hhans wrote:
Here's one that I made in the context of a song I'm working on. I'd be happy to put a little tutorial together on here if there's any interest. It's a pretty simple bass.
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Cheers!
This was all done in Ableton Suite 8 but could be done in any DAW. Mind you, this is the process as I recall it so you won't get the same sound. Play around with each step too, you could get very different results.
Okay, I started with a single oscillator saw or square wave in Massive, but it doesn't really matter which you use. Turn up the feedback knob pretty much all the way until it is resonating on one pitch, it'll be clipping pretty badly but just let it clip. It can be any note as long as it's low because it'll be in a sampler eventually. For a little extra pitch control you can run the square/saw wave through Massive's lowpass filter and play with the Cutoff and Resonance. Record a single note for about 2 bars, freeze the track and flatten it (also called bouncing the audio/exporting as audio file) and then leave in the arrangement. Copy the entire track (should be in an audio track now) and line both audio files up in the arrangement. Now detune them from each other. Group the tracks together by selecting both of them and pressing ⌘+G or Ctrl+G. Name the group something like detuned waves for organization's sake. Create an empty audio track that receives audio from the detuned waves group track and record the audio into it, you should have a single audio file now that sounds like detuned clipping square waves. Drag the audio file into a sampler, make sure it loops correctly, and drag your favorite distortion into the effects chain (I used Native Instruments' Driver), record a couple measures of a single pitch, bounce it down to audio again, repeat if desired but make sure your end product is an audio file, not MIDI. Once you're satisfied with the sound, put a highpass filter on it and cut at about 100-200Hz. I drew in volume envelopes that looked like this:
http://i.imgur.com/g5QVlgv.png
Then I made a sub in Operator that had a volume envelope that kind of followed the one that I put on the top part of the bass. It looked like this:
http://i.imgur.com/nJvobPp.png
and I just wrote in midi for every modulation in the top part of the bass.
I realize I rambled a bit, but that's because this isn't exactly a science. These are the steps as I remember them, so you'll probably get a better end result if you do your own thing based on the steps I used. Enjoy!
TL;DR: The main part of the sound is from detuned square waves clipping a lot, NI's Driver distortion plugin, and volume envelopes. Layer a sub underneath the whole thing. Driver was free a while ago, don't know if it is anymore.