Classic House Bass

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bradley1602
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Classic House Bass

Post by bradley1602 »

Hello guys,

I stumbled upon the following remix of Laura Jones by Mr.KS. I think it's a good example of a very simple but at the same time driving bass pattern. Concerning the pattern it's a simple one bar loop. The pattern i understand easily but I can't nail the sound-design to get near this sort of bass.

This is what i tried:

When I got inspired by the track i tried to recreate this style of bass in my 3 go-to soft synths. (Diva, Subboombass, Sylenth)

The approach was always very similar. Playing around with 2-3 oscillators and in diva with the moog and the jupiter-8 template .
I dialed in different approaches: two saws with a square underneath, a saw with a saw underneath, a saw with a sine underneath, two saws with a sine underneath. (Sometimes i divided the two saws and the sub-sine underneath if i had one to obtain better control)

I always filtered them down and assigned a short envelope on the filter. Afterwards i usually pushed the bass through u-he satin or presswerk. Altough presswerk gave me better results. I'm really loving this compressor. I never had a hardware compressor, but this really gives me a feeling of owning not one but three to four 8) .

Plus a highpass eq at around 40-50 hz and some sidechaining.

I never seem to be satisfied with the bass I'm making. Often I'm thinking about getting a Arturia Microbrute or a Moog Minitaur or something but then i just think this sort of bass should be easy to replicate in software with u-he plugins etc.
If you guys want, I could upload an example of my attempts and describe the process I've used with it to clear things up a little more.

I think this sort of bass is just a really basic thing i have to nail down in order to make the music I'd like to.
Maybe someone has some tips and knowledge for me on how to nail this one down.

Here's the track (She looks like a nice girl, altough the boobs are brought to size a little bit too obvious for my taste :shock: ):

AK
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Re: Classic House Bass

Post by AK »

It's always difficult trying to nail the oscillator source of sounds when they have been filtered so low but to me, it almost has a sense of realism, just a hint of it in a synth kinda way, when trying to come up with these types of bases, I always try Pulse waves, you mentioned you only tried squares, saw's & sines. Personally, I stay away from sines for bass in preference to filtering down other more harmonically rich waveforms. Pulses are particularly good for bass if you have a synth with good raw oscillators, filters & envelopes. By varying the width setting of the pulse wave, you increase/decrease and possibly remove/add some harmonics too - which makes you less likely to instantly reach for an eq to get the bass to sit. By varying the width, you can sometimes find the pocket where it works pretty well as is and you can just refine it too by knocking out resonances and whatever. Also, with the width control, you can thin it out, get more of a square wave, get nearer a saw etc. It's very flexible and versatile.

I don't know if the waveform is a pulse or not on the track, it's not a square and it has a slight hollow that suggests it's also not a saw, hence my thinking along the lines of a pulse wave at some arbitary width or another. Also, when the part of the track is HP filtered, effectively removing the fundamental from the bass, it sounds out of tune. Harmonically rich waveforms will have these by nature, saws have all harmonics, squares have odd, pulses vary upon width setting. The fact that is sounds 'out of tune' when filtered suggests to me that it contains odd harmonics above the fundamental which could well imply a pulse wave with a width setting that edges towards a square but not enough to be obvious. If I was trying to make this sound, those reasons would make me first want to explore dialling in a pulse to see if I get anywhere. Let us know how you get on. :)
bradley1602
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Re: Classic House Bass

Post by bradley1602 »

Yeah original sources of low filtered sounds are difficult to explain. Thanks for the tip with the pulse waves. To be honest I never thought about pulse waves. I just never really cared about them and just stayed with saw, square and sine.

I'll give it a try in the evening. If something pops up, that seems like a trail to follow for me I'll post an example of it.

We'll see..
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hydrogen
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Re: Classic House Bass

Post by hydrogen »

Common distraction to go analog for house bass... try a digital synth something like a DX7. lots of great bass sounds there and used on many classic records.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2AvJ9n8UlW0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtBkOgW8GBo
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AK
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Re: Classic House Bass

Post by AK »

hydrogen wrote:Common distraction to go analog for house bass... try a digital synth something like a DX7. lots of great bass sounds there and used on many classic records.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2AvJ9n8UlW0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtBkOgW8GBo
Good call, I was playing with dexed vst tonight and made a few bass patches that had a sense of realism, never have much of a clue what im doing with FM though. -frown 2
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hydrogen
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Re: Classic House Bass

Post by hydrogen »

AK wrote:Good call, I was playing with dexed vst tonight and made a few bass patches that had a sense of realism, never have much of a clue what im doing with FM though. -frown 2
I have yet to meet somebody who's got a clue about FM. :lol: DEXED is great man! Last time I tried I could not get it to load DX7 patches tho. :(
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hydrogen
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Re: Classic House Bass

Post by hydrogen »

oh dope... on the DEXED page there is a link to a bunch of sysex files. that actually work.

https://asb2m10.github.io/dexed/
http://hsjp.eu/downloads/Dexed/Dexed_cart_1.0.zip

I couldn't find a patch that was similar to what the OP was going for though...

Also to the OP... listening again... I don't understand why your approach with the sine bass isn't working... feel free to post the example!

AK had some pretty good tips in there too!

I think also too sometimes its really not the bass doing what you think it is... its the kick/bass interaction that creates the full effect.
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hydrogen
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Re: Classic House Bass

Post by hydrogen »

haha... i fucked around a little bit and tried to make the bassline OP posted in dex. http://kirkwoodwest.com/mnml/dexed.mp3

Basically 2 op bass... first op is low pitch the second one octave up and then feeding into it. Its super clicky, you can hear it with just/kick bass at the end. i didn't really mess with the envelopes too much. its pretty sh!t tbh. :P
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