The Official Growl Bass Thread

[mromgwtf]

I want to see ableton live with fl studio's playlist/sequencer.

Ableton's one sucks hard. The automation is just bitch.
I miss things like instrument rack and macros in fl studio... I hope they add shit like this in newer versions.

I haven't used ableton for much at all but isn't the instrument rack the same as a layer in FL?

I'm not really up on what the instrument rack and macro parts of ableton are but I thought the instrument rack was pretty much just instruments on the same channel playing off the same midi input or whatever lol not sure if that even makes sense I guess I could delete it but...

Yep, you're right.

I wish I could send you anything guys, but my dad is bitching about my grades in school, and he's like "you're not gonna touch pc until you get better grades". Yeah. Whatever. I'm lazy. I'm posting this post from my mom's notebook.

But I can give you awesome tip for creating growl basses in massive. Afair,
To get a fm modulation kinda sound, just select bend +/- mode on a waveform, and automate the intensity. It gives you a lot of movement to a waveform.

Not many peoples know that, bend +/- mode stretches the waveform, it starts fast, slows down, and ends up fast.
So imagine waveform like this:
OOOOZZZZOOOO

After enabling bend +/-
OOZZZZZZZZOO

Intensity knob is how much you stretch the waveform. If you select bend +/- mode and move the intensity knob right to the center, there will be no stretch. It will sound just like normal spectrum mode. If you start to move it to the right, it'll begin to stretch it in one way, if to the left, it'll stretch it in another way.

Hope it adds something useful to the thread

[kavaxofficial]

I totally second the bend -/+ thing. If you have Modern Talking (Modulating WT), A.I (Modulating WT and Intensity), Scrap Yard (Modulation WT and Intensity), Arctic etc.
You can get totally sloshey sounds out of Massive. Skrillex's new growls in his Holdin' On remix were made this way, And once you get the basics of which oscillator sound good then your Skrillex!!
eg Soundcloud

[kavaxofficial]

I totally second the bend -/+ thing. If you have Modern Talking (Modulating WT), A.I (Modulating WT and Intensity), Scrap Yard (Modulation WT and Intensity), Arctic etc.
You can get totally sloshey sounds out of Massive. Skrillex's new growls in his Holdin' On remix were made this way, And once you get the basics of which oscillator sound good then your Skrillex!!
eg Soundcloud

[Maxxan]

Yep, you're right.

I wish I could send you anything guys, but my dad is bitching about my grades in school, and he's like "you're not gonna touch pc until you get better grades". Yeah. Whatever. I'm lazy. I'm posting this post from my mom's notebook.

But I can give you awesome tip for creating growl basses in massive. Afair,
To get a fm modulation kinda sound, just select bend +/- mode on a waveform, and automate the intensity. It gives you a lot of movement to a waveform.

Not many peoples know that, bend +/- mode stretches the waveform, it starts fast, slows down, and ends up fast.
So imagine waveform like this:
OOOOZZZZOOOO

After enabling bend +/-
OOZZZZZZZZOO

Intensity knob is how much you stretch the waveform. If you select bend +/- mode and move the intensity knob right to the center, there will be no stretch. It will sound just like normal spectrum mode. If you start to move it to the right, it'll begin to stretch it in one way, if to the left, it'll stretch it in another way.

Hope it adds something useful to the thread

Seriously man, big ups. I like to think I know my way around massive but had no idea about HOW this actually worked. Your growls are killer as well, keep it up mate.

I was having a go at a growl yesterday and started thinking about the different stages of my sound design and I thought maybe we could share our processes in this thread, because there are so many different ways to go about it. Like where you get the actual talking movement from because I know people have really different methods here. (To clarify I don't really care how you generate the waveform and process it etc, just curious about the talking bit)

What I do is usually grab a couple different osc's until I get a bottom heavy sound with a lot of upper harmonics, and then to get it talking I just make a kind of formant in the EQ at random (no tables, I go for what sounds good) and sweep one of the bands around. That is the basis for the talking, then to get different sounds I also automate bandrejects, pitch, WT-pos, intensity and sometimes a scream filter or something as well just to get even more complex sounds, but the basis of the talking for me is always the EQ outside of the synth. I was curious where you guys get your talking from.

A lot of the growls I hear on here sounds more like it's just modulating wavetables/whatever parameters inside the synth but for me I've always had a hard time with this. My method using an EQ makes my growls a bit more reese-like and glitchy in character, I'd like to also be able to make some punchy in-your-face brostep screams so it would be cool to see how you guys do it.

[mromgwtf]

Yep, you're right.

I wish I could send you anything guys, but my dad is bitching about my grades in school, and he's like "you're not gonna touch pc until you get better grades". Yeah. Whatever. I'm lazy. I'm posting this post from my mom's notebook.

But I can give you awesome tip for creating growl basses in massive. Afair,
To get a fm modulation kinda sound, just select bend +/- mode on a waveform, and automate the intensity. It gives you a lot of movement to a waveform.

Not many peoples know that, bend +/- mode stretches the waveform, it starts fast, slows down, and ends up fast.
So imagine waveform like this:
OOOOZZZZOOOO

After enabling bend +/-
OOZZZZZZZZOO

Intensity knob is how much you stretch the waveform. If you select bend +/- mode and move the intensity knob right to the center, there will be no stretch. It will sound just like normal spectrum mode. If you start to move it to the right, it'll begin to stretch it in one way, if to the left, it'll stretch it in another way.

Hope it adds something useful to the thread

Seriously man, big ups. I like to think I know my way around massive but had no idea about HOW this actually worked. Your growls are killer as well, keep it up mate.

I was having a go at a growl yesterday and started thinking about the different stages of my sound design and I thought maybe we could share our processes in this thread, because there are so many different ways to go about it. Like where you get the actual talking movement from because I know people have really different methods here. (To clarify I don't really care how you generate the waveform and process it etc, just curious about the talking bit)

What I do is usually grab a couple different osc's until I get a bottom heavy sound with a lot of upper harmonics, and then to get it talking I just make a kind of formant in the EQ at random (no tables, I go for what sounds good) and sweep one of the bands around. That is the basis for the talking, then to get different sounds I also automate bandrejects, pitch, WT-pos, intensity and sometimes a scream filter or something as well just to get even more complex sounds, but the basis of the talking for me is always the EQ outside of the synth. I was curious where you guys get your talking from.

A lot of the growls I hear on here sounds more like it's just modulating wavetables/whatever parameters inside the synth but for me I've always had a hard time with this. My method using an EQ makes my growls a bit more reese-like and glitchy in character, I'd like to also be able to make some punchy in-your-face brostep screams so it would be cool to see how you guys do it.

Fuuuck. I was writing a kinda lenghty post about that talking, and I pressed some weird button on my mouse, and it turned off my browser, FUUUUCK.
I'll rewrite it later as I got 2 go. I was thinking about making a collab song with you, so you could learn something about this growl stuff, and I could learn something about music theory as I'm bad at it. I heard your track in your sig. Banger!

[Maxxan]

Thanks man! That sucks with the browser, I hate that. Fucking back buttons.

I'm totally down for a collab, even though I can make decent growls as well, just this particular style I got trouble with.

Soundcloud

(Song for reference)

But hit me up anytime, I'm game man!

[Sinergy]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpdUl9wNm9w

Real interesting growls in this... just a very distinct sound.

[Trichome]

theres 2 growls in my sig tune, ones a skrillexy "ryoooooryyyyy" and the others a nice "yaaiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii" with lots of harmonics i made.

[sunny_b_uk]

But I can give you awesome tip for creating growl basses in massive. Afair,
To get a fm modulation kinda sound, just select bend +/- mode on a waveform, and automate the intensity. It gives you a lot of movement to a waveform.

Not many peoples know that, bend +/- mode stretches the waveform, it starts fast, slows down, and ends up fast.
So imagine waveform like this:
OOOOZZZZOOOO

After enabling bend +/-
OOZZZZZZZZOO

Intensity knob is how much you stretch the waveform. If you select bend +/- mode and move the intensity knob right to the center, there will be no stretch. It will sound just like normal spectrum mode. If you start to move it to the right, it'll begin to stretch it in one way, if to the left, it'll stretch it in another way.

its actually just fm, no stretching. the bend modes are very useful for growls though. another good way to get nice growls is to use the sine shaper.. or even better use foldback distortion if you can find a plugin that does that, it sounds similar to fm.
tbh there are other simple ways to make growls, i use 3xosc mainly using sinewaves, lowpass in 3xosc and fruity waveshaper (not much else, long fx chains are fun but waveshaper can get you the sounds you want if you learn it inside out). i tweak waveshaper very finely and automate a lowpass (with res halfway up) before the distortion, u can get good growls with just that alone tbh. theres a free computer music version of fruity waveshaper if you guys don't use FL. i use it in step mode, good for ultra fine tweaks.

[mromgwtf]

But I can give you awesome tip for creating growl basses in massive. Afair,
To get a fm modulation kinda sound, just select bend +/- mode on a waveform, and automate the intensity. It gives you a lot of movement to a waveform.

Not many peoples know that, bend +/- mode stretches the waveform, it starts fast, slows down, and ends up fast.
So imagine waveform like this:
OOOOZZZZOOOO

After enabling bend +/-
OOZZZZZZZZOO

Intensity knob is how much you stretch the waveform. If you select bend +/- mode and move the intensity knob right to the center, there will be no stretch. It will sound just like normal spectrum mode. If you start to move it to the right, it'll begin to stretch it in one way, if to the left, it'll stretch it in another way.

its actually just fm, no stretching. the bend modes are very useful for growls though. another good way to get nice growls is to use the sine shaper.. or even better use foldback distortion if you can find a plugin that does that, it sounds similar to fm.
tbh there are much simple ways to make growls, i use 3xosc mainly using sinewaves, lowpass in 3xosc and fruity waveshaper (not much else) if you tweak waveshaper very finely and automate a lowpass before the distortion u can get good growls with just that alone. theres a free computer music version of fruity waveshaper if you guys don't use FL. i use it in step mode, good for VERY fine tweaks.

I was trying to explain it in simple language. If we are talking in more advanced level, it's called phase modulation, not frequency modulation.
If there is a signal called f(t), the bend mode is working like l(f(t), f(t * sin(pi + t * pi)), i)
where:
l - linear interpolation, l(i1, i2, delta)
t - time
i - intensity

I'm not sure about the linear interpolation part as I never programmed a PM modulator, it can be made in better way but lol.
Bend mode is modulating the phase of a waveform, not the frequency.

[Augment]

theres 2 growls in my sig tune, ones a skrillexy "ryoooooryyyyy" and the others a nice "yaaiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii" with lots of harmonics i made.

sick tune

[sunny_b_uk]

I was trying to explain it in simple language. If we are talking in more advanced level, it's called phase modulation, not frequency modulation.

fair enough & correct it is phase modulation, i just called it fm in my post since pm is generally referred to as that in fm8 etc (which is actually phase modulation since fm8 is a dx7 emulation which uses pm)
actual fm is very uncommon since it also changes the fundamental frequency (not musical).

[mromgwtf]

I was trying to explain it in simple language. If we are talking in more advanced level, it's called phase modulation, not frequency modulation.

fair enough & correct it is phase modulation, i just called it fm in my post since pm is generally referred to as that in fm8 etc (which is actually phase modulation since fm8 is a dx7 emulation which uses pm)
actual fm is very uncommon since it also changes the fundamental frequency (not musical).

Well, dx7 uses real fm not pm. I heard somewhere that a lot of "fm" soft synths are actually pm.

@edit
My bad. Even wikipedia links me to fm synthesis and tells it's using fm synthesis. But I found it on pm wiki page:

Yamaha had previously produced the first Phase Modulation synthesizers in their DX series of synthesizers: Yamaha mistakenly promoted their machines as FM when in fact used phase modulation. Both methods produce composite waveforms whose harmonics are the sum and difference of the carrier and modulator waveforms.

[mromgwtf]

Soundcloud

Quick overcompressed overlimited with 0db of dynamic range demo of a growl I made in fewteen minutes in massive.

The talking I got was by using double notch + band reject filter in series. or parallel, I don't remember.

[kryptolith]

its actually just fm, no stretching. the bend modes are very useful for growls though. another good way to get nice growls is to use the sine shaper.. or even better use foldback distortion if you can find a plugin that does that, it sounds similar to fm.
tbh there are other simple ways to make growls, i use 3xosc mainly using sinewaves, lowpass in 3xosc and fruity waveshaper (not much else, long fx chains are fun but waveshaper can get you the sounds you want if you learn it inside out). i tweak waveshaper very finely and automate a lowpass (with res halfway up) before the distortion, u can get good growls with just that alone tbh. theres a free computer music version of fruity waveshaper if you guys don't use FL. i use it in step mode, good for ultra fine tweaks.

i'd be interested to see this. i use waveshaping a lot but i can only get ugly distortion out of it, not any good harmonics (or maybe too many harmonics)

[mromgwtf]

Today I realized something in massive... lol

Open up massive, select sine wave on first oscillator, enable modulation oscilator, enable phase on osc 1, move the phase knob... what do you hear? Typical FM sound?

[mthrfnk]

Today I realized something in massive... lol

Open up massive, select sine wave on first oscillator, enable modulation oscilator, enable phase on osc 1, move the phase knob... what do you hear? Typical FM sound?

Lol. This is very useful for making reeses, especially with the PWM waveforms.

[Eskimo]

Soundcloud

Massive wavetables and some fx showoff
Can explain a bit if anyone wishes!

[mromgwtf]

Soundcloud

Massive wavetables and some fx showoff
Can explain a bit if anyone wishes!

Sounds like KTN, needs some tube saturation

Can you upload or do a screenshot of those presets? It'd be cool if so

[Eskimo]

Here, it's all in the fx and just getting the start preset to sound pretty wet
Try to just play a low saw wave, throw them fx on so it sounds phat and then start changing wavetables and messing around
(note to the world : i was hipster enough to use vocodex on synths before seamless started putting vids up )
http://imageshack.us/f/18/55855797.png/

http://imageshack.us/f/838/45100678.png/

http://imageshack.us/f/210/35981850.png/

http://imageshack.us/f/405/4fx.png/

Saturation all the way up on distortyr. Always.

Couldnt embed the images D: click on the numbers over the white thingie if the image doesnt display, imagshack doesnt like me today lol