Spectrasoul/Break Bass Snarl

Alexi

Drench Audio
VIP Junglist
Joined
May 21, 2007
Location
Bristol/Southampton
I'm not looking to create full basslines, just the 'snarl' (best word I could think of to describe it) that producers like Break & Spectrasoul use.

Couple of examples

Every 3rd & 4th bar after the drop

Around 2:14

Any help would be great, cheers
 
Last edited by a moderator:
im pretty sure he has an automation running on the mid bass which is linked to his lowpass (maybe bandpas etc) filter, im guessing he draws in the "growls" where and when he wants them. i think the trick here is to make and be happy with your growl/ harmonic content before hand cause thats what your gonna be hearing when you modulate that filter.

do you have massive or albino, what daw are you using? as long as you know how to automate perameters youll be fine, just experiment with diffrent waves and mix them ect. its good to have s sub that incorporates texture as the growl sort of becomes more alive. theres lots of ways to achieve this really. effects play a fairly big role too otherwise it would sound toooo dry imo. for that second tune it sounds like theres a fixed lfo or automated (filter 1 lowpass cut) lfo on that wave.... imagine a sine wave for example.... now imagine that sine wave has the same shape as a sine but the outline of the wave is wobbly, ill try and get a pic up cause its hard to describle. btw i have no idea how advanced you are and dont mean to sound patronizing ;)
 
cheers mate, I knew it would be mainly about automating filters, but everything I tried ended up sounding like a 4x4 garage wobble.

My musical knowledge has always been better than my synthesis, so this is the kinda stuff I'm just picking up as I go along.

I've got albino, and am on Ableton, but will just continue to experiment with the parameters you've said. nice one
 
ar nice you got albino, maybe start with a good sounding preset and just tweak it play around with the octaves. im not sure how youd go about automating in ableton but its well worth learning. something like a straight up sawtooth wave wouldnt be ideal for growly stuff although it could be used on the top end for a bit of rasp. in albino theres a preset under "deep basses" called bass molecules... youll have to adjust this like sustain etc but that could be a good start. just gotta get that lowpass in action.
 
It looks to me, once the sound's cut off is opened is where you should start from. It sounds like a distorted saw wave possibly. There must be an LFO or automatation or both on the cutoff with some resonance but not much at all. It seems there is loads of midranged stuff, so EQ the high's a bit down, right round -5db possibly. There might be some white noise in there that is highpassed. The distortion might be a sinus distortion (you can make that with tri-dirt or with luck, audicity) but there also seems like there is a crunch distortion ontop of all that. The sub is definitely split away from the growly bits you describe. There seems like there is an input gain automation that goes up to increase the amount of distortion after a 1/4 of a bar or so. Sounds a bit like calyx and teebe use similar distortion, look at their studio video, and see what they use. I think they used a bass pod or something of the like. oh and it doesn't sound like a tube distortion so dont bother
 
Lately all of this kinda stuff has come from resampling bass sounds. Basically you just find a nice reece to start with, modulate it a bit with a filter envelope, then bounce it into a wav. Open that again, distort a little, make a new envelope to it with a different filter and maybe some chorus or something, resample again. Then reverse it, do a lfo filter to it with another type of filter, resample etc.

A lot of it is about the properties of the distortion you use too. You can do minor changes with any tube simulation, but the more dramatic changes will require something like a waveshaper. Try changing the order of the effects in the resampling chain etc.

It's not very helpful but that's the way they do it. It's rarely a source from a single synth or the tone of a single filter sound, it's resampling.
 
you can also do it by pocketing frequencies. Take your bassline in its midi / VST form and copy it twice (one for each frequency range low / mid / high) so you have three identical copies of the same bassline. Then apply your modulations, or effects on each slice of the bassline, seperately from each other.

Ex (Low) i usually just use a slight bit of compression and make sure its nice and clean and fat. depending on the sound sometimes a very light touch of reverb is nice. You wont need too much modulation and you may want to remove some of the intricacies in your bassline (going from 5 notes down to three and extending some notes) - this is your low end sub bass.

(mid) this is where the majority of the action happens. Lots of modulation and play around with different types of effects like distortion and flanger (dont be afraid to modulate some of these parameters either). Play around with it, if your modulation movement is in your midrange and you play it with your your more basic low end riff, it should get you pretty darn close to the sound you are looking for.

(high) this is where you can chop down the midi notes a bit from your original lick, use lots of distortion and sometime a touch of delay.

If you want to watch a really great video, sabre explains this technique really well toward the end of his Producer Masterclass video he did for Computer Music magazine a little way back. Id link ya but youtube is blocked at my work.
 
Those were all removed :(

possibly get them other ways?...


You know I wish I youtube downloaded all those before I know they would go away. They are being selfish when they are asking good money for helping people out.
 
Back
Top Bottom