Skrillex reveals details on how he makes his basslines

[hasezwei]

hmmm im starting to get nice results with fm8, reese-wise.
however i haven't found any suitable sound for vowel-eq treatment on my harddrive so far, either that or i'm doing it wrong.
what im doing right now is drawing a rough vowel shaped eq curve with a hp, lp, 2 boosts and a notch in between and then grabbing all those points and moving them back and forth. sometimes it sounds quite cool but it's just sweet spots, nothing close to what i've heard in this thread.

i wonder, how much do you guys modulate your reese/bass/whatever sound before applying the vowel eq? and at what point in your fx chain do you apply it? right at the end or do you put other stuff behind it? i found that saturating/distorting the sound after the eq just destroys any formants i might have created.

i'd also like to hear some before/after compairsons of source sound and final vowelly growl... so yeah if anyone would do a step by step rundown i'd appreciate that. at the moment my results sound way too shitty to post, i have made decent growl sounds with other techniques but i'm curious if this one might end up more effective once i got the hang of it

edit: yeah actually i tried setting up an eq using the values of the formant table linked in this thread and it just sounds like a weird phaser

[Blastfome]

Good to see he mixes down in Ableton and wut not as well. Always wondered how he went about mastering his tracks! cheers

[KoenDercksen]

xrylex, I would love a video tutorial

I've been working on this Scatta sound in Massive.. Not really that succesful but I tried. It's all massive, no external plugins whatsoever

http://soundcloud.com/quantum-realm/monster-sounds

[rudebrat]

Wow, a lot of really good info/ideas in this thread. I also stumbled upon this article when it came out and have been experimenting with FM8/Operator and different effects since then. Didnt even know ableton had presets for formants, so thanks for pointing that out definitely gonna spend all of tomorrow playing with that haha.
Here are some tricks that I have come across in trying to get this bass. I find good distortion is essential for getting certain formants/movement. I use Ohmicide, Tridirt and Ableton saturator. Automating the EQ between two (or even three) different distortion types creates formants and some cool timbres; and automating an extra EQ before or after the distortion can also emphasize the formant. Also, if you have a really long FX chain with a bunch of distortion/compression/EQ/etc. and place a BP or LP filter before all of them it can give you some really mean wobbly sounds. Be careful with distortion though, you can destroy a whole sound easily if you put too much.
I've also noticed that a ton of skrillex basses (especially scary monsters and scatta basses) are lacking frequencies from 450 - 650hz, which shows that he uses notching techniques like used in DnB reeces. DOA's the grid has some good tips on making cool reeces.
I feel compression also plays a big role in the sound as well. If you squash the shit out of it with a low threshold it changes the timbre and contains the beast a little bit. A trick I've been using a lot lately is putting a limiter right at the end of my FX chain (before my spectrum of course ), so it doesnt clip terribly and keeps it at a nice level while not effecting the timbre (since amplitude effects timbre with a big distortion FX chain).
As for resampling, I bet he does it but not to the extent that people think he does. I think his synths are more focused on carefully placed automation with a long FX chain and a main frequency modulation synth that has a bunch of LFO's, envelopes and automation as well. He probably bounces out after that to free up CPU and add a little extra mastering, and maybe add a sub. His signature basslines are definitely FM synthesis, and not fucking modern talking.
I've gotten really close to these synths but I dont want to post them or replicate Skrillex's for that matter. I feel its better to take these methods and do your own thing with them. One last thing is that melody is really important; thats why Skrillex got so famous is because he had these huge ass synths and combined them with beautiful 21st century chord progressions.
Hope this helps
-Rudebrat

[xrylex]

yo rudebrat. solid input. you touched on several things that i think are key aspects to this sound. putting a limiter at the end of the chain is essential...

i like your idea of automating different distortions quite a bit.

and yep, huge notches cut out of the mids is def a big part of getting a growwllll.

[Jacob15728]

I still don't get why he automates the EQ. Why not just use a formant filter? Way easier and probably sounds better.

[hasezwei]

I still don't get why he automates the EQ. Why not just use a formant filter? Way easier and probably sounds better.

more flexibility

[Jacob15728]

I still don't get why he automates the EQ. Why not just use a formant filter? Way easier and probably sounds better.

more flexibility

I take it you've never used Forma-8 then? That thing is awesome, definitely more flexible than an EQ

[Mannyyyyy]

I still don't get why he automates the EQ. Why not just use a formant filter? Way easier and probably sounds better.

more flexibility

I take it you've never used Forma-8 then? That thing is awesome, definitely more flexible than an EQ

he's using an eq to get different letters out, it actually is way more flexible imo to use an eq and go through different vowels and sweet the freq spectrum.

after messing around with this technique for 3 days or so, its pretty easy to get nice growly reeses and stabs and wubs

[jrisreal]

I still don't get why he automates the EQ. Why not just use a formant filter? Way easier and probably sounds better.

more flexibility

I take it you've never used Forma-8 then? That thing is awesome, definitely more flexible than an EQ

he's using an eq to get different letters out, it actually is way more flexible imo to use an eq and go through different vowels and sweet the freq spectrum.

after messing around with this technique for 3 days or so, its pretty easy to get nice growly reeses and stabs and wubs

yeah this. a forma-8 or really any formant filter won't be as flexible as just automating the eq.

[VirtualMark]

why does everyone think it needs to be fm8? by the time its gone through all this processing, can you hear much of the original waveform? would a fat reese made in z3ta or sylenth be just as good?

[xrylex]

it certainly doesnt need to be FM8. the growl example i posted is Massive.
the main advantage of using FM8 (or any FM synth) is that its easy to generate a lot of harmonics quickly.

but at the end of things, it doesnt matter too much what your source synth is if you understand the HOW/WHY of the end result you are after.

[-[2]DAY_-]

WHY

begs the question

[Ignatius Funk]

Here's my attempt after reading the thread:
Soundcloud

[zonetrooper5]

Made a growling/screechy synth sorta like Skrillex, can hear it in my newest track.

Soundcloud

[sunny_b_uk]

I still don't get why he automates the EQ. Why not just use a formant filter? Way easier and probably sounds better.

to be honest you get way more flexiblilty automating the EQ points when they are shaped like band pass filters. you can get your basses really talkin some gibberish by doing this. for example i actually managed to get 1 of my basses to near enough say "yoga fire" just from automating two eq points

[Jasonooch]

@xrylex, what was your initial waveform in creating that sound? Is it essentially just an Operator with EQ and an automated vowel preset boosting back and forth between different frequencies?

I'm interested in this technique but I know not of any EQs other than Ableton's one that has vowel filters - WOW Filter comes to mind though that's not an EQ, but is it possible to do such formant EQ automations in FL Studio?

the initial sound really isnt that important with this to be honest. this particular sound is a combo of scrapyard and deepthroat, but ive gotten similar results with a totally different patch in massive using totally different waveforms. ive also got it running thru band reject in massive, plus some other random massive stuff (phase modulation, feedback, etc) none of that shit is important tbh, thats just to give different characteristics to the sound.

however the plug in chain is pretty long on this one, and ive got alternate versions of this that sound just as good with a shorter chain, but here is this one:

(all built into a custom ableton rack)
- massive > corpus > ableton vocoder > eq eight > ableton saturator > ableton phaser > wow filter > fabfilter pro-q > ableton guitar cabinet thingy > fabfilter pro-q
(then sent to my bass buss which is: Waves SSL channel > PSP Vintage Warmer > Ozone4)

automation macros in the ableton rack are:
- eq8 frequency movement
- vocoder formant shift
- saturator dry/wet adjustment
- vocoder dry/wet adjustment

oh! and PITCH BEND!! a ton of the movement in the sound is due to pitch bending....

you can def do the same thing in FL no problem. any parametric eq should work. and to be clear is not boosting up and down.. its MOVING what frequency you are boosting, my preference is what i said above in reply to mannyyyyy, having a big frequency CUT in between 2 boosted frequency points.

for example... this is the vowel of E as it looks on a EQ8...
http://postimage.org/image/ptxd43hg/

if you have ableton just look in the Eq8 presets under formant... from there is about moving the boosted frequencies with some automation to get EEEE-AAAA-EEEE type effects...


also, this is a great read on formant synthesis:
http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/mar01/a ... nthsec.asp

Your example soundclip was absolutely fantastic and spot on. I really wish I had EQ 8 just for those vowel presets..I used your screencap to recreate my own filter in my Waves Q10 EQ and got some interesting results automating it. Would it be at all possible to screencap the other vowel sound presets so I can try to recreate them? I don't have a handle on how they're made yet on my own, even after reading that SOS article you posted right at the end, so I'd greatly appreciate it or tips.

thanks man.

it not even about the specific vowel sound presets, its about modulating them to mimic a mouth opening and closing. so the specific vowel doesnt matter. i have no clue where my eq/modulations fall in relation to specific vowels, i just started with the same basic shape as one of the presets, then started tweaking til i found something cool and notch filter sounding.. then started automating. if you already made something similar in your q10, then just mess with automating the top points back and forth so that it looks like the side view of a mouth opening and closing (if the mouth was pointing straight up) and the eq8 sucks tbh. its a sloppy eq. its just easy to work with.

im planning on doing a video tutorial on this entire sound, but there hasnt been too much interested expressed as of yet so i havent bothered yet.

I would LOVE a video tutorial. I'm much more of a visual learner so I get the concept but it would reallyyyy help if I could see the process

[TheCoil]

it seems that as much as it is about the bass sound, it's also a certain effect or maybe a couple of effects that really make that Skrillex sound, because you can hear it in other people's music, Zomboy, Knife Party, etc, where you can hear they're using the same efx as Skrillex over different bass patches

[RandoRando]

I still don't get why he automates the EQ. Why not just use a formant filter? Way easier and probably sounds better.

to be honest you get way more flexiblilty automating the EQ points when they are shaped like band pass filters. you can get your basses really talkin some gibberish by doing this. for example i actually managed to get 1 of my basses to near enough say "yoga fire" just from automating two eq points

soundcloud or it didnt happen.




but realy i want to hear that,

[unwind]

http://www.acapellasforu.com/

sick fucks they made me post this but figured the majority reading this thread can go suck a fuck anyway...how do you expect to release your own soul if your chasing another guys!! if your under the age of 16 disregard the above and say hi to your mom for me!

wut

+1