HOW TO BASSLINE Thread

The vst will get you so far but they're really meant for sound creation and modulation of the particulars. Plugins are what kind of fill it out and polish it from what I've noticed. I like using a guitar compressor from the Jack Joseph Puig stuff because of the range of options you get with manipulating the sound with a compressor. Cyanide is a good one for adding distortion and I started playing around with Dada Life's Sausage Fattener as a good, simple warmifier. Also, a whiile back someone put me on to what they called the "Rule of 3s". In post production to you triplicate your bassline stem and then eq them for lo, mid and hi, respectively, compress them together and you get an awesome "full" yet "hollow" sound that sits really nice with the sub and kicks.
 
https://soundcloud.com/https%3A%2F%2Fsoundcloud.com%2Fartifexstudios%2Fsine-compression-filtering-repeat-sampler-reverb-multiband-compression
https://soundcloud.com/https%3A%2F%2Fsoundcloud.com%2Fartifexstudios%2Fsine-compression-filtering-resampling-reverb-repeat

I started with a wavetable I created in Serum that goes from a sine wave to a more softclipped sine wave on the WT-pos, then I mapped that to an LFO to create some subtle movement before running it into a compressor. I used 'the Glue', 0.01 attack, 1.2 release, -20db threshold, soft clipping on and then bring up the make up gain to taste. Next I added a notch filter with some heavy automation sweeping up and down pretty random, followed by another compressor to even out the levels. Now I filtered out all the sub frequencies and sticked a clean sub underneath. Bounced this to audio for the next step. Now I made some copies of this bounce but then some stretched and others pitched up and bounced these as well.

Now I took these files and put them all in instances of the Ableton sampler. From now on it's all been pretty much guesswork but I can try to describe. In Abletons sampler there are a few things I've used to achieve these sounds, mostly just playing with the start position and the loop markers, this is really powerful. Combine that with pitch envelopes, more filtering and/or some FM using the OSC tab in Sampler. I also put the Sampler to monophonic with portamento and create some glides here and there. Finally just go nuts with automating anything like the pitch envelope or filters for super morphing stuff.

Lastly I've added some reverb to it, but make sure that the reverb only affects the mids and highs. Then some multiband compression to even out the levels one final time.
 
Meiosis said:
so... what kind of reverb settings ?
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Just a random medium to big reverb on the Max Convolution Reverb Pro inside Ableton 9, anything with a decent decay should work. Then make sure that the reverb is highpassed so the sub doesn't get any reverb on it and stays clean.
 
I've got another favour to ask of you guys on a bassline, can't put my finger on where to start with this one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZEGUnRHWJbM

Kicks in at 1.10.
If an actual copy of the tune (the youtube clips shortened) you can hear it on it's own at 4:28

I can tell it's being modulated by some sort of LFO, but I can seem to choose the right wave (triangle was the closest I got) and don't know what processing to put on it afterwards.
Can anyone help me out? :) Cheers
 
smoothassilk said:
I always thought it was because it was the limit of human hearing/ speaker systems.
Anything below 20hz no-one is ever going to hear, so highpass it out just in case it eats any headroom.
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Even though you can't hear it, you can feel it. It does eat up headroom, but if left in wouldn't it hit the crowd harder on a large system? Maybe I'm wrong here. And that's also assuming the system your playing on doesn't have an EQ cutting 20 & bellow that the sound engineer slapped on it.

Reminds we.... We used to play at a club in town. They had a pretty good system, but our tunes just didn't hit right. Like, they seemed to have no sub at times. The sound guy wasn't always there. We would bring and set up all the tables, monitors, CDJ's, MIC's, etc. And plug everything into the clubs system. But some of the systems controls were in this locked rack/cabinet. One night we were setting up and someone from the club forgot to lock the rack, so we helped ourselves..... Turns out they had a EQ on the whole system cutting everything from 50hz and bellow! Fixed that issue and the place was bumping finally.

:: sent from android with tapatalk ::
 
Know One said:
Even though you can't hear it, you can feel it. It does eat up headroom, but if left in wouldn't it hit the crowd harder on a large system? Maybe I'm wrong here. And that's also assuming the system your playing on doesn't have an EQ cutting 20 & bellow that the sound engineer slapped on it.

Reminds we.... We used to play at a club in town. They had a pretty good system, but our tunes just didn't hit right. Like, they seemed to have no sub at times. The sound guy wasn't always there. We would bring and set up all the tables, monitors, CDJ's, MIC's, etc. And plug everything into the clubs system. But some of the systems controls were in this locked rack/cabinet. One night we were setting up and someone from the club forgot to lock the rack, so we helped ourselves..... Turns out they had a EQ on the whole system cutting everything from 50hz and bellow! Fixed that issue and the place was bumping finally.

:: sent from android with tapatalk ::
Click to expand...

I'm not sure if you would or not: 20Hz is actually a whole octave below 40Hz, which is more normal for a sub.
 
Can anyone help me remake this bassline from TC's bootleg of Get Lucky?
at 1:15
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLJXp8Tsxis
I have Massive, I tried many times to get close to it, but I can't recreate that crisp in the highs and most importantly tha movement in the bass. I'm quite new into dnb so I don't know all the tricks... I used to do filter house and hiphop/trap... so this is kinda different to me.. thanks in advance
 
zillo said:
Can anyone help me remake this bassline from TC's bootleg of Get Lucky?
at 1:15
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLJXp8Tsxis
I have Massive, I tried many times to get close to it, but I can't recreate that crisp in the highs and most importantly tha movement in the bass. I'm quite new into dnb so I don't know all the tricks... I used to do filter house and hiphop/trap... so this is kinda different to me.. thanks in advance
Click to expand...

Sounds like FM synthesis. It's actually quite similar to a patch I've made. If you have FM8, try modulating a sine wave using a triangle turned up to a high multiplier.
 
Can anyone hazard a guess as to how Loefah made this b-line please


Sine wave plus overdrive?
 
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