Creating heavy heavy heavy techno sub bass lines!

[Críoch]

haha - I've got so many files on my HD called subsekt kick/bass atm

Your one is excellent Renato.. nice bit of funk to it. Mine is heads down.. yours is a lot more groovin' than my one. I like that.

I'm certainly no master at synthesis.. but I find you can sometimes get a bit of clicking from the filter envelope too as well as the ADSR. So if you cant get rid of it, try making the A & the R on the filter envelope a bit longer till it stops. Just a tiny bit on the A - unless you want a "whoomp" on the filter.

With the audio thing.. sometimes if something is too straight- or I get sick of it.. I'll bounce to audio & shorten the loop & move it around a bar or 1/2 bar to find something cool. Moving the start point can be great also.. and if you zoom in, you can move it more finely. Never know. Its also cool with a Porc pattern or something about an octave or 2 up, then pitch it down by 12 or 24. You can sometimes get something cool with that. You may need to edit the volume envelope in the clip to cut out any clicking that the sample gets from being fkkd with.

Dont forget you can do the same in midi.. shorten your clip and move the bar around.. and move the start point.

[benjaminwilliams]

@helloitsmeagain, what a freakin nice sounding bass!!!! loving it

[Mattias]

Ok I'm gonna post "the boring but effective" way of making useful basses then hehe.

It's a typical moving bass which been extremely popular for over a decade. You can use it very well with more "popular" Techno coming from labels like, say, Bumload, 8Sided Dice, Sleaze everything that gets featured on Beatport (!).

I skip the previous kicks I made for this file because that type of kick just doesn't fit very well with this kind of bass-line.

It all comes to to a simple concept and use of LFO's and a bit of compression, side-chain & EQ (if you want).
Any synth can do this but I choose the Synleth 1 since its pretty standard these days and have good modulation capacity.
Check the adjustments I've made on the synth. Small changes in the LFOs can create totally new bass-lines, also mess with the waveforms as well. In this example I mixed in a bit of Sawtooth just to get a more gritty feel but its definitely not necessary. Remember to set the EQ so the bass and kick doesn't crash too much, also you can adjust the gain / scope out of the sine-wave tones where it sounds too much. Remember that EQ only affects the "volume" of the sine tones since it's just that, a simple sine tone. A few dB cut is usually enough.

kikbass1.jpg (398.08 KiB) Viewed 10240 times

kikbass2.jpg (153.88 KiB) Viewed 10240 times

kikbass3.jpg (104.5 KiB) Viewed 10240 times

[helloitsmeagain]

hey mattias, thanks for that!

it may be common, but there's a reason. anyway, now i know how to make it, it's gonna be getting even more common!

[Program]

Nice example Mattias, one question tho. This full cut you did on the EQ; is it to make room for the kick which is peaking in that area?

[Mattias]

The cut on the EQ is because I when the note around 70 Hz takes up too much "space" or "action" in the bassline.

[Program]

I see...Thanks!

[jacksonick]

A good tip I heard recently was to have the main oscillator as just a sine wave, the second as another sine wave but with a fast random lfo and then a third as low passed noise.

[Mattias]

hey mattias, thanks for that!

it may be common, but there's a reason. anyway, now i know how to make it, it's gonna be getting even more common!

No problem!

[bram2000]

Very helpful Mattias, thanks!

I've been trying to find a nice sub bass layer to fit with a tune I'm working on; played with your technique for half an hour and hey presto, it sounds great . I found it really handy to resample the LFO bass (from Sylenth), LP filter it right down, and then loop 1 bar of it and mess with the warp markers. It seems you could get many different feels from just the same 1 bar loop this way (not to mention all of the flexibility you have when creating the loop in the first place).

Thanks again.

[Mattias]

Yes that's cool. Resample, filter and play with start / stop marker, pitch and whatever. I also like to do what you do there, make synth stuff then make audio of it and tweak it further that way.

That type of bassline is very easy to make variable and flexible with just some small pitch / LFO changes so it's very handy!

[nicolas oliver]

Thanks for that detailed post Mattias! I will definitely apply it to future productions

[Críoch]

Ok Chaps.. anybody else going to have a crack at this?

Would be cool to see some more people involved..

[helloitsmeagain]

Hey guys, I'm hyped to see some more sharing on this topic! I'm happy to keep sharing if you are!

[Críoch]

C'mon people - I'm gonna start deleting A/c's & banning IP's if we dont get some more

[Patriek]

Some decent nazi modding going on here ICN!

[Críoch]

ROFL Patriek!!

I'm more of a Communist really.. I just want collectivisation

[helloitsmeagain]

ooh, we should open a politics thread!

anarchists believe in sharing... no dictatorial direction required.

[benjaminwilliams]

If somebody can tell me how to record a video in ableton i can upload a vid on of the basses I actually like...

[benjaminwilliams]

[noob]

i tried to do it with printscreen etc. but i have two screens and no idea how to only print the right screen. Also i do not have the patience to find out.

[/noob]