How To Make A Bass?! seriously

[CoreyJayzMusic]

first i want to say i appreciate you guys, everyones feed back is been very helpful on here..

my question is; how to make a bass?

i want a bass... a bass you could feel in you're chest, some really deep, something really sexy that demands nothing but only attraction, so good that you have no option but to turn it into a drum and bass tune.

i took quite a few classes on sound design, so i know how everything works... its just i cant execute...

i know what i want to make, i try and make it, turn a whole bunch of knobs, route stuff into stuff, next thing i know im at a cluster fuck of confusion, i wanted to make a deep bass sound that your track could really circle around.. but it sounds like a dog barking...


whats your Method of getting such?

even simple tips would be appreciated, something that will get me going quick, im working on a couple tracks and am completely stuck because i can't get that sweet bass im looking for.

[Stromkraft]

first i want to say i appreciate you guys, everyones feed back is been very helpful on here..

my question is; how to make a bass?

i want a bass... a bass you could feel in you're chest, some really deep, something really sexy that demands nothing but only attraction, so good that you have no option but to turn it into a drum and bass tune.

For the sounds I got Razor, but there's plenty of alternatives. The basic sound is of course important. For the sounds I want I run it trough amp simulation too. But no matter how well your bass sounds on its own, it has company in the mix.

After I took up gain staging, giving me more head room, and high pass EQing other tracks, I have the dynamic range I need for the bass. I use Waves Renaissance Bass for maintaining bass lines for smaller speakers and some head phones. My bass has really improved with these simple measures.

Not that I'm satisfied, I'm getting Waves Loair too. We'll see how that pans out. We could talk all week about bass. Better to just write some bass lines and learn.

Computer Music january 2013 (Bass) as well as Computer Music Specials 50 Dec 2011 (Beats & Bass) had bass-oriented features that I learned some stuff from. But you really have to experiment. There's no avoiding that.

[SuburbanThug]

Basic sine wave as your base layer. On top of that you can throw just about anything. If you're talking about old school drum and bass just take a sine wave with little to no attack, short sustain and release and maybe half way to three quarters on the decay. If you're talking about modern drum and bass you could keep that layer and throw some FM square wave on top modulated by another detuned square wave or saw. Dick around with those ideas for sure.

[gordon_strange]

Try loading operator, change it to monophonic (bottom right box, then choose the voices drop down, and choose 1).

Play a few notes (below c3, or whatever your preference). Loop those notes. Stick a saturation on the chain, and bring it down by about 15%. Then put a low pass filter on the track, and bring it down till it sounds right for you.

That should get you going in the right direction.

[Angstrom]

FIRST THING
I think the mistake most people make when trying to make bass patches is thinking it's got to be really BASSY, so "lets add 90000% of the fundamental harmonic, and then try to keep adding stuff from that, keep adding, keep adding ... why does it sound messy and muffled".

That is a "fundamental" mistake.

in fact in most traditional real world "bass sounds" you'll be surprised to find that rather than the fundamental being dominant, it's actually the second harmonic (the octave). I don't want to get into a big explanation of psychoacoustics because people are impatient and wont read it. But essentially - when the second harmonic is louder than the fundamental you can cram more sonic energy into the recording and the low fundamental is psychoacoustically implied and people actually hear the sound as a super sub-bass sound, but one that also possesses lots of percussive high frequency energy.

tl;dr work from the second harmonic up, to get punchy sub basses.


SECOND THING
Another issue which people have is Virtual Analogues are generally based on a Mini Moog structure, even something like "Operator". In a MiniMoog setup you have a single low-pass filter cut-off swept by an envelope and an LFO. So the env sweeps a lowpass up and down over the entire spectrum. That's not actually the best way to construct sounds - it was just all that was available in 1972.

In fact, consider the spectrum of harmonics as separate ranges, the "low bass" range, the "mid bass range", etc. Now imagine that each of these ranges has a VOLUME envelope on them. So the low bass has a short envelope, and the mid bass has a slightly longer envelope, and the mids have a different envelope. What this produces is a tight sub-bass while keeping an articulated mid range. You don't actually want your filter cutoff frequency moving across your spectrum, in fact you want to control the separate frequency ranges, to vary them in volume. Luck us we live in the future and can have as many envelopes as we want. But VA manufacturers sell to backward looking dopes.

tl;dr kick out your Env->lowpass

[Stromkraft]

in fact in most traditional real world "bass sounds" you'll be surprised to find that rather than the fundamental being dominant, it's actually the second harmonic (the octave).

That's excellent advice. This is likely why adding harmonics with saturation works so well. That's no reason to no not add them already in the sound. Putting too much emphasis on the fundamental also swallows up a lot of headroom.

In addition just the fundamental may not even be heard that much in any home listening environment. I played a fav tune for a friend on some monitors and the wonderful bass was lost on them.

In fact, consider the spectrum of harmonics as separate ranges, the "low bass" range, the "mid bass range", etc. Now imagine that each of these ranges has a VOLUME envelope on them. So the low bass has a short envelope, and the mid bass has a slightly longer envelope, and the mids have a different envelope. What this produces is a tight sub-bass while keeping an articulated mid range.

This is one reason why I like Additive Synthesis. In Razor for example you don't have to program each envelope, but nicely programmed and given ample headroom the bass sounds really fill out the bottom and beyond.

[ImNotDedYet]

"feeling" the bass is in the sub. Try moving your highpass cutoff down a bit, or change the Q of your highpass cutoff on the bass. Just make sure not to have too much sub or it will eat up everything else in the song.

[outsidesys]

i want a bass... a bass you could feel in you're chest...

Try layering your bass patch with an 808 kick that's tuned to your bass and low-pass filtered to reduce the click in its attack.