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How do I go about getting this bass sound?
Posted: Wed Nov 12, 2008 3:22 pm
by yearlongyeti
Hi all I have ableton suite and was woundering if anyone knew how to go about or what preset I could start from to get the "slam" by pendulum bass sound. (not exactly a unique sound I know)
Posted: Wed Nov 12, 2008 3:27 pm
by weeddigger
Got a link to the sound?
Posted: Wed Nov 12, 2008 3:31 pm
by yearlongyeti
Sorry, try this
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=NnkM6A6aAUc . I think the guy dancing is me

Posted: Wed Nov 12, 2008 4:26 pm
by weeddigger
Sounds really fat... I'm just listening on some shitty earphones, but the fatness is coming thru...
Pardon my newbness here, but maybe it's a simple FM bass, with possibly more bottom end than normal. Maybe adding some sub bass to it...
Seems relatively simple...
Posted: Wed Nov 12, 2008 5:12 pm
by parisapartment
I've just had a listen and it sounds pretty cool or fat even as weeddigger pointed out! Nice going.
Posted: Wed Nov 12, 2008 9:54 pm
by piZMo
Posted: Wed Nov 12, 2008 10:00 pm
by Nick the Zombie
I would go at that bass sound in 2 phases, one for the very pure lowest end part and the dirty, distorted higher part. For the lower part, try a sine tone running through a saturator, and then low pass filter that. For the distorted, part, I would take maybe a basic sawtooth wave, run it through lots of flanging or phasing, and then hipass filter it so that it sits on top of the lower end part without becoming too muddy. For my money, the hardest part is getting the two parts to sit well with one another.
Another approach is to take one sound and run it into a rack, splitting the frequencies between the super low end rumble stuff and the higher frequencies, and then applying different types of processing to each chain.
Hope this helped,
- Nick
Posted: Wed Nov 12, 2008 10:21 pm
by jamief
Sounds alot like a minimoog which i use to own. Got a virtual one now and its just as good. Go to
www.arturia.com and download the minimoog demo create the sound and then sample asingle bass note ( patch save is disabled on the demo) import to your sampler or simpler
Posted: Thu Nov 13, 2008 2:06 pm
by re.mark
Its amazing that sound... never gets old to me... ive tried so much to get anything like it but cant. Saw a video interview with Rob Swire (the main guy behind pendulum) and he goes through that track, and plays that bass track alone and it sounds immesnse. He said he used zeta+ to do it, and it invovled loads of resampling. Hes a big NI user too, think he mentioned using Guitar Rig on it to get that amazing growling sound. Ill try and find the video for you if i can.
Theres a clearer sound of it in 'The Terminal' towards the beining. Guttted theres nothing as fierce sounding as that on the new album - hope hes not deleted the patch in one of his many rages of fury lol
Posted: Thu Nov 13, 2008 8:01 pm
by Nogi
Posted: Thu Nov 13, 2008 8:18 pm
by leedsquietman
or buy Sonar 7PE or 8PE for 500 bucks or so and the full version of Z3TA+ is included and have a great DAW with tons of nice plugins a la Logic.
Sorry mac fans, PC only.
Posted: Fri Nov 14, 2008 3:21 pm
by jeskola
Dogs on acid > the grid.
Search for it - it's been discussed and analysed to death - several times

Don't post asking about it though, you'll most likely get pages of abuse.
Posted: Sat Nov 15, 2008 2:27 pm
by re.mark
Audio of the sound from 'The Terminal' for all interested parties
http://www.zshare.net/audio/513609359e064129/
Just been to get the videos and theyve been taken down

If anyone has the video interview with Pendulum from Future Music and would like to share, please do! That video was really interesting to watch!
Posted: Mon Nov 17, 2008 3:30 pm
by yearlongyeti
Thanks everyone, great help. Have just searched and see there is plenty of discussion on the net. I guess what I was woundering if it was possible to get a similar sound with ableton's soft synths?
Posted: Mon Nov 17, 2008 4:18 pm
by UKRuss
re.mark wrote:Audio of the sound from 'The Terminal' for all interested parties
http://www.zshare.net/audio/513609359e064129/
Just been to get the videos and theyve been taken down

If anyone has the video interview with Pendulum from Future Music and would like to share, please do! That video was really interesting to watch!
Which months FM was that?