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Tips for making Skazi type bassline


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Hello everyone, so I've been trying to make Skazi type basslines(from 2003-2005 era) And I can't seem to get anywhere close. This is pretty much exactly the sound I want to make..

 

 

I've been using Sylenth1 and Zeta+ but have gotten better results with Zeta+. Also, after switching to the bandpass filter I got that much closer to that sound(but not after wasting hours on the go to low pass filter) :)

 

....But still nothing as crisp, deep, and punchy as Skazi's stuff. :(

 

Any tips and or Vst recommendations will be gladly appreciated.

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I've also heard a lot of times that he used VB-1 at that time (which actually made a lot of Psy producers aware of that synth back in the day). Still love it because it's so easy and effective: Move Pickup and plectrum all the way to the left and add a little bit of lowpass filtering and you've got a decent starting point.

 

I also think it's possible to make this bass with almost any standard subtractive synth, the major part is processing - clever EQ, a bit of saturation, compression. I personally have always loved CamelPhat for this task. Subtle bass boost, compression, and distortion in one.

Oh, and make sure you've set your oscillators to retrigger (in sylenth this is the "retrig" button) so that every note has the same starting phase.

To get a punchy sound that cuts through the mix well you'll need transients and spaces.

Looking at the waveform helps: the bassline needs a fat "body", but also needs to be a bit louder at the start, so try to get a little peak at the beginning (the attack/transient). Make the notes slightly shorter than 1/16 to have a little space between the notes, allowing the next note to attack with full strength.

 

Another suggestion would be to resample single bass notes. Sometimes, your bassline will not sound "consistent". With other synths we probably don't want every note to sound exactly the same but with this type of bassline, this is actually a desired effect.

Record a single bass note that sounds well, and use this one as a sample, then reprocess again.

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Another suggestion would be to resample single bass notes. Sometimes, your bassline will not sound "consistent". With other synths we probably don't want every note to sound exactly the same but with this type of bassline, this is actually a desired effect.

Record a single bass note that sounds well, and use this one as a sample, then reprocess again.

I often hear that people are doing that but still havent' figured out how does it help. To my ears, retrigger in Sylenth seems to be pretty accurate. On the other hand, keeping bass in midi allows tweaking it as needed, I often need to re-adjust envelopes as I'm adding more stuff to the mix

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I've read somewhere that Skazi used VB-1 synth and Quadrafuzz plugin built into old Cubase. Here is a video where the guy shows how to make a psy bass with these plugins

 

 

But I think Sylenth or Zeta with any multiband distortion will do it.

Fantastic video thanks for the share!

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I've also heard a lot of times that he used VB-1 at that time (which actually made a lot of Psy producers aware of that synth back in the day). Still love it because it's so easy and effective: Move Pickup and plectrum all the way to the left and add a little bit of lowpass filtering and you've got a decent starting point.

 

I also think it's possible to make this bass with almost any standard subtractive synth, the major part is processing - clever EQ, a bit of saturation, compression. I personally have always loved CamelPhat for this task. Subtle bass boost, compression, and distortion in one.

Oh, and make sure you've set your oscillators to retrigger (in sylenth this is the "retrig" button) so that every note has the same starting phase.

To get a punchy sound that cuts through the mix well you'll need transients and spaces.

Looking at the waveform helps: the bassline needs a fat "body", but also needs to be a bit louder at the start, so try to get a little peak at the beginning (the attack/transient). Make the notes slightly shorter than 1/16 to have a little space between the notes, allowing the next note to attack with full strength.

 

Another suggestion would be to resample single bass notes. Sometimes, your bassline will not sound "consistent". With other synths we probably don't want every note to sound exactly the same but with this type of bassline, this is actually a desired effect.

Record a single bass note that sounds well, and use this one as a sample, then reprocess again.

Ok, I've been using strictly VB-1 now(on Ableton) I'll say I'm 80% there. Whats crazy is how simple that Skazi bass sounds but how many plugins I have used on my chain to achieve anywhere near it! I feel like I'm making a hardstyle kick haha.

 

I resampled a single bass note and I actually like what i'm hearing, the thing I hate about doing that is when I pitch up the notes they sound like shit, but it does work for consistent basslines. I have Camelphat and Camelcrusher but ended up getting better results with the more simple Camelcrusher. Oh and EQ does a world of a difference but we already knew that :)

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