psy basslines - what do you use?

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ciw
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psy basslines - what do you use?

Post by ciw » Wed Jun 18, 2008 12:51 pm

Ho hum

I struggle eternally to get that elusive rolling psy bass sound, immersive and full but not muddy.

I'm wondering if anyone has recommendations on which softsynth to use for this and how? I've recently been trying zebra->vintagewarmer but to no avail.

When I get home I'll post some links to the kind of sound I'm looking for...

Cheers!

aeon
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Post by aeon » Wed Jun 18, 2008 1:09 pm

imho, z£ta is fantastic for psybass; partly because the envelopes are so snappy, particularly with different slopes/curves, and partly because the FM implementation is really nice.

zebra's great, but apart from utilising some of the more unusual filter models, i too struggle to get the best bass from it. often i find myself using FilterscapeVA (also by u-he) which somehow seems to produce more... well, more thunk.

also highly recommended is Rumble:

http://files.filefront.com/Rumbledll/;9 ... einfo.html

made by a friend of mine, it features a number of vintage analogue and virtual analogue waveforms... my Virus is there, for example, and i think there's a Prophet too. it was basically designed with psy basses in mind.

the MOST important elements of psytrance bass are:

- note length & placement
- interaction between kick / bass
- resampling / retriggering for consistent attack phase
- judicious use of EQ and compression

the first of these is absolutely crucial. moving individual notes around by a smidgen, using velocity to give emphasis and 'feel', and subtle sidechaining to make space for the kick - these are all often incredibly useful. also try experimenting with track delay to nudge your bassline back or forth by a few milliseconds, it can make a *huge* difference.

the interaction between kick and bass is just so, so crucial. if possible try to get detailed feedback by listening to your tunes on the biggest rigs you can. almost invariably, most people start off with hugely deafening kicks, and far too much sub in kick & bass. for what it's worth, you can almost always hipass and lowpass your bass more than you think.

lots of people use minimal EQs... Rinkadink, for example, has been known to simply hipass-lopass and leave it at that (Commercial Hippies also do very 'straightforwards' bass sounds). others go hugely in-depth (Beatnik is known for his super-surgical EQ). you may find some joy with multiband compressors like ReaFir, a wonderful REAPER plugin that is available as standalone; or arguru's Stardust.

although it's a tiresome answer, really you ought to be able to get great bass out of almost anything. i know some of my favourite basses have come from uninspiring 303 clones; you just want a thick, straight-up sawtooth sound to get to work with.
digitally yours

ethios4
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Post by ethios4 » Wed Jun 18, 2008 1:19 pm

I use Massive almost exclusively for this.

The key, I've found, is to pitch the oscillator (usually a saw) down really low. This gives you a dense set of harmonics to work with. For example, if you are working with a saw wave with a fundamental of 80 Hz, you're first harmonic is at 160 Hz, and second is at 240 Hz. So, really you've only got 2-3 sine waves in the range of bass, so it's hard to get a full sound. If you drop the fundamental down an octave to 40 Hz, your first harmonic is at 80 Hz, second is at 120 Hz, third is at 160 Hz, fourth is at 200 Hz, and fifth is at 240 Hz. So, by dropping the fundamental an octave you go from 2-3 harmonics in the bass range to 5-6 harmonics. The result is a much thicker sound, even if you don't really hear the fundamental.

I arrived at this information by carefully analyzing dozens of psytrance basslines through a spectrum analyzer.

The reason I use Massive so much for this is because it is wavetable based, so the waveforms are exactly the same with every note, which is nice for a stable bassline. The key is to set the oscillator to reset it's phase on trigger, which is found in the OSC tab. Also, I find it's envelopes are really fast for basslines, and usually not clicky. I also really like the FM filter capability, which is use with a really fast attack to give a "pick" kind of attack .

Cosmosis has a short bassline tutorial for Albino on his site HERE. He is also advertising a pro psy bassline tutorial, but he's asking 32 euros for it...sheeesh!
Last edited by ethios4 on Wed Jun 18, 2008 1:56 pm, edited 1 time in total.

ciw
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Post by ciw » Wed Jun 18, 2008 1:20 pm

@aeon: wow thanks for the detailed answer - can't wait to try those out :)

what do you mean by resampling/retriggering? do you mean to sample one note and have all bass notes be transpositions of that sample? won't that sound odd for notes more than a few semitones away from the original?

landrvr1
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Post by landrvr1 » Wed Jun 18, 2008 1:36 pm

Holy Shit! That's some serious bass science.

And to think I just plug my 5-string into Ableton via my Pod, add a bit of compression and EQ, output the channel to my Trace Elliot (still the best bass amp ever made), then crank it until it feels like my spleen is going to explode.

Clearly I need to rethink.



...

GranMarnierAndYooHoo
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Post by GranMarnierAndYooHoo » Wed Jun 18, 2008 1:37 pm

ear plugs.



sorry, couldn't resist.



.gmayh.

ethios4
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Post by ethios4 » Wed Jun 18, 2008 1:42 pm

Great tips aeon!

ethios4
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Post by ethios4 » Wed Jun 18, 2008 1:50 pm

Just thought I'd mention that the basslines on the Silent Horror track 'Nemesis" are just killer, IMO. That guy really knows how to get mileage out of the Kbbb formula....sick!

ciw
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Post by ciw » Wed Jun 18, 2008 1:53 pm

thank you too ethios4!

landrvr1 - i think you mean bass psyence ;)

GranMarnierAndYooHoo you will be reborn as a dung beetle in the next life due to the hit your karma took by hearing and failing to recognize the one true form of music when you heard it. Unless you take a trip to the other side of existence where you can ask the metauniversal liminal entities for forgiveness. Ha. :twisted:

KbbbKbbbKbbbKbbbKbbbKbbbKbbbKbbbKbbbKbbbKbbbKbbbKbbbKbbbKbK-~~~/

landrvr1
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Post by landrvr1 » Wed Jun 18, 2008 2:10 pm

ciw wrote:landrvr1 - i think you mean bass psyence ;)

LoL, true, true.

ethios4
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Post by ethios4 » Wed Jun 18, 2008 2:12 pm

aeon wrote:also highly recommended is Rumble:

http://files.filefront.com/Rumbledll/;9 ... einfo.html
Funny, I just loaded up PsyKick3 to make a kick to run against Rumble. ;) I loooove PsyKick3!

aeon
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Post by aeon » Wed Jun 18, 2008 2:16 pm

ciw wrote:@aeon: wow thanks for the detailed answer - can't wait to try those out :)

what do you mean by resampling/retriggering? do you mean to sample one note and have all bass notes be transpositions of that sample? won't that sound odd for notes more than a few semitones away from the original?
no problems... i can upload some z3ta+ patches later if you want.

ethios4 has much good advice, and also touched on the resampling/retriggering thing.

for most basses, you want the waveform to start at exactly the same point every time. good synths will offer this as a feature, but confusingly it's known by a number of names.... such as osc reset, retrigger, osc trigger, attack phase, phase init, osc restart. they're all ways of saying the same thing: at note-on, the initial phase (or starting position of the waveform) is reset to a point of your choice, usually the start.

this gives a consistency, solidity and coherence to basslines, partly because the waves themselves are that much longer, and partly because it just sounds tight.

resampling is useful when the synth you're working with doesn't offer retriggering... or when you have a more complex synth patch which relies on modulations. just sampling one note is one way of approaching it; another is to play a series of notes covering an octave, select the best of them, and load into a multisampler. depending on the style of psy you're writing, one note might well be enough (think of the dark, night-time throbbing bass which is *so* often steinberg's VB1).

also worth mentioning stereo processing. because the actual wavelengths of bass frequencies are so long, it gets progressively harder for us to determine the precise starting point of low frequency sounds. this is why you can put a sub on the floor behind you but still appreciate the oompf it gives. as i understand it, this means that there is no point fucking with the stereo image way down below because you cannot hear the difference.

it's possible (and sometimes desirable) to have stereo bass, or at least the illusion of stereo bass. i've even heard stereo kicks but never found a satisfactory use for them myself. when i want width and depth in a bassline, i find it's far easier to split the bass into separate channels for processing... i.e. duplicate the bass channel and apply separate EQ, compression, distortion & even delay to different elements. usually there will be one lowpassed solid mono centered bass channel for the 'meat' of the bassline, then a stereo-widened, highpassed, possibly even slightly delayed bass channel for the higher frequency stuff. layering basses this way gives you heaps of tonal control - for example, subtle shifts in EQ and the relative levels of each part can have a huge effect on the sound, particularly if you're distorting, compressing or delaying some parts. of course this could be achieved with a multiband dynamics plugin - some compressors have separate stereo controls for individual bands...

if you have the time, then DEFINITELY head over to isratrance to read this:

http://forum.isratrance.com/the-mother- ... es-thread/

it's aptly named... nearly 70 pages of psytrance bassline chat. some crap in there, but also some really good advice from 'big names' (Domestic, Broken Toy, etc.).

another good thread is here:

http://www.psymusic.co.uk/forum/showthr ... t=bassline


ethios4 wrote:I use Massive almost exclusively for this.

The key, I've found, is to pitch the oscillator (usually a saw) down really low. This gives you a dense set of harmonics to work with.
definitely useful!
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aeon
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Post by aeon » Wed Jun 18, 2008 2:17 pm

ethios4 wrote:
aeon wrote:also highly recommended is Rumble:

http://files.filefront.com/Rumbledll/;9 ... einfo.html
Funny, I just loaded up PsyKick3 to make a kick to run against Rumble. ;) I loooove PsyKick3!
hehehe :D
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heavensdaw
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Post by heavensdaw » Wed Jun 18, 2008 3:02 pm

Hey guys Muchas gracias.. For all the info and tips! great stuff here..
Cracking that real solid psy bassness is a tuffy... I'm gonna try those nugetts of wisdom you dudes have dished up!
It has so much to do with technique and sound source.. I've been messin with Zebra (don't own Massive) and delays but find that I lose the attack if I rely on them (the delays) too much...
I'm not trying to recreate exactly that typical psy bass sound or style,to use throughout an entire track, but as an element I LOVE it!

I saw that Cosmosis production tutorial but man... €32 dunno.. seems he needs the cash..

Thanks for the links to those threads.. Gonna wade through and learn!
Hopefully i'll have something more constructive to add 8). Until then....

besuretoallowyourselfthefreedomofunbridledcreation!

Peace

Hd

ciw
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Post by ciw » Wed Jun 18, 2008 5:59 pm

i've had a chance to have a go now...

lots of great advice here, more than i needed but hey i can come back when i feel i need to learn more in future! really liking rumble, it's nice and simple and does the job better than anything i've managed so far. z3ta is cool too.

aeon if you don't mind sharing z3ta patches i won't say no :D

cheers all!

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