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i just posted this. i spent a while typing and someone deleted it. I do not know why. I searched the forums and have not seen this exact topic covered at all. i have seen variations of it. i do not know why. it is my first post and i asked very nicely for some help. i dont ever post because i usually can fig stuff out on my own. can someone please help me. I would be very appreciative.

anyways this is along the lines of what i typed that got deleted.

I have a bass that was at c2. I split it to low, mids, and highs. finally after alot of resamplign i got it the way i wanted. I threw the resampled variations into drum rack and played out my bass pattern. How do you guys do your sub bass in situations like this since in reality it is just really one note chopped up and played into a melody? Do you make a sub with all one note pattern? For my less hard dark dub beats with more melody i have no problem coming up with a melody but i do not know much music and am not sure what to do. Do you only use the resampled bass cause it has the low in it?or use notes other than the one note that was sampled. This might sound really dumb. I tried my best to explain it and the first time i explained better but it took me a half hour the first time to type it and was deleted. I am confused and stuck and will appreciate any help.

I posted 3 versions below so you can get an idea of what my sub bass is at now.
version 1 with just the low mid high chopped resampleSoundcloud
version 2 with one note sub Soundcloud
version 3 Soundcloud

Those highs are hurting my ears....

advice?

wait, your freq splitting sub bass?

i think hes splitting his whole bass spectrum into sub, mids and highs.

Id honestly recommend losing the sub frequencies in your samples and getting the mids and highs down, then playing out sub bass on a piano roll to get it smooth under the rest. this way you dont have to fuss with chopped sub and everything will flow better.

also, cut your highs. it sounds like some of them are hitting at like 18k. get em down lower and turn down the highs volume level all together. its just a bit too overbearing.

stick the highs the lows and mids one to each other in a way that you could make adjustments to all of them at once...i mean put them into a sampler for example(keep them separate) and then add filter/volume/pitch modulations to all of them or only to mids and lows for example(you could make separate modulations for the highs or vice versa),,,dont do distortion on all of them cuz the lows would become mids all of a sudden...then you could resample all of the movements that you've just did and put the pieces into a drum rack(like you wanted to) - you would have mids lows and highs on the same note and modulations...

when you're making a sub for your mids you have to make it on the same note as the mids(think of it as a whole sound no matter if they're splitted off)...the other thing about the subs is that most of the time you wont need only a single sinewave - make a lowpassed saw or square or whatever just to make the whole thing more glued and like its one sound not 3 separate...

thanks guys. ya the highs are bad cause i put some mastering plugins on real fast. i am gonna take them off dunno why i did that. I think you guys are confused of my question. my question is when you make a chopped up bass that is originally all one note is your sub bass only one note on another track . do you play a melody with different notes even tho the resampled chopped up bass line hence mine is all c2 notes? i don't know much music just a little theory but i am just wondering. I can't seem to get sub bass on any tracks like this right . the chopped up bass on the tracks above was originally one baseline from massive resampled 8 bars, i then copied them 3 times and did lows mids and highs, added the effects etc, kept resampling. eventually i got the sounds i wanted and threw them into a drum rack and played them live. I am used to using an mpc. I am just stuck on how you get a sub bass to go alone with something so chopped up. is it one sustained note a lot of notes at the original note c2? or a melody including different notes ( or wouldn't that be out of key). hope that makes a little more sense

Soundcloud

here's another track i tried getting the sub bass sounding dark and dub by but i am having trouble. any suggestions?

make a separate sub

yea i have a separate sub but since the chopped up bass notes are all the same not c2 do i make it all c2 the sub or c3? or do i do other notes in the c scale? thats what i am confused about. only in this situation not other situations like my other track above.

i'm really confused as to what you're asking

nevermind, read the long post

well for one thing when you make one long midrange note to resample you shouldn't just leave it as a single note, you're still going to have to play other notes with it (unless it's like 1/2 bar low growl or something.) otherwise your entire song is going to be played in one entire note. i'm not too sure how to tell you to go about taking pieces of that note to turn them into a melody, when i do that i have the melody first and then add the automations and all that.

anyway, play the sub note the same as everything else. what everything else is is up to you

enthawizeguy wrote:advice?

Notch your individual tracks at 8khz, please.
At least on those 3 midrange snippets you posted up top. Google sibilance; and learn to avoid it like the plague.

ugh so pretty much since all the notes are c2 i am stuck with a sub that an only be c2? and yeah guys i know the hi end is bad. its cause of what i put on the master. i am gonna take it off. didn't realize it was that bad thanks

might as well trash this song. to bad i was liking it but a sub bass all c sounds bad to me i guess

enthawizeguy wrote:my question is when you make a chopped up bass that is originally all one note is your sub bass only one note on another track . do you play a melody with different notes even tho the resampled chopped up bass line hence mine is all c2 notes? I am just stuck on how you get a sub bass to go alone with something so chopped up. is it one sustained note a lot of notes at the original note c2? or a melody including different notes ( or wouldn't that be out of key). hope that makes a little more sense.

You can play the same note as the other sounds layered on top or a whole other melody which harmonizes with the rest of your tune. While there are people that would tell you to layer just a static c2 for your sub under your midrange, I would tell you to do the opposite. Learn more music theory, as that goes hand in hand with sound design, then write a melody underneath your midrange (at least that's what I do and a lot of others). And there's no need to trash anything you write as you could always come back to it after you improve. Think of it as a doodle you can come back and expand into a full blown painting.

As far as getting a sub to go along with a chopped up midrange, you have plenty of options (play more than one sustained c2 and write an entire melody in key), or play with your ADSR (automate as necessary or resample) so it fits with your midrange hits or automated filters so on so forth. Lots of options are out there, you just have to reach out there and grab it.

I've noticed with sound design its a lot easier to reverse engineer the sound you're trying to design as opposed to "designing from the ground up" which can be frustrating. Now I don't mean reverse engineer a patch, but instead, design the sound you want within the technical constraints of the tune. Is it a sustained bass hit? Is it a crazy pitched one-shot? First, think about how your sound hits, then which frequency ranges and at what amplitudes you want your sound to cover. If necessary, write it down or draw it on paper.

I suppose if you had to pick out the most applicable and helpful tidbit in my wall of text, it would be to learn the technical aspects of sound design, not matter how boring or dry it may seem, because even the most complicated sounding samples are actually quite simple and elegant by design with lots of clever post-processing.

mikeyp wrote:nevermind, read the long post

well for one thing when you make one long midrange note to resample you shouldn't just leave it as a single note, you're still going to have to play other notes with it (unless it's like 1/2 bar low growl or something.) otherwise your entire song is going to be played in one entire note. i'm not too sure how to tell you to go about taking pieces of that note to turn them into a melody, when i do that i have the melody first and then add the automations and all that.

anyway, play the sub note the same as everything else. what everything else is is up to you

So you're saying instead of resampling one single sustained note, you're saying making a melody and THEN resampling it? Or do you already have a melody in your head and are chopping up samples from the note to use as your melody?

BassSaber wrote:

mikeyp wrote:nevermind, read the long post

well for one thing when you make one long midrange note to resample you shouldn't just leave it as a single note, you're still going to have to play other notes with it (unless it's like 1/2 bar low growl or something.) otherwise your entire song is going to be played in one entire note. i'm not too sure how to tell you to go about taking pieces of that note to turn them into a melody, when i do that i have the melody first and then add the automations and all that.

anyway, play the sub note the same as everything else. what everything else is is up to you

So you're saying instead of resampling one single sustained note, you're saying making a melody and THEN resampling it? Or do you already have a melody in your head and are chopping up samples from the note to use as your melody?

say i have a decent bassline going and I kind of have in my head how I want it to move, i'll already have it laid out, i'll repeat it a million times, hook things up to my midi controller and go to town. since i'll have a hundred patterns all sounding different i can chop the notes out and put them together. just how i do it, it's pretty effective

Ah, I see, you're making variations on the melody via automation and chopping.

I'm going to take a stab at explaining this and hoping to answer your question....I believe I have cracked this "concept" myself very recently, so here goes: I'm about to type out a scenario that much resembles yours, but isn't exactly. For the sake of argument, the tune is in C minor. C because that's what you designed your sounds in, and minor b/c we all know dubstep sounds better with that minor dissonance keys. Alright here we go:

Say you designed/synthesized 3 different bass sounds, which are all 'played' on C2, because perhaps that's where all 3 sounds sounded the coolest. At this point it is important to understand:
-if you were to play those sounds on a different note, as long as it's in key of C minor, you add an additional element of novelty to your track.
moving on...
you create a melody with the 3 different sounds, all being played on C2: AABC, AACB, ABAC, ABAA.
-it's important to note that A,B,C are the 3 different bass sounds you made. The pitch is still C2, but the 'melody' is present through a 'pattern'. This is the "chopping" of the sounds that you're referring to, no?...now, to your question of:

How to design the sub bass to the melody of AABC, AACB, ABAC, ABAA...
-Just about everyone may tell you, "there are no rules", "if it sounds good, then its right", etc...I have come to realize that the right answer really should be, you have "CHOICES". Because the honest truth is good/bad practices both exist, therefore bad practice equivocally means wrong. That isn't to say that something new may come from doing the wrong thing, as much of history has proven that fact. But to not get too far off topic, and for the sake of learning, practice a few choices to see which works best for the track you're making:

You can choose to split the melody as a whole into different freq bands. In ableton, i'd group all the bass tracks into a group track, split the bands in the group channel, and of course boost the shit out of the bass. Usually this lends itself to a muddly low end because your sounds have different characteristics in the low end (by far a very simple way to explain a intricate topic, and I aim not for a second to offend anyone!!) An instance where this would work well is say you have different bass tracks utilizing different modulations and/or automations that have been duplicated from the same tone.

You can choose to slit the bands of the individual bass tracks and bring out the low end in those and try to lightly compress and match the mixdown. I usually split all my bass sounds into different bands individually anyways, but then end up cutting out the low end and replacing with a sine. (i'll explain that next)

You can choose to sustain a C sub bass note of a clean sine under the entire melody of AABC, AACB, ABAC, ABAA. That would look like this:
AABC, AACB, ABAC, ABAA
_____________________ where this line is the sustained C note, but if I were you, I'd slam that baby down to at LEAST C1. Or you might choose to do this:

AABC, AACB, ABAC, ABAA
____ _____ _____ _____ where the lines are still C sub bass notes, but instead of sustaining the course of 4 bars, it's once per bar . OR you could do what I think atticuh was saying, which is:

AABC, AACB, ABAC, ABAA
____ _____ _____ ____ where the lines are a clean sine sub bass tone being played not all just on C, but of course in the key of C minor. For instance, your sub line would go C, D, D#, D (easy people, just an example )


I really hope this helped as I try my best to bridge the communication gaps while trying not to get lost in words.

Cheers!

I mean you when making the bass you can always make a long loop of you going down a scale and then chop it up after you bounce it... or sometimes
c2 repeating can work..... You might be suprised how sometimes higher notes can affect the precieved bass note playing.
Your could dump the bottom frequencies all together and high pass it or you could deal with pitch shift artifacts and pitch shift the bass(sometimes turns out cool)
If you bounce out a couple samples of different notes the pitch shift artifacts aren't t0o bad. Get creative!