Bass Sound/Patch

[Guest Johnny Digital]

I Still can't get the bass sound i want so i went back and designed some new bass patches.

 

I can give you a tip: use a tempo sync'ed LFO on the filter. great efx

 

apart from that, does anyone have any tips for me ?

 

 

 

thanx,

[Guest Jolly Roger (Epsilon)]

I got one good tip from Mikael from Finnish musicians forum:

 

Insert some distortion to the bass and mix the original signal with the distorted one and voila. The bass doesn't drown on the other stuff so easly. Actually you can't even hear that the bass is distorted when there's other stuff layered. This works pretty well.

[Guest Johnny Digital (MushRoom]

I usually use some gain in the patch, not distortion like overdrive.

 

However i would like to get a good patch before applying any efx

[Guest drav]

ok to get those rolling bassline type things have a mess around with delays. Basicly bang the keyboard (heh) in time to the beat and fiddle with the delay knob. You want an off beat delay so the bass rolls rather than sits on the beat. Very cool, although i have a tendancy to end up replicating the bassline from dr who quite a lot Must be a subliminal love of mine, a bit like the crocodile dundee music

[Guest drav]

sorry just read your post again, and you want to get a good sound before the effects go in. Ignore my above rantings then. Ok errrr...what do i know about bass?? Ok i tend to go for quite clean basslines, as opposed to distorted ones as in my opinion distorted basslines take up too much room in the overall sound and can get quite muddy. Just my opininon, only saying it because you were mentionning distortion above, and er....i know jackshit about it I tend to play with the ADSR envelopes a lot for bass, with the sequence on a short loop, i'm using an fm synth at the mo, as my soundcard is too bad for soft synths (till next week) so i cant tell you what analog waveform i use for bass. Basicly, medium to fast attack, bit of decay, fairly long release, low pass filter, some funky delays, and a little bit of the magic dust. Basslines are really important, take the time to make some nice ones. In fact, its pretty much all i do at the mo

[Guest Johnny Digital (MushRoom]

I agree with most of what you said except for the delay thing.

 

Delay usually takes too much space (headroom??) and makes sound appear distant (??) and makes to much unwanted track noise but maybe it can be effective just to be a little different from the rest of the tracks (it is a nice trick... i used to do lots of it.

 

the bass will be much more louder if without delay or if your make your delay go throught the reverb thingy and then to the mix.

 

I'm using a sample-based synth too (mc505) and have little control about the waveform i'm using... usually i check with diferent type of bass samples like "sin bass", "saw bass", etc... what do you prefer ?

 

When i increase the gain in the bass to make in louder it often gets muddled... ...that's what i'm trying to avoid

 

You should try LFO too (see my first post). I going to check the adsr envelope again with you recomendations. Any sugestion for the Filter/Pitch Envelope ? I believe your sugestions were for the Amp Envelope.

 

If you're delay is tempo sync'ed you could use triplets instead... makes a nice efx but i don't recomend overdoing it to the bass...

 

After all this, my bass still hasn't the presence i want...

[Guest drav]

i meant temp synced delay, i find its not too bad for sounding mushy. The trick i find with delays is to tweak the amp envelope so the sounds dont overlap each other, this means things dont get so confused. Anyway, who cares, i just like making noises.

Hmm if i were you id get hold of a demo of reaktor (if you havent got it) and see what the bass on that sounds like to you. I think its excellent. If you get the sort of noises youre after on that then it could be your present hardware thats hindering you. Sorry i cant help more

[Guest Johnny Digital]

I've just found something very interesting:

 

http://www.computermusic.co.uk/tutorial/ba...ps/basstips.asp

 

50 bass tips. i haven't read it yeat but i'll do it later.

 

 

thanx

[Guest Jolly Roger (Epsilon)]

What I meant by distorting the bass you don't distort it completely. You just add little bit fuzz in it and mix the fuzzed bass with the clean bass. You won't hear the bass is fuzzed but it will be much more powerful and it won't drown in the mix. Just try it and you'll see.

[Guest jakemyth]

Hey Johhny......check to see that both your kick and bass sounds aren't competing for the same frequency. Try transposing the bassline up or down and see if it sounds better then or try the kick.

 

I had the problem recently where no matter how i mixed, compressed or eq'd the bass sound it would still sound muddled and when one dropped out the other was very present and together they were messy.

 

Hope that helps

 

Enjoy

 

Jake

[Guest Johnny Digital]

The problem is that i cant equalize the kick and the bass apart from each other.

 

Also delay sounds good but drowns out the whole sequence... maybe i'll try fake delays

[Guest drav]

yeah fake delays is something id like to try, but havent really found the motivation for yet. Id rather twist knobs than inputting notes and tweaking levels, but i somehow suspect that computer gimpery is the way to go. Damn

[Guest Slidingtrancer]

You need a short delay on the bass which falls in between the notes. You need some extra compression and make sure the bassline is layered UPON the bass.

 

I managed to make quite a few nice basslines in Reason lately.

 

Most of all its compression and 'headroom' precision.

[Guest The Bastard (alex!)]

You don't NEED delay on your bassline at all , hehe... and if you do, use as little as possible. compression seems to be essential though.

 

another thing that hasn't been mentioned yet is layering of basslines ---

one for sub-bass/bass, another sound for mids.... if you use this method, you could use a thick stereo delay, chorus, whatever you want on the middy bassline

and still leave a clean solid sub bassline with no or little FX, all that much easier to make it sit well with the kickdrum. just copy your current bassline to another channel and pair em up --- you could also then displace the middy bassline by a few notes, rearrange the notes a little bit, or whatever sounds good.

 

Also, if you are having trouble with the bassline and kickdrum competeing for space, try checking to see if you have bassline notes hitting at the same time as the kickdrum. this sometimes sounds good for me with 1/8th note basslines, but usually i avoid it, especially with 1/16th note basslines. But then again you could use EQ to make a hollow kickdrum with the bassline running right thru it...

 

The Bastard

[Guest drav]

all cool tips, keep em coming in, cos im lapping em all up. Could someone if they have time, put up a topic on compression, what it is how it works, what to use it on etc, as im a little confused about it all. Thanks

 

Drav

[Guest coriolis]

my additions:

 

if your going to use delay on a bassline, it should have some somwhat midrange stuff going on, and you should cut the low end off the delay signal, otherwise your in for trouble when the lows come back and overlap themselves.

 

the bass must not compete with the kick for punchiness, and the kick should not extend its low frequency soundings into the bassline. like the posts above, i suggest eliminating the bass note on the sounding of the kick. your kick should have enough bass energy in it to carry the feel right through even if the bassline isn't sounding at that instant.

 

be careful with the midrange, especially from 100 or so up to around 400/500. if you have a synth line or something doubling or dueting with the bassline, put a highpass filter on it to stop it from competing with the bass, or use selective, surgical parametric EQ. i usually pick bass patches that have just a touch of midrange, like a lowpass filtered sawtooth or something. i don't like my basslines to go to high in the freq range because i need room for stuff above it. you often want a little bit of space between your kick/bass and the rest of the mix, which usually means somewhat of a dip in the 200-ish range, which is usually only excited on each downbeat with the attack of the kick...

 

compression on the kick and bass are sometimes necessary. look at them in soundforge or whatever to see if they have transients (impulsive bursts in loudness) that will take away from the overall punchiness of the sound.

 

peace