Getting that "minimal/deep" dnb bass movement

Rubs90

Rubs90

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Easy all,

trying to get some bass movement in those dark deep dnb tunes, and I need some help. I know it's done by resampling, but I was just wondering if we could go a bit deeper into it as to how exactly do you get that movement. Is it an envelope or an LFO, and it is moving the cutoff, resonance, phaser modulation? Just curious as to how these artists can get so much movement and such sick sounds. Some examples below:



 
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it doesnt have to be done with resampling, just layering up your synths can give you great results, and if you have a fairly powerful PC, unless you are reversing or timestreching your sounds, you dont need to resample at all

the key is, as you say, filter movements, cant really give you a how-to on that, it all comes down to practice, but I would say, think of your mid-range synth layers as Texture over the sub, rather than notes on their own
 
By the way, TWO of your three example videos were posted two days ago in a similar "how do I make this bass" thread. For fucks sake.
 
Innovine said:
By the way, TWO of your three example videos were posted two days ago in a similar "how do I make this bass" thread. For fucks sake.
Click to expand...

Lol, I was in here, thinking..."I swear I posted in this thread yesterday, where the fuck has my post gone?"....turns out I was wrong.....
 
Yeah check my thread man, got some good responses :)

Fletch in particular had some good tips to help make these sort of tunes :P
 
First the synth, filter movement, and like Fletch said in the other thread, linking envelopes and lfos to other things like resonance, pulse width, saturation etc.

Also pitch. Modulate overall pitch with an envelope. Or modulate the pitch of one oscillator and leave the others.

Portamento + Mono output(one voice) and single trigger (that's what it's called in Albino3 anyway) so that if you trigger one long note and play some short notes over the top it will bend to the short notes without retriggering the lfos, can get really warpy that way.

Really get to know your synth and it's modulation matrix.

Once you have an interesting sound you could sample it (render to audio)
In favour of sampling is that it freezes all your lfo and envelope movements in place so no matter where you start playing from the movement is in the right place and the same every time.

Then do your frequency splitting, mono the low end, add fx to the mids and highs.

distortion, reverb, eq.......additional filters (formant filter can be nice), lo-fi plug, phaser, flanger, chorus, stereo spread.

Small (tiny) tweaks can make all the difference.

Render all your 'accidentally sounds awesome' bits into a sample folder even if you're not going to use it straight away.
 
subprime said:
First the synth, filter movement, and like Fletch said in the other thread, linking envelopes and lfos to other things like resonance, pulse width, saturation etc.

Also pitch. Modulate overall pitch with an envelope. Or modulate the pitch of one oscillator and leave the others.

Portamento + Mono output(one voice) and single trigger (that's what it's called in Albino3 anyway) so that if you trigger one long note and play some short notes over the top it will bend to the short notes without retriggering the lfos, can get really warpy that way.

Really get to know your synth and it's modulation matrix.

Once you have an interesting sound you could sample it (render to audio)
In favour of sampling is that it freezes all your lfo and envelope movements in place so no matter where you start playing from the movement is in the right place and the same every time.

Then do your frequency splitting, mono the low end, add fx to the mids and highs.

distortion, reverb, eq.......additional filters (formant filter can be nice), lo-fi plug, phaser, flanger, chorus, stereo spread.

Small (tiny) tweaks can make all the difference.

Render all your 'accidentally sounds awesome' bits into a sample folder even if you're not going to use it straight away.
Click to expand...

Nice one mate, sounds good. Apologies if this has been posted before, but in all fairness if it weren't for reposts 60% of the production threads wouldn't exist..
 
I got nice results recently like dis. not exactly like your examples but lowpassing this and playing with the filter a bit might get close.

Got a nice patch on Rob Papen Albino.

Split 3 ways, sub, mid, high. Then buss into 1.

Sub: compressor
Mid: autofilter bandpass w/ envelope follower
High: 3-band distortion (all with different types of dist) with LFO on the split frequencies, bitcrusher (slight)

then do some simple bassline, resample and set to the same processing chain, but adding a amp simulation to the mid and ditching the bitcrush.

Cut up single hits to pieces, do some reversals and pitch envelopes, and send some of the hits to a new channel.

Split that new channel into 2, camelphat to highs, lows empty. randomized camelphat until nice, some flanger added.

Added a reverb to the highs but with 100% dry, just lifting it up at a few fills.

Then tweaked the original bass patch a little (shortened lfo for example), and made a clone of it with more changes (BP instead of LP, more resonance, reversed the saw up envelope, etc etc).

Created a send channel with a delay, sent some of the mids there occasionally for fills.

Some of the resampled bits just went straight through without further processing, and I added a cleaner sub to hit in some of the emptier places too.

So I guess it's more like just coming up with different kinds of sounds to get movement. I usually don't resample much but the results were very nice this time around.

View attachment Aggro.mp3

edit: when I resampled the original bass patch, I remember that I just set it to play for 16 bars and recorded some filter & resonance movements, envelope depth, lfo depth and mix level live. from the result I chose the best few bits and carried on with those. Did this a few times with the changed bass patches too.
 
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A little off topic, question to Kama! How long have you been producing man? You know so much! Thanks for all the tips :)
 
Sounds awesome Kama.
Just out of curiosity, at what frequencies do you split your mids from highs or is it different depending on the sound.
Also does anyone use more than three bands when splitting the bass?
 
oh and resampling through the same split channel stack can do wonders as well. It's definately not the same as just applying more distortion, it's more like getting this effect:

[video]x0RQ2w27pW4[/video]

fuckssssake

too drunk



---------- Post added at 00:53 ---------- Previous post was at 00:48 ----------
parsons19 said:
A little off topic, question to Kama! How long have you been producing man? You know so much! Thanks for all the tips :)
Click to expand...

some 10 years altogether, 6 years more seriously.

subprime said:
Just out of curiosity, at what frequencies do you split your mids from highs or is it different depending on the sound.
Click to expand...

Usually sub below 150-200, to retain some upper bass too. mids from there to...dunno, 1200ish, 1500? Sometimes i just split into 2, at 300-500

---------- Post added at 00:57 ---------- Previous post was at 00:53 ----------

hmm that bass of mine doesnt sound that nice on it's own.
 
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