from the original note? I guess to get 30-40hz will require different note pitches depeding on the sound...

Thanks for the advice, good stuff...

Had an interesting session in a pro studio on Friday - the big dubstep tunes don't actually have that much sub-bass, it's just the right sub-bass, carefully mixed with the rest of the track...

luke.envoy · Post by **luke.envoy** » Tue Sep 05, 2006 5:03 pm

narcossist · Post by **narcossist** » Tue Sep 05, 2006 6:00 pm

Grievous Angel wrote: Had an interesting session in a pro studio on Friday - the big dubstep tunes don't actually have that much sub-bass, it's just the right sub-bass, carefully mixed with the rest of the track...

Anyone know how much this has to do with the mastering process? My old tutor - an amazin engineer - used to place a lot of emphasis on how effective high end [ie. £10k+] mastering eq's were in seperating frequencies in a way you just can't get with cheaper equipment. i'm guessing the big tunes [ie any release which has been mastered] have the optimum sub frequencies left in while the dirge around them has been carved out.

Waiting for Kode9 to post on this thread explaining how he did the sub for Nine Samouri

sek [espionage] · Post by **sek [espionage]** » Wed Sep 06, 2006 1:49 am

map the pitch to the attack env, give the attack a short quick boost (only a few milliseconds.
...will add a nice 808 sounding punch to the sub

parson · Post by **parson** » Wed Sep 06, 2006 2:40 am

or just use an 808 kick sample which is a modified sine

decem · Post by **decem** » Wed Sep 06, 2006 8:39 am

Grievous Angel wrote:
decem wrote:well this is useful for any synth i guess.. so my 2cts on making subs.
Excellent info. A few queries...

> for a sub with some character (by using overtones), use square or saw (i prefer square) waves and detune them,
Do you mean layering another square wave over the top of the sine? Played at the same pitch?

When you filter a sound, it means you remove it's harmonics. Every single (harmonic) sound is constructed out of a lot of sinewaves, each varying in amplitude and pitch. The groundnote is the first of those sines, so when you lowpass a squarewave until about 40hz with a 24db slope, then you'll have something almost like a sine remaining. The difference is that there'll be some subtle differences between a lowpassed squarewave and a sine, since you won't cut off all of it's harmonics. A sine alone has no harmonics.
More info about harmonics: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmonics

> since hz*2 is the span of an octave, you'll want the ground-note of your sub (and thus your track) lying around 30-40 hz for maximum bass weight.
You lost me there... What's a ground note? And do you mean that the frequency of a note, X2, gives you an octave from the original note? I guess to get 30-40hz will require different note pitches depeding on the sound...

When you write music, you'll find yourself using scales. for dancemusic (and dubstep in particular) there's often not a 'classic' scale present, but most of the time your track will have one particular note which is it's 'base' note. this is what i meant by groundnote. i could be wrong by calling it a groundnote since i don't really know for sure that's what it's called in English.
What I meant by freq*2 is that when you have a pitch of for example 30hz, the upper octave of this pitch will be at 60hz. when you go another octave up, it will be 120hz, etc. When you have a sub, you will want it to leave room for a decent kick which will lie in the range of 80-120hz. A (western) scale is always divided into an octave, so you'll need an octave to support your melody with your sub. When your 'base' note or groundnote as i called it is lying around 44hz, then you'll have 44hz to 88hz as a range for your sub. This might sound a bit cryptic and i really can't explain it better in english, but you could do some further reading at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequency
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_scale

Thanks for the advice, good stuff...

no problem, glad you found it usefull

decem · Post by **decem** » Wed Sep 06, 2006 8:40 am

narcossist wrote:
Grievous Angel wrote: Had an interesting session in a pro studio on Friday - the big dubstep tunes don't actually have that much sub-bass, it's just the right sub-bass, carefully mixed with the rest of the track...
Anyone know how much this has to do with the mastering process? My old tutor - an amazin engineer - used to place a lot of emphasis on how effective high end [ie. £10k+] mastering eq's were in seperating frequencies in a way you just can't get with cheaper equipment. i'm guessing the big tunes [ie any release which has been mastered] have the optimum sub frequencies left in while the dirge around them has been carved out.

Waiting for Kode9 to post on this thread explaining how he did the sub for Nine Samouri

i'm curious about that too

narcossist · Post by **narcossist** » Wed Sep 06, 2006 10:26 am

anyone got a freq/note chart thing? TRied googleing but no luck

decem · Post by **decem** » Wed Sep 06, 2006 10:54 am

narcossist wrote:anyone got a freq/note chart thing? TRied googleing but no luck

search for midi to frequency

http://tomscarff.tripod.com/midi_analys ... quency.htm

What helps create decent sub bass?

What helps create decent sub bass?

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