The Official Growl Bass Thread

[OmegaMode]

Sorry Omega, cant remember everything hahah! Thank you!

All good! I like the sound alot! Big Up for you!

[OmegaMode]

There are two different growls in this and I'm willing to give them away to you guys! warning though! they are very short so pay attention to them!
Soundcloud

0:27-0:34-0:37

and I have a skrillex/barely alive style growly "wHOMp wHOMp" sound in there as well!

Mainly used Fm8, and Massive for them and I will be giving patches away!

[JackSawyersMusic]

There are two different growls in this and I'm willing to give them away to you guys! warning though! they are very short so pay attention to them!
Soundcloud

0:27-0:34-0:37

and I have a skrillex/barely alive style growly "wHOMp wHOMp" sound in there as well!

Mainly used Fm8, and Massive for them and I will be giving patches away!

Pretty sick bro

[Musick]

There are two different growls in this and I'm willing to give them away to you guys! warning though! they are very short so pay attention to them!
Soundcloud

0:27-0:34-0:37

and I have a skrillex/barely alive style growly "wHOMp wHOMp" sound in there as well!

Mainly used Fm8, and Massive for them and I will be giving patches away!

Someone's been watching virtual riots YouTube tutorials (the chiptune)

In all seriousness though, awesome job and I'm looking forward to the patches

[IamDroid]

There are two different growls in this and I'm willing to give them away to you guys! warning though! they are very short so pay attention to them!
Soundcloud

0:27-0:34-0:37

and I have a skrillex/barely alive style growly "wHOMp wHOMp" sound in there as well!

Mainly used Fm8, and Massive for them and I will be giving patches away!

Wait... hold on. Does this mean that you are not doing the write up on the sounds from Alien Poisoning?

[OmegaMode]

There are two different growls in this and I'm willing to give them away to you guys! warning though! they are very short so pay attention to them!
Soundcloud

0:27-0:34-0:37

and I have a skrillex/barely alive style growly "wHOMp wHOMp" sound in there as well!

Mainly used Fm8, and Massive for them and I will be giving patches away!

Someone's been watching virtual riots YouTube tutorials (the chiptune)

In all seriousness though, awesome job and I'm looking forward to the patches

I figured the chip tune out with one of his tuts but yeah I am inspired by alot of artists! Patches will be uploaded real soon!

[OmegaMode]

There are two different growls in this and I'm willing to give them away to you guys! warning though! they are very short so pay attention to them!
Soundcloud

0:27-0:34-0:37

and I have a skrillex/barely alive style growly "wHOMp wHOMp" sound in there as well!

Mainly used Fm8, and Massive for them and I will be giving patches away!

Wait... hold on. Does this mean that you are not doing the write up on the sounds from Alien Poisoning?

No not yet but Im not totally sure how to go about this growl things because I used 3 different flps to make them...

[Draastex]

Ive been trying to get Hooks sound, Am I at least in the ball park?

Soundcloud

[OmegaMode]

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.

I think I want to crack the code to his growls and I will succeed!

[OmegaMode]

Here's a new one!

Soundcloud

[Labco]

Here's a new one!

Soundcloud

Third ones actually nice, that just eq modulation?

[OmegaMode]

Here's a new one!

Soundcloud

Third ones actually nice, that just eq modulation?

Yeahh I made my own vowel in the eq and moved it around.



and the sound source is a fast repeated house kick. after that its just eqing and one instance of ohmicide.

[AvinosisOfficial]

First ever post!

So anyways, I've been following the board for a while, a long while.
Props to Hook for all the success he's been getting.

So I followed Ocular's post about the vocodex bass and kinda modified like kurnauskis. Instead of resampling like Ocular, after the vocodex I ran it through another EQ, WOW filter, and maximus. I tried to make it less "wet" sounding and more full.

Soundcloud
Any thoughts? good? bad?
The reason i'm posting is I can upload the FLP if anyone wants it. Along with any screen shots.
Just trying to give back to the community after reading the thread for so long.

and OMEGA, let's get some tips on those wrecking ball growls finally! I keep checking back for some presets or screenshots and nothing! They sound great though.

Thanks to everyone who has contributed this far!

[Draastex]

First ever post!

So anyways, I've been following the board for a while, a long while.
Props to Hook for all the success he's been getting.

So I followed Ocular's post about the vocodex bass and kinda modified like kurnauskis. Instead of resampling like Ocular, after the vocodex I ran it through another EQ, WOW filter, and maximus. I tried to make it less "wet" sounding and more full.

Soundcloud
Any thoughts? good? bad?
The reason i'm posting is I can upload the FLP if anyone wants it. Along with any screen shots.
Just trying to give back to the community after reading the thread for so long.

and OMEGA, let's get some tips on those wrecking ball growls finally! I keep checking back for some presets or screenshots and nothing! They sound great though.

Thanks to everyone who has contributed this far!

Yes Yes Yes, Sounds amazing dude you think you could upload a clip with some pitch bending.

[AvinosisOfficial]

Yes Yes Yes, Sounds amazing dude you think you could upload a clip with some pitch bending.

Alright so I modified the pitch bend amount in fm8 and messed with the automation a little more and came up with this:

Soundcloud

I don't know how much of a difference it really made with the pitch automation.
But if anyone wants to try and take it from here and see what they come up with
Here's the FLP(11.03):
http://www.sendspace.com/file/khwqbd

[Draastex]

Yes Yes Yes, Sounds amazing dude you think you could upload a clip with some pitch bending.

Alright so I modified the pitch bend amount in fm8 and messed with the automation a little more and came up with this:

Soundcloud

I don't know how much of a difference it really made with the pitch automation.
But if anyone wants to try and take it from here and see what they come up with
Here's the FLP(11.03):
http://www.sendspace.com/file/khwqbd

Wow That is siiiiiick, Love it i should probably start using fm8 haha. I usually make growls in massive with only one or two osc, but the fx chains are usually huge. Like the ones in my jericho wip. Heres one i was working on last night.

Soundcloud

[hendrix126]

Just admire this for a bit
Soundcloud

[AvinosisOfficial]

Needs eq and MB Compression but i'm getting closer hook, i'm getting closer

https://soundcloud.com/labco/hooky/s-okDgQ

Any chance you can reveal what's going on here? links dead. but i remember thinking this was pretty good. Screenshots plzz?

[bouncingfish]

Shit. THe last two pages of this thread have been amazing, thanks hook. Lots of great growls lately, OceanAires your growls are amazing!

[AvinosisOfficial]

Shit. THe last two pages of this thread have been amazing, thanks hook. Lots of great growls lately, OceanAires your growls are amazing!

Thanks mate!