HOW TO BASSLINE Thread

I've been trying to generalize the process for making a bass. You can memorize the exact settings from a tutorial, but it won't help you make basses unless you understand all the things you need to do:

Things you need to do:
1. Start with a blank template with lots of frequencies in.
-This is usually detuned saws, but you can use anything as long as it's pitched and has the right low/mid/high balance- FM, maybe even samples of an instrument, I don't know... You want lows for weight, and mids and highs for filth and character.

2. Add major movement with a lowpass or bandpass filter (or even two, maybe?) at some point in the plugin chain. This is where 50% of the movement in a sound comes from: the rest being the pitch of the notes played and other modulation.

3. Add some more subtle movements as well.
-You can use almost anything for this: delay effects, reverb, vowely stuff, notch filtering, EQ automation, splitting frequencies, FM stuff, layering in foleys.... sky is the limit. You could link this to the filter movement or not, it's up to you

4. Compensate any changes in the frequency balance and volume that are caused by 3. This is where you need a good pair of ears, and break out the EQ and compressors.

5. Get some stereo width somehow.
-There are plenty of ways to do this, but my favourite is just to go back to the synth and pan the separate oscillators left and right a bit... put an LFO on or something. Also chorus and stereo widening tools.

Things not to do:
1.Lose your sub.
- You don't want any delay or delay based effects on your sub, it will mess with the cleaness and weight by causing phasing. Adding effects to subs is pretty pointless because sub is just a sine wave. You can add harmonics by distorting or using a square, but I don't see the point really: the harmonics aren't in the sub frequency band so they will just become part of the main bass.
- Don't pan your sub. I can't remember why you're not supposed to do this, but just don't do it. This includes putting stereo wideners on the whole bass, including sub.
- Easiest way to do this is to just highpass your main bass then add a sine wave sub. Simples.

Is that it? Did I miss anything?
 
Yo guyz!

I thought I would like to share a technique I "discovered" to make a pretty simple but massive neurobass using Sytrus. I don´t have massive so Sytrus is my bread and butter.

Step 1:

Turn all your operators freq ratio to 0.25.

Step 2:

Set Op 1 to be square and Op 2 to be triangle(75% and 25% shape respectively). Set Op 3 also but this time a sine wave.

Step 3:

Turn your freq ratio on Op 2 to about 0.2570 and on Op 3 to about 0.0010.

Step 4:

Open Op 2 and change its Skew to about 45% and Sine shaper to about 77%.

Step 5:

In FM matrix turn the second knob(numbered from left to right) under first knob(numbered from top to bottom) about 40-50% to the right and the knob right near this(to the right) about 20% to the right.

Step 6:

Add some unison, fine tune as you like. I had the second unison order which sounds better than any other order.

Step 7:

Add lowpass filter, distortion, some LFO, chorus, reverb and stuff you like. I find the VST Camel Phat 3 plugin to do this job really well.

Voila, hope you enjoy!

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To illustrate:




First bass is unprocessed. With proper modulation, FXing, filtering and EQ you should get the second result.
 
I'm gonna resurrect this thread cause I discovered something new by myself and I want to show it off...

I found a technique I hadn't discovered before, and I think it makes an interesting effect... even if it's a bit blurry and messy.

Put your filter before a ring modulator with very high mod pitch, then use a high shelf to cut out most of the screech. I did this on an otherwise standard reece (with delay and a ) and got this:


I think that this is also the secret to making those electro vowely wobbles that are around a lot too.

I tried to make the modulator the same note as the bass, (just 4 or 5 octaves up) which meant that I couldn't change which note my bass was, so I added a pitch shifter after most of the processing and automated it, which added some more character .

Have we had that technique yet? I'm starting to think that this thread must have almost every bass trick in it by now...
 
Remember, don't overdo your modulation effects (chorusing, flanging, phaser). It's all about differences in the left and right channel to get a wide stereo image. Don't rely on effects to get wide panning. Eq differently on each side, try different waveforms on each side, look into what each modulation effect actually does (modulating and eq peak, phase, pitch...).

But the trick to me is to get something that gives you synthesia, something that sounds alive and actually organic. Make a 2 bar loop, and keep automating things until it sounds like something you could describe like "that sounds like a robot shooting my fucking face off".

Some things for a reece you could do, layer the balls out of some saw waves. whatever detuning you do, make sure it's equal on both pitching up and down. Layer different types of sawwaves, different octaves, eq one differently (like in z3ta+ with all that waveshaping stuff).

Try micing up a bass amp. It'll act as a natural compressor because the large speaker will not be able to reproduce the energy of faster waves. Take the highest frequency it can reproduce (say 50 Hz for example) and find out it's wave length (about 20 ft) and find the quarter wave. This is where the wave starts to actually develop, at 90 degrees in it's period it actually has some bass
 
I would like to get some help with designing one type of bass that is particularly usual to Joe Ford style but is also played in this remix.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MwEXpP8vZD4#t=303


@1:20 you can hear that sound that reminds me of metallic guitar or something

what could be the starting point for designing that bass?



Follow the same rules as any neuro bass Except at the start of processing.

think of it as you just explained it "a metallic guitar". How would you make a metallic guitar sound. . . . . a slight pitch envelope for a pluck sound a guitar has and that metallic sound can be attained by phasing and chorus. A lot of time, for that sound I'll split the track in thirds. Make one the sub layer (high pass to 100hz) low pass the others around 100hz. . .(those numbers aren't exact. adjust to taste). for the two mid/high layers, ill pitch one up 3 semitones and pitch one down 3 semitones that'll give it a nice analog sounding phase. then for size ill pan one left and one right not too far though, you still want a good mono mix too.

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Well thats awesome. Ill check it out. you are the man, yet again. hahahah
 
ill pitch one up 3 semitones and pitch one down 3 semitones that'll give it a nice analog sounding phase. then for size ill pan one left and one right not too far though, you still want a good mono mix too.

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I think you mean 3 cents, not 3 st.... playing a tritone in the bass would be a bit harsh on the ears :D
 
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