bassline tutorials

[The_Laughing_Man]

At the moment I'm making stripped down broken beat kind of techno- Audio Assaults kind of stuff... The bass is giving me trouble... patterns and what not.

Audio Assault?
If you wanna look at broken beat go and listen to the people who actually knew what they were doing.
The Audio Assault stuff was always a bit, well, production line.
Try
Regis, Makaton, 65D Mavericks, Mulero, Innigo, Supagrupa, Lotki blah blah, Hiyama, Paul Damage, Early Reeko.

Most AA stuff just had your typical sub rumble that I covered already.

The more clever stuff by people above used stuff like bass chords, detuned synths with a very percussive envelope, syncopated to the kick, or polyrythmic lines.

The real "secret" or maybe the "method" to good borken beat is to approach the syncopation completely differently to standard 4s on the floor.
The offbeat is no longer note 3, 7, 11, 15 in a 16 note pattern.
So react accordingly, generally I feel good percussive stuff works on a call and response.
So the kick is the call, and each kick needs a response to balance the phrase.

Obviously sidechaining will help make stuff work, but with offbeat stuff you need to be much more clever with note placement.

I find it infinitely more inspiring than doof-tish music personally, and I wish borken beat was more widely accepted.

[DannyBlack]

I love Audio Assault.


Regis yes, I only recently started getting into his stuff. 65D Mavericks are astounding!

I like your call and response idea. I think thats where I'm falling down- the call goes out but my response is falling flat or not happening.

I have to look into side chaining because it isn't something I have ever done before.

The reason I like the off beat/broken beat stuff is because it is more, as you say inspiring and a lot more of a challenge to make. That is to say, I never really mastered thud slap thud slap...

[Honeey]

So much good information!!! thank you! :) I have learned much.

[BloodStar]

what about a tutorial on dnb/dub reese kind of bassline? :)

[The_Laughing_Man]

Okeedokey

[ritaheed]

Okeedokey

aye your tutorials are well good man

good to see one of the bigger producers given us advice

[CTRLS]

I actually already did one of those so hope i'm not too late to save you the effort laughing man.

techno-dnb.com • View topic - TUTORIAL: Simple ways to make fat bass.

[ritaheed]

I actually already did one of those so hope i'm not too late to save you the effort laughing man.

techno-dnb.com • View topic - TUTORIAL: Simple ways to make fat bass.

nice one man!

[BloodStar]

not bad effort CTRL, but still i wnat to see more info about LFOs and further synth modifications, as these are the basics of wellprogrammed reese bassline, tho., indeed together with a postprocessing.

looking forwrd to what Steve will teach us :] keep em coming.

[CTRLS]

not bad effort CTRL, but still i wnat to see more info about LFOs and further synth modifications, as these are the basics of wellprogrammed reese bassline, tho., indeed together with a postprocessing.

looking forwrd to what Steve will teach us :] keep em coming.

ah right you wanted to know about midrange synths and reeses, that tutorial is dedicated to sub energy. here's a quick 'primer' and maybe Steve will get into a more hands on example.

The usual practice in dnb is to split the sub and midrange of the bassline into 2 channels (or more). That way you can process the midrange to hell and back with morph filters, distortion, frequency splitting and whatever else you fancy, while leaving the bass big and boomy. basically you copy the same sound across 2 channels and lopass the sub channel, hipass the midrange so they're separated nicely. if you set the filters right you can make a nice space around 100-200hz where your beats can cut through while still leaving space for lots of big sub.

YouTube - drum and bass tutorial : Subfocus par1 how to make a basic modulated reese in massive. layer that with a sub and you're halfway there.

if you want to get really advanced you can have 2-4 different midrange sounds fading/filtering in and out of each other on top of the sub, then maybe group it all and process it further. that's what a lot of the serious bassline tweakers like phace and spor are up to these days. referred to by geeks as a massline :lol:

a lot of dnb producers like to resample their sounds as well. they'll make/sample a reese and process it. then load it into a sampler and make a bassline from it, sometimes they'll do this several times, constantly cleaning and adjusting things. other people like to record a bunch of crazy tweaking from their synth, then cut and paste the results back together on an audio channel and adjusting things from there.

you can also go the more traditional route and make the whole bass sound in one synth or sampler, then just eq and process things to fit. distorted 808 kicks make a good starting point for example.

in other words it can be a pretty complex process, and you need to pay a lot of attention to the entire signal chain or you're likely to end with mush.

[CTRLS]

YouTube - Sabre Producer Masterclass 2009 Drum N Bass P3

top quality stuff from sabre. very useful info in here and a nasty track he's making.

[The_Laughing_Man]

I`ll try and get something more techno related in respect to deep sub done for christmas.

[bram2000]

Hi all,

First off, thanks for the info here, good stuff. I'm really interested in the tutorial posted near the beginning of the thread about the techno bass line (arpeggio's with dissonant tone) and I've had a go myself. It sounds ok, but the examples posted are no longer working, so I can't compare mine to them. Any someone could repost them?

Cheers,

Jon

[BloodStar]

bump :p

[ritaheed]

anyone else up for doing more bassline examples?

kinda stuck with what im trying to do?

[CTRLS]

@rita, what are you trying to do exactly? post up a clip and maybe some tunes that you're using for reference.