About bass, sub.

Performance & Techniques Music Production
1

About bass, sub.

I found hard to make a bass line like in most house and techno tracks, it just does not sound good (or sounds too static and there is silence in between the notes) and I can not make sub bass because it is something I never though much about it. Where does sub bass take place can someone explain me a little bit of it?

Lets say I want to produce similar bass line like Beatport’s top techno tracks what do I need to consider? Maybe there is a good read about bass stuff in house and techno.
Thanks!

2

First off you need to find a nice sub/bass sound.. Then it’s all about midi placement. That’s the hard part.

3

A lot of sub bass is just a sine wav or filtered square wav layered an octave lower than the main bassline, simple that part. Making basslines is IMMENSELY easier if you can easily hear what you’re doing too, how’s you monitoring situation?

4

I have got m audio bx8 monitors and they are kept in a small room. Because I got no stands sometimes I have to stand back so I can hear more of the bass.

I also trying to look at other projects like Splice platform and understand the overall elements of a song.

5

Sub bass can just be a sine wave, that’s all you need to make the sub woofers rumble, and it’s in the 30Hz to 80 Hz region.

If you have Massive, give this a go, Foamo layers a square wave on top of the sine to make it cut through more on smaller speakers:

http://www.be-at.tv/brands/point-blank-music-school/point-blank-music-school2/point-blank-music-school/foamo

6

I got no massive, but I get the idea!

I have uploaded a private test that I have made just now:

Can you guys give me some feedback about bass and anything else that gets in your mind? It is a little bit quite. Thanks.

7

Yeah the bass cuts through pretty nice on that sample

I would def do some more mixing on it though

8

I have been reading some stuff about bass, and it really helped a lot. Yeah everything needs mixing :slight_smile: Just to clarify things that is not a sample, I did midi for all audible sounds. Btw I use operator for bass line.

9

Very nice mate good start

10

Operator’s cool for sub bass, nice and straightforward with good sound.

To make your sub cut through a bit more you cold try adding a bit of pitch envelope, which will make the sound a bit more audible on smaller systems and fool the listeners ears into thinking the sub is a bit louder than it actually is.

In operator, turn on the pitch envelope and put the dial upto 100%, set the initial / peak to +12 (which I think is the default anyway) then turn down the decay until there’s just a bit of a bump at the start of the note (that’s the decay of the pitch envelope). If you feel that 12st of pitch is too much, try 7.

11

That is nice, my whole bass sounds much better now after reading your tips on here. I also try to cut off some frequencys below 30 and use sub bass on around 40 to 80Hz only. Then goes bass after 80Hz so they blend together nicely and dont interfere with each other.