Ableton Forum

What are the different ways to go about this?

been doing quite a bit recently and find it alot easier to produce electro sounds but the bassline seems to be harder to work on.

Here's a quick trick:

Play a bassline on any MIDI instrument, copy it to another track that is triggering the same instrument. Now transpose the copied sequence up an octave and shift all the notes later by an 8th or a 16th. Insta-funk!

If the sound you are triggering is monophonic, you can get interesting things happening as the note jumps up the octave. A touch of glide (portamento) can be good too.

i'd say some velocity modulation on the filter as well.

Ronan_Mc_Killop wrote:What are the different ways to go about this?

been doing quite a bit recently and find it alot easier to produce electro sounds but the bassline seems to be harder to work on.

it might sound simplistic but here is my advice:
get the right tool.
find a synth, a bass guitar, a vsti that produce the sounds you like.
dont lose time tryin to tweak bass sounds out of what you've got if you're not happy you'll never be...

I'd like to offer the opposite opinion: The tool, more or less, doesn't matter.

It's the sequence. If you're in the pocket and your offbeats are wel-fed, then it's funky.

I tend to agree with machinate.

Sometimes the best thing is to just noodle on the keys while recording for a while.

I'll occasionally fart around and have a 15 minute midi recording, and I will pull only 1 bar out of it, but that 1 bar is some of the funkiest shit... and then I ditch the rest.

See "Pilgrimage" on my website for a good example

also agree with Machinate and timothyallan here.

The sequense and its timing (or maybe lack thereof) is the key.
A great bassline can sound funky and great regardless og the bassound.
Play around with the best you have at hand. The sound itself can always be
tweaked to perfection later.

im not an "effect" kind of guy. i always value the quality of the sequence or the melody more than it's technical quality... but....

but for the bass its a different thing. in my subjective opinion, basses have to be felt with your guts, and for that the quality of the sound itself is very important.

timothyallan wrote:I'll occasionally fart around and have a 15 minute midi recording, and I will pull only 1 bar out of it, but that 1 bar is some of the funkiest shit... and then I ditch the rest.

I do the same useually, start of by just messing around to get the chops down so I can play it in time, then turn on record and go to town and grab the best take and then tweak the note durations to groowe better.

Would be realy nice if Live 6 had something like a take manager or you could just set the loop to say 4 bars and each time it rolls around it would create a new clip in the slot below.

If you truly mean funky, rather than some loose definition meaning 'good' then for funk I say go to the source and revise up your syncopation, listen to the masters.

get hold of a load of late 60s early 70 James brown (the JBs) and listen to the interplay between the drummer and the bass.

if a bassline sounds funky on its own (solo), it's too busy IMO . It should sound funky in the track not on it's own, ever egging the funk can be counter productive.
The rhythm section works together to create the groove, if kit and bass are unified - its funky, if both are doing their own thing and trying to be funky individually - it's not funky.

learn to play electric bass

since i use a good bass player to play my basslines, my sound has improved a lot .
if i need to add harmonics to the bassline i use a soft to create midi rintones to have a midi image of the audio ,the soft works good for single instruments .

Benshik wrote:

Ronan_Mc_Killop wrote:What are the different ways to go about this?

been doing quite a bit recently and find it alot easier to produce electro sounds but the bassline seems to be harder to work on.

it might sound simplistic but here is my advice:
get the right tool.
find a synth, a bass guitar, a vsti that produce the sounds you like.
dont lose time tryin to tweak bass sounds out of what you've got if you're not happy you'll never be...

Definetly find the right tool or tools. My faves: minimoog V, SH-101, Rhode Pianos.

BUT also work on the sequence. I find the seqeucne comes much faster if I've already dialed in my bass sound (or gotten more or less in the ball park).

Angstrom wrote:If you truly mean funky, rather than some loose definition meaning 'good' then for funk I say go to the source and revise up your syncopation, listen to the masters.

get hold of a load of late 60s early 70 James brown (the JBs) and listen to the interplay between the drummer and the bass.

if a bassline sounds funky on its own (solo), it's too busy IMO . It should sound funky in the track not on it's own, ever egging the funk can be counter productive.
The rhythm section works together to create the groove, if kit and bass are unified - its funky, if both are doing their own thing and trying to be funky individually - it's not funky.

Words of wisdom!

Space is what you need to get funky syncopation happening. Don't be afraid to envelope out (or ditch midi notes of) parts. It's gotta breathe.

I copied and pasted this from my friends blog on Myspace - Mike Balance

He makes some serious jams - please read

BASSLINES
Unless you are an advanced keyboard player, basslines can be the most difficult part of your project. The trick is to know when to keep it simple and when to get tricky with it. At first, pick simple notes that go with your sample or whatever element you want compliment it with (you don't even have to pick a huge range of notes, some of the simplest bassline can be the most powerful). Then just experiment... try different rhythms and syncopations (Copy and Paste goes a long way here) and don't be afraid to use a combo of your keyboard and your sequencer's step editor. A lot of the time you can move several notes up or down an odd number of keys (3, 5 or 7) to get them to work together better.


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BASSLINES IN REASON
A lot of you who use Reason always say you just can't get a good bass sound out of it. The trick is to combine just the right path of things to get the most out of Reason's synths... here's an example: For big, nasty, electro type basslines, combine a Malstrom with an MClass Compressor, crank up the Ratio and the Input and top it off by adding a Scream for a touch of distortion (Tube works good) and a Vocoder switched to Equalizer and experiment with the settings. For juicy, bouncy, rich sounding, funky basslines: Use a Subtractor with a mono bass synth (play with the cutoff frequency a bit too) combined a little bit with the Comp-1 compressor. Then add a Scream with a little bit of Tape distortion then run it all through a Vocoder set to 4 Band Equalizer. To maximize any Reason synth, try using a Combinator to combine several synths together that are playing the same midi track... you'll be amazed by how big it can sound and how much more control you'll have... just remember not to go overboard!