VST Basslines and how to produce them propley

to answer the kik gen question:

do a search for e-phonic on google, then pick one of the free drumsynths up, say drumatic 3 or the new drumatic ve (links in the free vst thread).
those are free.

and def. check this lil homie out:

http://www.soniccharge.com/products

pc demo:

http://www.soniccharge.com/public/In...TonicVST10.exe

mac osx demo:

http://www.soniccharge.com/public/Mi...Mac101.pkg.zip

sound demo:

http://www.soniccharge.com/public/MicroTonicDemo.mp3

I use rhythmsBD
http://odosynths.panicnow.net/vst.html

Waldorf Attack

Drumatic 3 (nice this, has a nice warmth) http://www.e-phonic.com/vstplugins/drumatic_3.html

Sonic Charge - Microtonic. this is great http://www.kvraudio.com/get/759.html

Really, after getting to grips with these, I find it hard to use samples, unless it`s for more conventional, live drum kit sounds.

I like the Microtonic, very user-friendly and lots of stuff to mess about with.

cheers boyos

regarding bass or bass lines in general I am of the opinion that FM synthesis is the way to go. It can be a pain to program, but once its done it will shatter almost everything else.

Mr. Bass has the EQ idea down...remember to cut the bottom off of the bass as well to avoid the mud. I cut everything off the bottom at around 50-60. some go lower, some higher.

Also, Drum synthesis is for sure the ticket. Samples are more of a pain to get the way I want them so I use a good ol' drum synthesizer...or you can use a regular synth (wave, FM, whatever) with a little savy synth programming.

yahoooo

thanks for the tips guys, great thread :clap:

Have been looking at kick/bass relationships in Adobe Audition's spectral display. Noticed a pattern in well-eq'd hard dance tracks; kick looks like a back-to-front J over time, dipping down to about 60 hz at the bottom of the J, and the bass sits in the "crook" of the J at about 115 hz.

Finding it tricky to track down my own "J-shaped" kick...most of them I have are too big, and more of a lopsided smear than a J, with nowhere to put the bass. Tried notching out the crook of the J using Audition's marquee tool, and end up with messed up waveform (it's too short a sound for such shenanigans not to mess it up completely, seemingly).

These tracks didn't have subbass...where does the subbass go? And as a rule of thumb, if CM are being cavalier about chopping out the low end, where can you high pass the kick at such that it's not completely castrated?

And...do any of these drum synths let you mess with the spectral stuff directly? I doubt it...but come to think of it I heard of a synth called Cube which lets you do it, will try to track down a demo...hmmm, just found it, and holy shit...

i have read lots about highpassing kicks, often i found say 40 Hz about to be mentioned, perhaps higher if you have lots a sub beneath it.

just remeber you shouldn't double up loads of sub and a deep kick, think of it like ying and yang :crackup: .

you might also rather want to lowshelf the kick instead of cutting it off alltogether.

also, when you said there was no sub in those tracks that got me thinking
about stuff like waves maxxbass. not that i advise using it but that could be a possible cause.

lots of bass is less deep then one would think.

this is pretty interesting:

http://www.postunder.com/files/minimag/sep04/kicks.html

..."More Tips" from the page above:

When desgining your kick using any of the above methods, you will find that playing with the amplitude and pitch envelopes produce various variations, for instance a tight volume envelope will produce a sound resembling the "909" kick, while a more loose envelope with a longer decay will produce the sustaining low end "oomph" charactaristic of "808" kicks.

To further improve your kick sounds equalization and compresion come in handy. With an equalizer one basic concept would be to trim much of the mid andhigh frequencies and leave only a small "spike" or "snap" higher freqency for some character in the kick's attack. Then proceed to trim some of the "muddy" bass areas. Usually this falls around 150-250 or so hz. Even if you don't hear it, your kick may contain very low bass frequencies (around 30-40hz and less) that even really good monitors have problems reproducing. Also, because you don't hear them reproduced on your speakers these frequencies can often be very loud and cause many sound related problems such as digital clipping and a constant attempt by your monitors to deal with these frequencies. To avoid this it is especialy important on bass sounds to trim all frequencies below a certain threshold. Trim at least below 20hz, if not up to 40.

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this might be a nice read too:

Memoid's kickdrum tutorial

http://www.energyuk.net/music/produc...amp;criteria=*

mixing basslines in mono and at the front of your mix helps (ie. no reverbs or delays that might fade that would push it back into the mix).

remember that most soft synths default to a stereo signal and this can be distracting to ur mix. working in mono creates more room in ur mix and creates less clashing frequencies. the more room for ur bass, the more defined it should b if that makes sense.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by loopdon

this is pretty interesting:

http://www.postunder.com/files/minimag/sep04/kicks.html

..."More Tips" from the page above:

When desgining your kick using any of the above methods, you will find that playing with the amplitude and pitch envelopes produce various variations, for instance a tight volume envelope will produce a sound resembling the "909" kick, while a more loose envelope with a longer decay will produce the sustaining low end "oomph" charactaristic of "808" kicks.

To further improve your kick sounds equalization and compresion come in handy. With an equalizer one basic concept would be to trim much of the mid andhigh frequencies and leave only a small "spike" or "snap" higher freqency for some character in the kick's attack. Then proceed to trim some of the "muddy" bass areas. Usually this falls around 150-250 or so hz. Even if you don't hear it, your kick may contain very low bass frequencies (around 30-40hz and less) that even really good monitors have problems reproducing. Also, because you don't hear them reproduced on your speakers these frequencies can often be very loud and cause many sound related problems such as digital clipping and a constant attempt by your monitors to deal with these frequencies. To avoid this it is especialy important on bass sounds to trim all frequencies below a certain threshold. Trim at least below 20hz, if not up to 40.

----

this might be a nice read too:

Memoid's kickdrum tutorial

http://www.energyuk.net/music/produc...amp;criteria=*

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I would say cut a lot higher than that. A slope down starting from 60, especially if you are looking at cutting to vinyl.

thanks, dirty.

cut the bass on the kick then to stop muddyness?? by at least 20hz. bit of a gay q. but wot tipe of eq would you use to cut 20hz from bottom and also how would you read that you hav cut 20hz off?? :oops:. i kno on logic theres a load of different eq's. the channel eq and by the read out thats onit? :rambo:

well, i think it's more about lowshelfing here.

in order to get rid of very low stuff, i think waves linband lowband eq is often used. it's pretty accurate, i think. i think absolutely removing some freqs is pretty impssible, though.

i tend to use sound forges paragraphic eq to cut certain frequencies

ok cheers loopdon and acid man im on mac tho so no soung forge for me. looking into getting a few more waves plugins i hav got the native bundle but only c1 comps are authorised. hopfully them eq's are in the native bundle ;)

:clap: good advice on here this is somrthing ive been struggling with so thanks.
one question, how do you know what frequencies say a kick and bass are at?
do people use some kind of analyzer? can anyone recommend one please

Quote:

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Originally Posted by fortune

:clap: good advice on here this is somrthing ive been struggling with so thanks.
one question, how do you know what frequencies say a kick and bass are at?
do people use some kind of analyzer? can anyone recommend one please

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waves paz analyser or maybe something like inspector which is free and can be got here:

http://www.elementalaudio.com/produc...tor/index.html

Quote:

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Originally Posted by professor

regarding bass or bass lines in general I am of the opinion that FM synthesis is the way to go. It can be a pain to program, but once its done it will shatter almost everything else.

Mr. Bass has the EQ idea down...remember to cut the bottom off of the bass as well to avoid the mud. I cut everything off the bottom at around 50-60. some go lower, some higher.

Also, Drum synthesis is for sure the ticket. Samples are more of a pain to get the way I want them so I use a good ol' drum synthesizer...or you can use a regular synth (wave, FM, whatever) with a little savy synth programming.

yahoooo

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fm synths are wicked for bassline's, i almost always use the efm1 synth on logic for basslines

Quote:

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Originally Posted by nova

ok cheers loopdon and acid man im on mac tho so no soung forge for me. looking into getting a few more waves plugins i hav got the native bundle but only c1 comps are authorised. hopfully them eq's are in the native bundle ;)

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you won't 'bias peak' for audio recording on the mac, spark xl is pretty good as well