I hate to do it but......

Mr Fletch

Mr Fletch

aka KRONIX
VIP Junglist
Joined
Aug 6, 2009
Location
Essex, England
I'm afraid I have to ask the question everyone hates to see...........HOW DO I MAKE THIS SOUND....lol!;)

So I'm getting into producing some dubstep recently, but my main letdown is the "gritty as a sandy vagina" basslines! I can get them near to what I'm after but they never seem heavy or full enough. I'm ok with wobbles etc, I know how to get that part, it's the initial fat sound.

Some of you guys on here (Richie Stix, Quartus Saul, Mattix & Futile to name a few) have got it nailed so I'm hoping some of you could give me some step by step guides to getting it down, prefferably in a synth I'm used to using (Rob Papen's Predator, Albino or Blue. FL's Sytrus, 3xOsc, or Zeta). I guess it's your typical dubstep type bass I'm after.

A couple of examples of the bass I'm trying to nail are;



Any help would be hugely appreciated. I've searched youtube for tuts, and found a few, but none of them give the real dirtyness I'm after.
 
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on zeta a square with a sine an octave below adding a ditso waveform for the really whiny stuff. add a bit of soft drive to the filter and possible a bit of wide eq boost aroung 3khz. if its not fat enough then possibly add another square an octave below the original one. the only thing is im not too keen on is zetas filters, i find massive lends itself better too these sort of aggressive sounds.

hopefully that''l help a bit. alot of the reason these sounds are so fat is the mix. appying SUBTLE compression, eq and saturation to help fill them out. where they sit in comparison to the other elements allows them to fill the mix and sound fat.

that might be useless to you but hopefully you can gleam some help from it. if i get time next week i'll try and knock up a example zeta patch, im not promising anything though :)
 
Mr Fletch said:
it's the initial fat sound.
Click to expand...

thats the type of Dub Step bass i like. as a matter of fact i just listened to wheres my money a few minutes ago. Those basses are pretty heavy and sound awesome on a big system.

If you are using Reason I can make a patch for you, and send it. I made one thats pretty capable of doing those low and fat notes.

If you don't have Reason then just practice it yourself.

Two or three oscillators, some low passers with lfo sync, maybe comb filter, bit of compression, bit of maximizer, unison effect if you have it, tiny bit of EQ. Don't go crazy with the eq on these, try not to use the self ends, and just use the bump or w/e they called. Don't add any more than 5 or 6 db and just try and keep it decently straight/flat.

if you ask nicely try and get some one on skype with you or even do a screen sharing session.

Tell us what synth your using.
 
Cheers guys appreciate it. I'm not on reason mate, I use FL 8. My favourite synth right now is predator, but I also use zeta( although I'm not as educated in zeta), albino blue sytrus and 3xOsc
 
At first, I wanted to thank you for mentioning me. Very nice of you.
In This Thread I shortly described how to make one of those sounds you can hear in my track Icarus' Dream.

here is it again:
How I make those kinda sounds?

Synths (mostly 2 or 3 Osc. Use saw, square, other harsh waveforms you like) -> Distortion (analog and digital, have been a Metal Guitarplayer for years. Got proper Efx. Even the Scream 4 in Reason does a good job) -> EQ them (However you want. Oush the Midrange or the bass or both) -> Maybe some Unison and Pan FX, if you like a phaser, work with the phases or a flanger

NOW double up the synths with 3 different filters (1 on each track) (HP BP LP anything you like and play with them. try different freq and resonances together) and spit it in 3 samplers (I sometimes use the simpler in ableton). Now you got ur sound fat if you doubled it up.
If you don't understand the last part, here again.
3 Tracks -> each track (a sampler) with the sound -> each track a different filter.

The missing part is the wobble. Simple use a filter with and lfo (or even the simpler) and program your prefered Synched Rate.

That's it.


The most important part is the sound itself, what the synth and the fx does. You can even get a thick sound, if you just use 1 OSC.

Remember: If a sound is shit, leave it alone. There is no way you gonna polish it.

Hope that helps a bit.

Greetz Q

Mr Fletch said:
So I'm getting into producing some dubstep recently.
Click to expand...

Hope u get out again. I totally stuck in Dubstep :D
 
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Quartus mate, thank you for your help but I'm finding what you wrote a little difficult to understand (sorry).

So am I right in thinking, you use a synth with 3 oscillators, using all 3 or maybe 2 of those oscillators, one square, one saw, and another of random choice. Use the synth to distort it (or throw it on a mixer channel and add distort?

Then use another synth with different waveforms, repeat the process?

Or am I missing it completely?

Sorry for the noobness, I've tried following stuff like this before but never get the outcome I need. I guess what I really need is a step by step guide on one of the synth's that I already use lol.
 
Anyone else fancy helping a fellow producer out? 114 views and no one knows the answer huh? LOL!

Seriously tho, the more techniques I get to understand the better really,
 
Ok, here's my thoughts on how you do it.

You'll need a synth with 3 oscillators, use any combo of square and saw waves (remember to detune 2 of them by a few cents) or some sort of fm based synth (basically anything that'll generate LOTS of harmonic content). I like to add some subtle pitch modulation to the sound - it just makes things a little bit more expressive. Now you need to send the synth track to 3 separate buses (one for bass freqs, one for mids and one for high freqs) use hpf and lpf to isolate the freqs (remember to have the synth track set to no output). So on the bass bus (these are arbitrary figures btw, use whatever works for you) I'd use a lpf to filter out anything above 500hz; on the mids bus I'd hp at 500hz and lp at 1000hz and on the highs bus I'd hp at 1000hz. Now this gives you better control over the relative volumes of each part and you can apply separate effects to each bus (like getting a little bit of cheeky flanging going on on the mids bus).

Now route the bass, mids and highs buses to output on a different bus so you can use a bit of compression and distortion to gell the sounds together a bit more. The aim is to get a nice long and dirty note and not bother with any modulated filtering yet.

Now bounce this note and load it up in your sampler of choice (I ALWAYS use Kontact, you can get some really complex modulations going on in there). Try putting the resampled note through some of the same effects again (or different ones). Now rinse and repeat this process until you're happy with what you've got or it all went horribly wrong somewhere along the line.

Useful effects for dirty bass - bitcrusher, distortion (you'll want many stages of subtle distortion not just one with the gain all the way up, trust me, you'll get a much fatter and controllable sound by doing it that way), chorus, flanger, phaser, whatever really - your imagination is the limit. Also once you're happy with the sound send it to a reverb (remember to filter out the bass freqs) to give the highs and mids a bit of a stereo presence.

Another thing you'll want to check out considering the tracks you linked is formant filtering - that's how they get the YA YA sort of sound. Try modulating the vowel sound to get expressive wobbles.

It's kind of like asking how do noisia do their reeses? There is no "correct" method, just some pointers in the right sort of things to do. It all comes down to practice in which will help you develop the gut instinct of what processing needs to be done when and finding effects chains that work for you in your mixes. Keep at it cos I'll guarantee that at least your first 10 attempts you won't be happy with - as they say practice makes perfect.

Also have a look here: http://www.dubstepforum.com/datsik-and-excision-sounds-t141519.html cos that question gets asked all the time.
 
you have everything you need to make it... I think 75% of your battle is finding the right distortion... try using chorus and other effects.
im thinking personally that you may want to try having one of your osc an octave or 2 higher than the rest to give it a wider sound.
 
heres a ramble to add to the pile

try out loads of different combinations of waveforms together, blend them differently, modulate them using something other or aswell as than the frequency, use distortion, eq, maybe u only like the high gritt from one u have made, take the high, apply it to another synth u have made... in that first track just sounds like a fairly standard wave form with distortion + bitcrushing. if u are modulating on the frequency using a lp filter remember u can put boost quite harshly on the mid/higher end of the eq so that it isnt all lost in the wobble.

i like to make an fx chain with a few distortion units in it, then when u subtely tweak things either in the synth or in one of the distortion units u can get massive changes and varied sounds.

the first note in wheres my money sounds like fm modulation and opening a lowpass
 
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