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acrap wrote:excellent advice but quick question what does it mean for the basses to be "tone balanced?" i've heard from plenty of people to just consider making a song straight from one bass patch and small alterations to it in order for me to get the hang of it before i start introducing new sounds. You did a really great job on "sinful minds" you have alot of sounds that compliment eachother extremely well on the drop that's more or less the feeling or character that i want my drops to have but it seems like it takes alot of work for all the sounds to work in unison like that. Another side note is that i feel the rhythm in which the sounds are played helps the compliment of sounds and thats something i havent gotten down packed yet. If you could get into more detail on how you constructed that tune it'd be appreciated thanks

wow u have had a lot of replies since yesterday lol. what i meant by tone balanced basses is that each bass roughly needs the same kind of frequencies (i just use my ears and check if it all sounds right). i like to put the same kind of impact on each bass by making sure if 1 of the basses are phat/loud/punchy in the low end, then i cant have any other basses in the song that lack that feel to it. it doesnt have to be that way but i normally tweak/layer basses to get each sound to compliment each other if they dont sit together too well. also i try to EQ most individual sounds seperately! (i didnt do it so much with sinful minds, i rushed the song as its a WIP).
making my song was easy on the bass side, its actually very repetitive. how i made it sound less repetitive is with foreground sounds like little arpeggios playing at different parts as the basses are playing AND plenty of white noise whooshes and sweeps, square waves pitch bending in the back and all reverbed/delayed plenty, also spooky ambient (drone) sounds, which were done by timestretching and reverbing unusual sounds.
theres nothing else worth noting to how i did the song apart from having a catchy melody. the melody structure is what makes the song sound somewhat listenable, the sounds aren't brilliant and are kind of crap at some parts its all about the little details in the back that makes things more enjoyable.
try to listen to songs more in depth and pick out all the little sounds you can hear! id say its REALLY important to have these little details in songs so hope u can learn from this! its dead simple to do, takes a while sometimes but its a good way of sounding more "pro" lets say.

Cornbreadddd wrote:

What a tune, You really still need to open your mind, read that post about kung fu again man that was spot on.

Man you're trying to make a form of dubstep and you're asking what else to listen to that's got soul?
Obvious question is a bit obvious...

Turn your speakers up or listen on quality headphones. Get the whole Catch A Fire album in high quality, you can listen to it over and over.

We're saying it takes a long time but we're not saying it's not fun.
If you don't listen to the roots of where this music comes from it's like walking around with your eyes crossed focused on the tip of your nose.

Hey guys i've had troubles in the past with making brostep like i've so desperately been trying to do, one thing i've noticed though is that brostep often has alot of trance breakdowns and what not and i was previously into trance before brostep completely took over my taste in music. Would learning how to produce trance directly help me in producing brostep? Probably an obvious answer but i've never produced before these last 3 months and its been strictly focused on brostep. Maybe switching would inspire me in the melodic aspects instead of focusing on straight filth. Also would you guys consider different types of electronic music as "easier" in terms of structure to produce as opposed to brostep. i'm saying this because alot of popular brosteppers that i'm into have started off at other genres and dropped into brostep from there. thanks

curmee wrote:

I dont listen to ANY other music besides brostep

here is answer to your question

listen to some metal

Looking for some relatively simple brostep tracks that i can copy because i think that'll make my workflow better. all the songs that i like seem extremely hard to copy and i cant quite catch the depth of the tunes enough to copy them with easy. can anybody give me some brostep tunes that are easy to grasp conceptually yet would still be funny to try and mock? thanks

if you're just copying a song to work on your workflow why not do something a little more bare-bones so you can focus on finishing/structuring the track rather than having to worry about crazy sound design and listening for drum patterns amongst all the midrange madness?

lol so what you're saying is start by copying drum patterns then move from there? thats what i understood that's actually a really good idea.

Excision & Datsik - Swagga

jr is right. that song has very clear and pronounced wobbles. Don't focus on sound design so much as the lfo speed of the wobbles and how they are arranged to create rhythm

yeah i agree its pretty straight forward. do any of you guys also get the feeling that when listening to brostep its a WHOLE bunch of notes scambled all over the place? took me a while to grasp this but in most of the songs i like all the madness is just a matter of clever rhythm because the notes almost always stay exactly the same only the different sounds and octaves that they're played it make them sounds different

acrap wrote:yeah i agree its pretty straight forward. do any of you guys also get the feeling that when listening to brostep its a WHOLE bunch of notes scambled all over the place? took me a while to grasp this but in most of the songs i like all the madness is just a matter of clever rhythm because the notes almost always stay exactly the same only the different sounds and octaves that they're played it make them sounds different

I take the opposite reaction to that. When I hear that (and I am guilty of doing this, myself) I feel as if the artist was lazy and just wanted to find an easy way to keep the song interesting instead of actually working for good variation.

acrap wrote:lol so what you're saying is start by copying drum patterns then move from there? thats what i understood that's actually a really good idea.

pretty much yea. the midrange is recognizable in every song, yet drums are what are hard to discern. although most brostep drums lack any type of swing/groove and are pretty standard, which is also why i suggest something with some more groove.

In all seriousness though,

Burial has his RnB, Mala has his dub, Coki has his dancehall, Distance has his metal, Zomby and Kuedo have their trap-rap, and Skream apparently has his Prince..

Get me

acrap wrote:Hey guys i've had troubles in the past with making brostep like i've so desperately been trying to do, one thing i've noticed though is that brostep often has alot of trance breakdowns and what not and i was previously into trance before brostep completely took over my taste in music. Would learning how to produce trance directly help me in producing brostep? Probably an obvious answer but i've never produced before these last 3 months and its been strictly focused on brostep. Maybe switching would inspire me in the melodic aspects instead of focusing on straight filth. Also would you guys consider different types of electronic music as "easier" in terms of structure to produce as opposed to brostep. i'm saying this because alot of popular brosteppers that i'm into have started off at other genres and dropped into brostep from there. thanks

now im pretty sure you're trolling.

swagga was such a great choice lol this is really fun to do actually i'm 8 bars in

acrap wrote:swagga was such a great choice lol this is really fun to do actually i'm 8 bars in

make sure you post the finished result!

^^Yes, this will be interesting.
Another really simple song (element wise: just sub/midrange wobbles/drums/risers) with a very clear mix would be Game Over - Datsik/Flux Pavilion. I think a lot of Datsik's tunes have a minimal number of elements at the same time. The brostep stuff around that time was my first taste of dubstep and what got me into wanting to produce actually. "It's just drums and effects, this must be so easy to make!" And of course I wanted to impress my friends. Then I found DSF and fell down the rabbit hole. Through DSF I was introduced to the more diverse side of dubstep and now I tell my friends "It's not that easy" and try to get them into bass weight meditation. /producer life story

I think I'll try my hand at a cover of Game Over.
Edit: The vocal part has some terrible dc offset!

knife party - fire hive
simple melody with just a few bass patches + and most of the sounds are just the band pass and scream filters on massive with the res all the way up. i managed to copy 2 or 3 of the basses exact so i know it must have been originally made in massive.

Don't just get caught up in copying brostep tracks, have a stab at all different genre, techno, house, blues, jazz... maybe do one a week you should learn loads, do lots of listening, and reading too. Should make you a more well rounded producer

acrap wrote:would you guys consider different types of electronic music as "easier" in terms of structure to produce as opposed to brostep

Pretty much the easiest there is when it comes to structure.