VST Basslines and how to produce them propley

[Apex Beat]

Any ideas? I'm starting to get a bit better at it, but find it difficult to use basslines on the sorta dark techno sound I've been pushing lately. I find that increasing the lowend on the kicks usually makes things sound quite bassy, is this what pretty much most people do (i.e. Pounding grooves, really bassy techno but with no recognisable bassline - whats that all about?).

I found thus far with basslines, that they sound like they belong with dodgy electro or house music rather than those really low, subtle basslines that you get with techno. I mean, do people like Speedy J even use basslines? I'm interested to know how those producers make techno that dosnt seem to have one, but then the bass freq is seems to be hiding there somewhere...

One more question, whats the deal with bass saturators? Someone told me to use them, any idea's what they do and if so, do they come in VSTi and it would be nice if you recommend some!! phew, lot of quesitons there!

[loopdon]

good question!

depends on the style your doing, i'd say, but loads of (harder) Techno seems to rely on offbeat emphasis, instead of real basslines.

i think loads of people either just use somwhat eqed kickdrums to generate their basslines, like

kick 1 (normal): x---x---x---x---
bassline kik : --xx--xx--xx--xx //so two x before every real kick

adjusting the velocities of the bassline kicks and maybe highpass (say 100-300 Hz) and that creates a running feel.

you can do stuff with sine waves as well or 808 kix (pretty much the same :cool: ), this is something that is often done in jungle.

you can easily create basslines using perc loops and then filtering them down (lowpass+res) that makes basslines in no time.

i have found u can do cool stuff with tom sounds etc. as well.

don't forget a helluva lot of tech you have listened to has been treated (abused? :lol: ) with waves maxxbass.


just some ideas, hope they help.

[180mph]

try taking a tune with a bassline you like, add a low pass filter (gets rid of all the rhythm stuff) add a notch about 100 (kick should be gone), sample a bass note and start writing your new line with it... then abuse abuse abuse!!!! (baxxpander is quite a nice little plugin for extra oomph)

[miss bass]

Was reading in computer music about getting a nice mix etc and they had lo cuts on every track just about from around 90htz to 130hts to 200 hts obviously depending on the track.

Was quite shocked how much they cut off the kick and bass, but then they add sub basses, and then lo cuts again.... :neutral: i understand lo cuts take alot of the unwanted muddy frequencies out, just seemed quite a high cut if you get me?

I need to try it myself to understand why.

Not to mention sonic maximiser and vintage warmer on almost every track. (off topic i know, but interesting.) Aswell as compressing, then maybe putting it through an effect and compressing again.

[Apex Beat]

Cheers Loopdon, very helpful as per usual. When you refer to a bassline kick, is this just a normal kick filtered down to take out everything but the low frequency? You know, so you just get that sound I cant really discribe rather than the auctual snap or punch of the kick? Also, would increasing the attack of that given kick make it more bassy, i.e as it would lose the edge in which the main mid/high frequency hits? er, if that makes sense!

[eyes without a face]

getting a bit confuddling already here... ur talking about sub bass there ross im pretty sure, ive only just managed to get the hang of it this year myself.... everyone uses basslines even if its just a sub to get that "bassless" sound ur talking about, Speedy J wouldnt have that big, aggressive sound without basslines.....

alot of it is to do with the programming of the bassline and uve just gotta work hard at it, there is no easy shortcut really when it comes to bass, well not one that gets better results than actually working it out.... using kick drums for basslines is a bit well i dunno, amateurish imo, alot of people do it no doubt, but whats the point when there are so many vsts out there that will help u work on ur own killah basslines with a bit of effort and hard work....

plugins like bassxpander, vintage warmer etc all help, altho a vintage warmer on every track i dunno, i use the PSP Vintage Warmer on my masters and if i tried to apply it on every track within a project without bouncing down then the computer wud soon tell me to **** off in the way it best knows how... by freezing! haha

recommended plugins for bass : Junglist, ARP26000 (best for this i find, some awesome sub basses on there), V-station, Exciton....

[loopdon]

you could try the offbeat reverbed kick thing as well. send your kick to reverb and then play with the predelay setting until the reverbed kick falls into the space between the real kix.

or play with reversed kicks inbetween. in addition to that you could play around with sidechaining.

after all, i think its the kickdrum to (sub)bass relationship that counts, they need to work together!

regarding that 'amateurish' statement from eyes without a face,
808 kicks are just about sinewaves actually. i think the result is the only thing that counts after all. but off course you can use the subs loads of synths provide, it's all up to personal taste, imho. and i like to try loads of stuff really in order to see what works for me.

[stjohn]

for a while i thought that all the big producers had an unreal library of kick drums that were huge.... but then listened to stuff more closely i realised that its the subbass that makes it big... alot of the time the kiks are pretty tiny.

i read somewhere earlier that Mark EG starts a tune with a subbass (his words) and i think this is a good approach...

it fills a huge gap IMO

[loopdon]

Cheers Loopdon, very helpful as per usual. When you refer to a bassline kick, is this just a normal kick filtered down to take out everything but the low frequency? You know, so you just get that sound I cant really discribe rather than the auctual snap or punch of the kick? Also, would increasing the attack of that given kick make it more bassy, i.e as it would lose the edge in which the main mid/high frequency hits? er, if that makes sense!

i wouldn't increase the attack or enhance the transient on the offbeat kicks, they would become the real kicks then, so to speak. i would rather back up on their attacks. and yes, you can use your main kick and just say highpass it at say 100 Hz in order to get it sit better with the main kicks. just give it a shot, even if it's just to find out that that isn't what you were looking for, hehe

[eyes without a face]

hmm well since no one mentioned the 808 kick specifically beforehand, and the fact its comprised of a sine wave (which i knew, not that it matters), then i stand by my comment... it is my opinion that a true bassline is best harvested from a synth rather than a treated kick drum, the flexibility with a kick as a bassline is somewhat limited anyway, and the methods described here will leave Ross with that classic off "oompah" off beat bassline which is more than tried and tested i think

my ultimate advice tho is just see what works best for u, get a few synths, get a few kicks, try both ways, and bobs ur uncle

[stjohn]

agreed with u scott.... more and more im realising the more shortcuts u take, the more your tune 'sounds' like shortcuts were taken...

stickin a delay on a off beat kick will fill the low end, but ....... :neutral:

any recommendations for a good subbass vst then? coz ive seen a few posted on this forum and none ever really done it 4 me...

i find it hard to program absynth or reaktor to get a good sub!, then again i could be just stupid

[loopdon]

hmm well since no one mentioned the 808 kick specifically beforehand, and the fact its comprised of a sine wave (which i knew, not that it matters), then i stand by my comment... it is my opinion that a true bassline is best harvested from a synth rather than a treated kick drum, the flexibility with a kick as a bassline is somewhat limited anyway, and the methods described here will leave Ross with that classic off "oompah" off beat bassline which is more than tried and tested i think

my ultimate advice tho is just see what works best for u, get a few synths, get a few kicks, try both ways, and bobs ur uncle


agreed. if anything those tips referred to getting a simple sub bass going.
you could apply some dist to this on a second channel and highpass that to create a little more mid bass etc, but it is limited.

i do recommend to try filtering down a nokick perc loop, can be nice too.

synths leve you with besser possibilities though that is for sure, i quite like the audiorealism bassline with low cutoff, there's some nice presets to be found for refx vanguard, too. actually i think with a little experience and good monitors/headphones most (newer) synths can produce nice bass.

the sequences you play on the bass and maybe the processing you apply
are very important, too.

[Apex Beat]

cheers all, very helpful

[dirty_bass]

Well, I`m big on bass.
I mean, I love it. Probably in a really unhealthy way.

For real deep sub to work, to some extent, it depends on how it interacts with the kick.
If you want big sub, then a good idea, is to fit it underneath your kick, frequency wise.
In fact, cutting some of the lower frequencies on the kick, and maybe moving it into the low mid/high bass area is what you want.
Then pull the kick frequencies out of the bass, and they will sit together nicely.

Also sidechaining a compresser on the bass, to the kick will help.

Currently I`m experimenting with really big bass, and I`ve found that, if you make the kick fairly narrow in band, and then pull out the kick frequencies of the bass, you can have the kick sit right "inside" the bass, which is great!!! and still retians clarity in both.

[loopdon]

Well, I`m big on bass.
I mean, I love it. Probably in a really unhealthy way.

For real deep sub to work, to some extent, it depends on how it interacts with the kick.
If you want big sub, then a good idea, is to fit it underneath your kick, frequency wise.
In fact, cutting some of the lower frequencies on the kick, and maybe moving it into the low mid/high bass area is what you want.
Then pull the kick frequencies out of the bass, and they will sit together nicely.

Also sidechaining a compresser on the bass, to the kick will help.

Currently I`m experimenting with really big bass, and I`ve found that, if you make the kick fairly narrow in band, and then pull out the kick frequencies of the bass, you can have the kick sit right "inside" the bass, which is great!!! and still retians clarity in both.


i am always experimenting as well and must agree with your last statement. i have found a kick that really makes the kick sit in it's bass bed, if adjust them carefully. i think one problem could really lie in compressing kickdrums that have really been (over)compressed many times before. as i read compression actually multiplies instead of adding up, so for example if you compress your kick (probably already compressed before, several times perhaps) with a ratio of 4:1 and then have something with a setting of maybe 10:1 (mere examples) on your master that would mean the your compressing the kick by 40:1 (superlimiting :dontevengothere: ). just a direction, i may be wrong about this...

also, instead of trying to get a desired effect out of a kickdrum you have by mangling it through dozens of fx aneqs and whatnot and layering yourself into nirvana, you might better choose an appropriate kick from a selection, i bet you'll find one that gels nicely (if the volumes are adjusted nicely.)

i once read sth. like long booming bass - short kix and vice versa, deep bass -higher kick and so on.

[dirty_bass]

Yeah, as a rule I don`t use kick samples anymore. I use a kick generator, and that way I get a lot more control over the compression archtypes.
Recompressing a kick sample can cause probs.

[Apex Beat]

:clap: Wicked thread, this ones getting saved. Very helpful, many thanks.

[Mindful]

Well, I`m big on bass.
I mean, I love it. Probably in a really unhealthy way.

For real deep sub to work, to some extent, it depends on how it interacts with the kick.
If you want big sub, then a good idea, is to fit it underneath your kick, frequency wise.
In fact, cutting some of the lower frequencies on the kick, and maybe moving it into the low mid/high bass area is what you want.
Then pull the kick frequencies out of the bass, and they will sit together nicely.

Also sidechaining a compresser on the bass, to the kick will help.

Currently I`m experimenting with really big bass, and I`ve found that, if you make the kick fairly narrow in band, and then pull out the kick frequencies of the bass, you can have the kick sit right "inside" the bass, which is great!!! and still retians clarity in both.


Nice advice D-B,A quick question what freqs should I be looking at to get that sub bass you can realy feel in your gut on a big system?

[stjohn]

dirty: another qs.... those kik generators u mentioned above and in another post....what were their names again, i couldnt find the other post

cheers

[Apex Beat]

Stomper is pretty good and its free as well.

[loopdon]

to answer the kik gen question:

do a search for e-phonic on google, then pick one of the free drumsynths up, say drumatic 3 or the new drumatic ve (links in the free vst thread).
those are free.

and def. check this lil homie out:

http://www.soniccharge.com/products

pc demo:

http://www.soniccharge.com/public/InstallMicroTonicVST10.exe

mac osx demo:

http://www.soniccharge.com/public/MicroTonicVSTMac101.pkg.zip

sound demo:

http://www.soniccharge.com/public/MicroTonicDemo.mp3

[dirty_bass]

I use rhythmsBD
http://odosynths.panicnow.net/vst.html

Waldorf Attack

Drumatic 3 (nice this, has a nice warmth) http://www.e-phonic.com/vstplugins/drumatic_3.html

Sonic Charge - Microtonic. this is great http://www.kvraudio.com/get/759.html

Really, after getting to grips with these, I find it hard to use samples, unless it`s for more conventional, live drum kit sounds.

[Apex Beat]

I like the Microtonic, very user-friendly and lots of stuff to mess about with.

[stjohn]

cheers boyos

[professor]

regarding bass or bass lines in general I am of the opinion that FM synthesis is the way to go. It can be a pain to program, but once its done it will shatter almost everything else.

Mr. Bass has the EQ idea down...remember to cut the bottom off of the bass as well to avoid the mud. I cut everything off the bottom at around 50-60. some go lower, some higher.

Also, Drum synthesis is for sure the ticket. Samples are more of a pain to get the way I want them so I use a good ol' drum synthesizer...or you can use a regular synth (wave, FM, whatever) with a little savy synth programming.

yahoooo

[greasyfastspeed]

thanks for the tips guys, great thread :clap:

[rounser]

Have been looking at kick/bass relationships in Adobe Audition's spectral display. Noticed a pattern in well-eq'd hard dance tracks; kick looks like a back-to-front J over time, dipping down to about 60 hz at the bottom of the J, and the bass sits in the "crook" of the J at about 115 hz.

Finding it tricky to track down my own "J-shaped" kick...most of them I have are too big, and more of a lopsided smear than a J, with nowhere to put the bass. Tried notching out the crook of the J using Audition's marquee tool, and end up with messed up waveform (it's too short a sound for such shenanigans not to mess it up completely, seemingly).

These tracks didn't have subbass...where does the subbass go? And as a rule of thumb, if CM are being cavalier about chopping out the low end, where can you high pass the kick at such that it's not completely castrated?

And...do any of these drum synths let you mess with the spectral stuff directly? I doubt it...but come to think of it I heard of a synth called Cube which lets you do it, will try to track down a demo...hmmm, just found it, and holy shit...

[loopdon]

i have read lots about highpassing kicks, often i found say 40 Hz about to be mentioned, perhaps higher if you have lots a sub beneath it.

just remeber you shouldn't double up loads of sub and a deep kick, think of it like ying and yang :crackup: .

you might also rather want to lowshelf the kick instead of cutting it off alltogether.

also, when you said there was no sub in those tracks that got me thinking
about stuff like waves maxxbass. not that i advise using it but that could be a possible cause.

lots of bass is less deep then one would think.

[loopdon]

this is pretty interesting:

http://www.postunder.com/files/minimag/sep04/kicks.html

..."More Tips" from the page above:

When desgining your kick using any of the above methods, you will find that playing with the amplitude and pitch envelopes produce various variations, for instance a tight volume envelope will produce a sound resembling the "909" kick, while a more loose envelope with a longer decay will produce the sustaining low end "oomph" charactaristic of "808" kicks.

To further improve your kick sounds equalization and compresion come in handy. With an equalizer one basic concept would be to trim much of the mid andhigh frequencies and leave only a small "spike" or "snap" higher freqency for some character in the kick's attack. Then proceed to trim some of the "muddy" bass areas. Usually this falls around 150-250 or so hz. Even if you don't hear it, your kick may contain very low bass frequencies (around 30-40hz and less) that even really good monitors have problems reproducing. Also, because you don't hear them reproduced on your speakers these frequencies can often be very loud and cause many sound related problems such as digital clipping and a constant attempt by your monitors to deal with these frequencies. To avoid this it is especialy important on bass sounds to trim all frequencies below a certain threshold. Trim at least below 20hz, if not up to 40.

----

this might be a nice read too:

Memoid's kickdrum tutorial

http://www.energyuk.net/music/production_article.asp?article_id=22&articletype_i d=2&criteria=*

[sash]

mixing basslines in mono and at the front of your mix helps (ie. no reverbs or delays that might fade that would push it back into the mix).

remember that most soft synths default to a stereo signal and this can be distracting to ur mix. working in mono creates more room in ur mix and creates less clashing frequencies. the more room for ur bass, the more defined it should b if that makes sense.

[dirty_bass]

this is pretty interesting:

http://www.postunder.com/files/minimag/sep04/kicks.html

..."More Tips" from the page above:

When desgining your kick using any of the above methods, you will find that playing with the amplitude and pitch envelopes produce various variations, for instance a tight volume envelope will produce a sound resembling the "909" kick, while a more loose envelope with a longer decay will produce the sustaining low end "oomph" charactaristic of "808" kicks.

To further improve your kick sounds equalization and compresion come in handy. With an equalizer one basic concept would be to trim much of the mid andhigh frequencies and leave only a small "spike" or "snap" higher freqency for some character in the kick's attack. Then proceed to trim some of the "muddy" bass areas. Usually this falls around 150-250 or so hz. Even if you don't hear it, your kick may contain very low bass frequencies (around 30-40hz and less) that even really good monitors have problems reproducing. Also, because you don't hear them reproduced on your speakers these frequencies can often be very loud and cause many sound related problems such as digital clipping and a constant attempt by your monitors to deal with these frequencies. To avoid this it is especialy important on bass sounds to trim all frequencies below a certain threshold. Trim at least below 20hz, if not up to 40.

----

this might be a nice read too:

Memoid's kickdrum tutorial

http://www.energyuk.net/music/production_article.asp?article_id=22&articletype_i d=2&criteria=*

I would say cut a lot higher than that. A slope down starting from 60, especially if you are looking at cutting to vinyl.

[loopdon]

thanks, dirty.

[nova]

cut the bass on the kick then to stop muddyness?? by at least 20hz. bit of a gay q. but wot tipe of eq would you use to cut 20hz from bottom and also how would you read that you hav cut 20hz off?? :oops:. i kno on logic theres a load of different eq's. the channel eq and by the read out thats onit? :rambo:

[loopdon]

well, i think it's more about lowshelfing here.

in order to get rid of very low stuff, i think waves linband lowband eq is often used. it's pretty accurate, i think. i think absolutely removing some freqs is pretty impssible, though.

[dan the acid man]

i tend to use sound forges paragraphic eq to cut certain frequencies

[nova]

ok cheers loopdon and acid man im on mac tho so no soung forge for me. looking into getting a few more waves plugins i hav got the native bundle but only c1 comps are authorised. hopfully them eq's are in the native bundle ;)

[fortune]

:clap: good advice on here this is somrthing ive been struggling with so thanks.
one question, how do you know what frequencies say a kick and bass are at?
do people use some kind of analyzer? can anyone recommend one please

[loopdon]

:clap: good advice on here this is somrthing ive been struggling with so thanks.
one question, how do you know what frequencies say a kick and bass are at?
do people use some kind of analyzer? can anyone recommend one please

waves paz analyser or maybe something like inspector which is free and can be got here:

http://www.elementalaudio.com/products/inspector/index.html

[fresh_an_funky_design]

regarding bass or bass lines in general I am of the opinion that FM synthesis is the way to go. It can be a pain to program, but once its done it will shatter almost everything else.

Mr. Bass has the EQ idea down...remember to cut the bottom off of the bass as well to avoid the mud. I cut everything off the bottom at around 50-60. some go lower, some higher.

Also, Drum synthesis is for sure the ticket. Samples are more of a pain to get the way I want them so I use a good ol' drum synthesizer...or you can use a regular synth (wave, FM, whatever) with a little savy synth programming.

yahoooo


fm synths are wicked for bassline's, i almost always use the efm1 synth on logic for basslines

[fresh_an_funky_design]

ok cheers loopdon and acid man im on mac tho so no soung forge for me. looking into getting a few more waves plugins i hav got the native bundle but only c1 comps are authorised. hopfully them eq's are in the native bundle ;)


you won't 'bias peak' for audio recording on the mac, spark xl is pretty good as well

[fortune]

thanks for the info loopdon, ill download that later

back on the original topic, i'm using synapse hydra for bass, sounds good to me u can get lot of sub from that
if you get the demo its fully featured except you cant save new sounds that youve programmed