Sub Bass Techniques

[Kit Fysto]

I like to do it all on one track of operator playing through the whole song. I usually mimic the notes and bends of the other instruments, but at times, thinking of it like a bass guitar and playing different notes than the midrange basses, keys, whatever can sound cool. Probably a byproduct of my rock music background

[Gravehill]

Just one track..thats your bass line. Single mono sine wave 40 - 80 HZ no distortion or saturation or any shit like that

[bassinine]

plain sine. 3-5 db saturation, high-pass to taste.

if you want to change it up add some pitch bends/glides/env's.

pretty much all there is to it. mimicking refers to having your sub bass play the same melody as your mids.

and you can gate it if you want, but volume automations/envelopes always sound better. can side chain if ya want, i usually do a little bit if it's long notes mimicking midrange. but if your sub is following your kick, like an 808, then you won't want to side-chain.

High cut you mean surely? If you high pass, you're removing all low end?

whoops, yeah, high cut. but like the other guy said, always good to get rid of sub freqs below 25hz (but, mostly that comes from poor processing/bass patch).

[OfficialDAPT]

Check it out if you want a subbass that moves with your sounds.

[Samuel_L_Damnson]

I tend to make a few becuase i usually have a few midrange synths. SOmetimes i put a pitch envelope on it with a very short decay to mimic 808s.

[Samuel_L_Damnson]

I tend to make a few becuase i usually have a few midrange synths. SOmetimes i put a pitch envelope on it with a very short decay to mimic 808s.

[Genevieve]

I only use a clean sinewave with nothing on it, literally. And sometimes I have it do its own thing compared to the rest of the track. Like if you have some midrange bass stabs, having the sub play a different note can make for some cool harmony.

[Samuel_L_Damnson]

yeah i dont understand the whole sub saturation/distortion thing. They never sound more powerful to me, just more muddy.

[mthrfnk]

yeah i dont understand the whole sub saturation/distortion thing. They never sound more powerful to me, just more muddy.

Sounds nice if you do it right. It also sounds good when you don't have a load of midrange and the sub + added harmonics is basically the lead sound of the track.

[fragments]

yeah i dont understand the whole sub saturation/distortion thing. They never sound more powerful to me, just more muddy.

Sounds nice if you do it right. It also sounds good when you don't have a load of midrange and the sub + added harmonics is basically the lead sound of the track.

Great points here. I would never layer a saturated sub with midrange personally. Things get muddy down there quick. Also, typically I find that by the end of making the track it sounds better if you saturate the the sub until you can hear the saturation/dist. pretty clearly then back it off until it's just barely audible. But in sparse/subby/deep tunes I don't really think of a saturated sub as just sub bass--more the the bass of the tune. I think it's an important distinction. Whether we are talking about adding weight to mid-range in the >100hz region or we talking about "deep" bass. blah blah blah

[Gravehill]

yeah i dont understand the whole sub saturation/distortion thing. They never sound more powerful to me, just more muddy.

Sounds nice if you do it right. It also sounds good when you don't have a load of midrange and the sub + added harmonics is basically the lead sound of the track.

But if thats the case you should just make it a whole separate track because a mono midrange isn't gonna sound fantastic plus you dont wanna weaken your sub especially if its getting played next to other tunes in a club

it just doesn't make sense to do anything to the sub other than pitch and volume IMHO

[bassinine]

every mastering engineer with saturate the sub a bit, so really, saying it will lose power next to others because of this is wrong. yes, your track will never sound as powerful as those mastered professionally, that's a given.

anyways, ~4 db saturating, 12db/oct low pass... Usually around 100hz.

[Gravehill]

every mastering engineer with saturate the sub a bit, so really, saying it will lose power next to others because of this is wrong. yes, your track will never sound as powerful as those mastered professionally, that's a given.

anyways, ~4 db saturating, 12db/oct low pass... Usually around 100hz.

Im not sure what you mean with the first part but there is no reason to ever add harmonics to a sub bass

EDIT: ill elaborate a bit more; adding harmonics to your sub is fine if thats the sound you want but if thats what you are gonna do then you should duplicate the sub track, distort/saturate and process it however you want and then highpass it around 80 or 100 cycles or whatever and treat it as a separate track. Your sub is your sub, it doesn't need harmonics

[mthrfnk]

yeah i dont understand the whole sub saturation/distortion thing. They never sound more powerful to me, just more muddy.

Sounds nice if you do it right. It also sounds good when you don't have a load of midrange and the sub + added harmonics is basically the lead sound of the track.

But if thats the case you should just make it a whole separate track because a mono midrange isn't gonna sound fantastic plus you dont wanna weaken your sub especially if its getting played next to other tunes in a club

it just doesn't make sense to do anything to the sub other than pitch and volume IMHO

Why can't I have mono midrange, if you can call the harmonics from a saturated/distorted sub midrange... What if it gets played in a club with a mono system?

If I was really bothered about the lack of width on the borderline low-midrange I'd just frequency split and spread the top end rather than having two different tracks.

The point I was making was not neccesarily to fill the midrange with distortion as you would a bro/electro "bass", it was that you can add "warmth" or higher harmonics to give the bass a fuller sound which is appropriate if you want that as the main element of the track, accompanied by say just drums, pads and maybe a melody. That way you still have a nice weight of frequencies but without all the muddiness that can occur with layering midrange or high end lead sounds. Also if done correctly you're not going to weaken your sub that much.

I've said it a thousand times on here: each to their own, do what you think sounds good

but there is no reason to ever add harmonics to a sub bass

Why? Is that a rule?

[Gravehill]

yeah i dont understand the whole sub saturation/distortion thing. They never sound more powerful to me, just more muddy.

Sounds nice if you do it right. It also sounds good when you don't have a load of midrange and the sub + added harmonics is basically the lead sound of the track.

But if thats the case you should just make it a whole separate track because a mono midrange isn't gonna sound fantastic plus you dont wanna weaken your sub especially if its getting played next to other tunes in a club

it just doesn't make sense to do anything to the sub other than pitch and volume IMHO

Why can't I have mono midrange, if you can call the harmonics from a saturated/distorted sub midrange... What if it gets played in a club with a mono system?

If I was really bothered about the lack of width on the borderline low-midrange I'd just frequency split and spread the top end rather than having two different tracks.

The point I was making was not neccesarily to fill the midrange with distortion as you would a bro/electro "bass", it was that you can add "warmth" or higher harmonics to give the bass a fuller sound which is appropriate if you want that as the main element of the track, accompanied by say just drums, pads and maybe a melody. That way you still have a nice weight of frequencies but without all the muddiness that can occur with layering midrange or high end lead sounds. Also if done correctly you're not going to weaken your sub that much.

I've said it a thousand times on here: each to their own, do what you think sounds good

but there is no reason to ever add harmonics to a sub bass

Why? Is that a rule?

I definitely get what you're saying, I edited my last post as well when you were typing this. And as I said in another thread, there are of course no rules in music - but there are certain practices that seem to work for a lot of people!

of course you can have mono midrange but its just bad practice IMO to go and distort/saturate and process your sub directly

[mthrfnk]

yeah i dont understand the whole sub saturation/distortion thing. They never sound more powerful to me, just more muddy.

Sounds nice if you do it right. It also sounds good when you don't have a load of midrange and the sub + added harmonics is basically the lead sound of the track.

But if thats the case you should just make it a whole separate track because a mono midrange isn't gonna sound fantastic plus you dont wanna weaken your sub especially if its getting played next to other tunes in a club

it just doesn't make sense to do anything to the sub other than pitch and volume IMHO

Why can't I have mono midrange, if you can call the harmonics from a saturated/distorted sub midrange... What if it gets played in a club with a mono system?

If I was really bothered about the lack of width on the borderline low-midrange I'd just frequency split and spread the top end rather than having two different tracks.

The point I was making was not neccesarily to fill the midrange with distortion as you would a bro/electro "bass", it was that you can add "warmth" or higher harmonics to give the bass a fuller sound which is appropriate if you want that as the main element of the track, accompanied by say just drums, pads and maybe a melody. That way you still have a nice weight of frequencies but without all the muddiness that can occur with layering midrange or high end lead sounds. Also if done correctly you're not going to weaken your sub that much.

I've said it a thousand times on here: each to their own, do what you think sounds good

but there is no reason to ever add harmonics to a sub bass

Why? Is that a rule?

I definitely get what your saying, I edited my last post as well when you were typing this. And as I said in another thread, there are of course no rules in music - but there are certain practices that seem to work for a lot of people!

of course you can have mono midrange but its just bad practice IMO to go and distort/saturate and process your sub directly

I get what you're saying for sure, I'm not saying I do this it all the time... just sometimes I do and it sounds nice. I should probably point out most of the time when I do this I'm not using a pure sine as the sub... so that obviously helps harmonics wise

[bassinine]

dude, you don't know what you're talking about. proof that harmonics are added to any fucking sub in the world:

take ANY track (pop, edm, rap) with a deep sub that goes down to ~50hz according to a specrum.

now, play that song on speakers that only register to 80hz (pretty much any standard 4-6"speaker that doesn't have a sub).

notice how you can still hear the sub when it dips down to 50hz, but your speakers only register to 80hz? fucking harmonics on the sub. god damnit. that's why they fucking do it, so the sub doesn't COMPLETELY disappear as soon as you play it on speakers that can't register that low.

[Gravehill]

dude, you don't know what you're talking about. proof that harmonics are added to any fucking sub in the world:

take ANY track (pop, edm, rap) with a deep sub that goes down to ~50hz according to a specrum.

now, play that song on speakers that only register to 80hz (pretty much any standard 4-6"speaker that doesn't have a sub).

notice how you can still hear the sub when it dips down to 50hz, but your speakers only register to 80hz? fucking harmonics on the sub. god damnit. that's why they fucking do it, so the sub doesn't COMPLETELY disappear as soon as you play it on speakers that can't register that low.

I dont own any system that stops at 80 hz XD

but seriously man, thats not what I meant. Of course any track is gonna have harmonics that are an implied part of the sub, but they're NOT the sub. sub is sub. you know what i mean? why not keep it separate. I didn't mean to imply that it was the only right way but I think its a good idea, like whenever i want to saturate my sub i just send it to an aux channel and high-pass that a bit and keep it separate, because like what if you wanna do some extra processing or stereo effects/reverb or something? why do that shit to your sub? I cant imagine how you could conclude that i dont know what im talking about from a few posts in a thread I havent even said much, just offering my 2 cents

[bassinine]

you don't need to seperate the harmonics that saturation adds to another channel.

and why would you ever add reverb or stereo effects to a sub? even if it is on the harmonics... keep it mono.

basically, all i'm saying. every pro in the world does it this way: plain sine, saturated ~4dB, low passed with a light slope (search for any of the Q+A's here on this website, downlink, depone, etc). if you don't want to do it that way, that's fine, just saying there's a reason EVERY SINGLE pro does it this way.

and even if you don't do it this way on a track, the mastering engineer will.

[Gravehill]

you don't need to seperate the harmonics that saturation adds to another channel.

and why would you ever add reverb or stereo effects to a sub? even if it is on the harmonics... keep it mono.

basically, all i'm saying. every pro in the world does it this way: plain sine, saturated ~4dB, low passed with a light slope (search for any of the Q+A's here on this website, downlink, depone, etc). if you don't want to do it that way, that's fine, just saying there's a reason EVERY SINGLE pro does it this way.

and even if you don't do it this way on a track, the mastering engineer will.

All of the pro producers Ive ever seen swear by doing absolutely nothing to their sub except pitch and volume modulation. Ive never watched any mix engineers work though