I need BASS!!!
 

I would really need help with my basses. I make trance (hard-trance, psyche) and techno. I just can?t get good, usable bass sounds out of my virus (or MS2000, thou I just got it a few months ago). I mean those really subby, punchy and dark :twisted: trance basses you hear on Infected mushrooms work or in numerous hard-trance records. I know infected use Novation Bass-station but I?m little low on cash right now. I?ll buy it as soon as possible. In the mean while I?m trying to keep my workflow on so if someone makes trance (anykind will help) please post me a INIT-patch or something to help me get the point. Or some hints perhaps. Or some ready made patches to tweak. MS2000 patches would be nice too if someone owns one. I know it?s perfectly good for basses but haven?t figured it out yet.

The fatness comes not from one single patch my friend....

Try making a relatively fat patch.....record it as audio, copy that track three times and divide each bass track so that each one deals with a different range of the frequency spectrum (ie bass track 1 200Hz and below, track 2 200Hz-3kHz, and track 3 3k-12k)

Then find a balance between the three, send it out to a valve Compressor, then into a valve EQ, fuck with it, distort it, get creative!!!!!

Then, come back and tell me you cant make bass fat....

bassline is all about eq.

I know you can work wonders for bass in the mixing (EQ, compressing), but my real problem is working when making songs. You see, I mainly use hardware when making tunes. So I need some good bass patches for my Virus or MS2000 to keep the creative work rolling. Trance is about the sounds and if I can?t see the big picture when I start making music, my song will end up not so good. It?s about my working habits. I need that good bass that fits in to my song in my memorybanks in the minute I start making something. Then I can easily get my songmaking rolling and forget about the rest. Then the mixing part is more easy and I won?t need to do much for the sounds anymore when I?m ready to record.

Cut the useless crap and get to the point. I need trance basses to store into my memorybanks. Please Send a MIDI or tell me how to do it myself. I know all about mixing, I?m studying it in a polytechnic school. (I don?t mean to be rude :wink: )

here is how i usually work my basses either on the Virus or the Discovery2.2 which sounds like NordLead (and infected do have a nord btw, i don't think they make their basses on the cheesy bass station)

for trance, basically i do it this way:
- 2/3 saw waveform, the first at 12' and the sec at 0'
- sub osc to middle
- analog boost and eq !
- fast filter decay, 0 sustain and 0 release
- u can also add punch (not too much tho)
- use unison and set detune and panspread to 0, slightly detune the 2nd osc
- u can also sync the 2nd osc and alter its semitone by 1 to 7, this can also make a nice effect on the sound
- etc etc etc etc

Discovery has special envelopes, they are very agressive and fast, so setting the filter attack to 3 or 5 instead of 0 and very fast decay can make very nice effect on the bass sound.
When I use Discovery, i always add a second layer of sine wave behind the initial sound to make it deeper.


u can combine all these tips to get a unique sound, u can mix saw and square waves, too, PWM........... man u have so many choices :D

i'll do my best to post some patches i made tonight or tomorrw!

Yeah, I also think it's better to get your sound going in. I can almost always get the sound from the synth, without having to rely on too much EQ. Compressing a synth bass usually means that you did a poor job in the ADSTR structure, why more people don't know this I haven't figured out, but needing to treat a synth bassline for dynamics just means that whoever is behind the wheel isn't doing their job (unless you're going after the artifacts of brutal compression).

Why don't you list 5 or 6 patches that come close to the sound you have in mind, and we can see what needs to be done with them.

Find a bass patch, literally any bass patch, or pretty much any/all lead patches (with a short attack and short release), too.

Add the sub-osc and whack it up.

The FM feature is my favourite weapon for rich bass on the Virus...

Make sure the Osc2 sync' button is disabled, then use the FM amount knob. - Turn it very slowly (one value at a time) and tune it to the sound you're hearing, while repeatedly holding or hitting a key/note. There's a dozen or so sweet spots on a whole sweep of the FM amount knob, depending on the Osc2 detune value (play around with the detune control - it acts like a "fine-tune" to the FM amount, but it doesn't have to be any way surgically perfect to give nice sonic results - far from it) and the chord structure you're using for the song, and this will add some really nice additional harmonics to underlie and strengthen the bass patch before it goes to be filtered + processed.

After that, use the filter-env control(s) to start with full attack and (moderately quickly) sweep downwards, and then set a filter envelope-amount (depth) of around 64, and add a little resonance (not too much). Lower the cutoff knob until the sound starts with a little higher/mid freqs before sweeping downwards (as specified in the filter env). It'll add a little punch to the forefront of the patch and will control where the resonance will sweep from/to.

Inject a distortion model (start from an actual value of 0 at first to keep it subtle so you can hear the differences between the models, and then when you've found a nice distortion type gently raise it up), and this will bring out the raw-sounding FM harmonics from earlier and give it some real bite. Maybe add a little saturation, but not a lot. Valve emulation stuff isn't all that good for low-EQ's/bass, imho - it makes it woolly and loose. I tend to find valve/saturation is best suited to mid-range sounds.

Finally alter the resonance, the cutoff, filter-env, (etc.) a little to taste, to get everything to balance and flesh out. Add analog-boost and tune it, etc.

Thank you Timo and Hatembr. Really nice tricks there. I?ll be in touch again after I get into my synths again. In the meanwhile keep posting your ideas here. Someone got any Patches to share?

As far as my understanding goes the unison won?t have any effect besides making the sound louder if both detune and panspread is set to 0. This will only alter the amplitude of the output wave (sound) since it?s actaully a copy of the original wave you add to a completly indentical wave. The point of unison is to add slightly different waves to each other to make it sound fatter or like a choir of voices instead of one voice. Am i missing somthing here or am i completly wrong :?: :?

yes that is correct!! Setting them to 0 will only make the raw sound louder and thicker, i usually do it this way instead of doubling the audio track in cubase! ;)

I was also thinking how to make the best out of the virus chorus. I?ve tried a lot of different settings but only a few of them on some sounds have an effect i?d like them to have. Does it work well with the unison turned on? How do I make my sounds fatter with only chorus, not using unison at all? It should be possible.

I have never really liked virus effects. Don?t get me wrong, they sound good (exspecially reverb/delay and analog boost) but they are so hard to handle. My MS2000 has a simple delay processor (which can do basic stereodelay and L to R delay) with only time and depth controls
(+ something in the menu) but in a way it?s far better than virus delay, because there?s no functions you can mess with too much and make your sound useless. It makes my trance leads Rock! In it?s most simplest way.

Anything on the bass department?

Might also drive the overdrive/distortion and saturation processors harder too. ;)

hmmm chorus on the bass? i don't think it is a good idea, it will bring the bass sound to the front and i guess it will sound weird and detached from the kick imho.

I agree,

I've been experimenting with music for many years now and come to the conclusion that bass sounds has to be simple. Using chorus and unison does not make your bass stand out, it just makes the sound more diffuse and makes it blend in with other sounds you have in a track. You also have the problem with phasing out the low freqs wich is bad when it comes to bass because the lowend has to stable/constant and play at the right places. I almost only use 1 osc for bass but not from the Virus wich I hate for bass. It just doesnt work with simple sound but kicks ass at complex stuff. Anyway remember that a bad bass sequence makes a good bass patch sound bad. I think your problem might be your midi programming instead of the synth programming.
Infected Mushroom uses mostly ultra simple 1 osc bass sounds (I dont think they use the Bassstation though but they use a Juno106 and Nordlead all the time for bass, and sometimes Jupiter 6) they are just very good a programming midi sequences. Using very short notes the right places can really ad life to a bassline.
Try naming some Infected Mushroom tracks where you like the bass.

Not the saturation stage since it?s the filter creating that and i?m so not sure about distortion either. Isn?t unison the last point of the chain? Then there would only be the output that could distorts because of to high levels but i?m not sure that that would sound very nice. Hmm, don?t know :?
As for doubling identical tracks; wouldn?t that just be the same as to turn up the volume? I mean it would only make the amplitude higher...

hmmmmmm not sure, or may be yes! actually i don't know! as far as my tiny experience go, when i use twin unison or even triple it, it makes the bass sound punchier, thicker and louder and doesn't sound the same as when doubling the audio track or pushing the levels up, which eventually may lead to the same result if one uses adequate compression with it.
Can you try it Onkel? i am curious to know if i am hallucinating or if it really sound the same...... :wink:

Hmmm, i tried to make a recording with:

1. No unison, no track layering.
2. No unison, 3 identical tracks layered.
3. Unison mode 4, detune = 0, panspread = 0, no track layering.

Then i balanced the volume level of the tracks and compared them. All 3 options sounded different but i found that nr. 3 was sounding best. Maybe it has something to do with the output of the Virus. Maybe some kind of limiter is built in to the output to prevent it from distorting. I have to throw the towel in the ring and say you?r right. I just can?t explain why :? Wierd :roll:

About doubling midi tracks. Remember that midi timing is not rock stady plus you get twise the noise when your record the same seq twice and mix them. The virus has no limiter. I have no probs clipping the outs.

You should use a preamp to record your synths at a high enough level.

That still dosn?t explain why there?s difference in the sound (apart from higher volume) when using unison with detune and panspread set to 0. That was what i found wird. I can understand that you might get some diffenrence when doubling tracks...

cool, now i'm sure i stopped taking lsd !! :p

seriously, i thought about it, i think the difference between layering and using 0-detune and panspread is the following:
- when u double the tracks it is like having two sounds out of 2 different boxes with 2 different filters, 2 different fx..... which gives a certain sound.
- when using unison with n voices, they all go through the same amp env, filters, fx..... which logically makes it sound different then two layered sounds.
i think it is as simple as this.... ?

I didn?t mean to use chorus on bass sounds. I drifted out of the topic. I?ve been trying to use chorus on lead sounds for example. To thicken them or make them sound more transparent. I never use chorus on bass. It doesn?t work.

Hmm, i always thought of it as the unison being last point of the chain and not that it was detuned and panspread layers going through the filters and effects too. I thought the unison just doubled (or tripled, qaurdubled, etc.) the output sound slightly detuned and spread into a stereo image. Is it me that?s wrong here. Can anyone who actually knows this tell me if this is true or false?!

I thought that Unison stemmed right from the first block - the oscillators, triggered by the pitch - and then that (summed) signal went through the filter and amp blocks as just one signal. Therefore the filter and filter saturation would have a direct effect on it - especially if the signal is made stronger by the addition of two or more duplicate oscillators (in unison). The effects including the distortion come last.

Maybe Marc or Ben might be able to clear this up.

I think chorus sounds great on bass as long as it's subtle. Again, it depends on what kind of effect you're going for. Listen to this sample, I'm pretty sure there's chorus on the bass line and it sounds gorgeous:

Bass Sample

-REMIDI

dj remedi:

nice sample, whose track is that ?

onkel:

assuming it is the last point of the chain, would that mean we can have more than 2 filters per part? ;) certainly not, so i'm pretty sure it is at the very beginning.

timo:

yep! i think mar or ben would have the final word

Errr, now i?m really confused :? What i mean with "last point of chain" is that the oscillators go to the filter and to the envelope, etc. and when the sound has been formed to the last point it?s copied, detuned and panspread. But when i think about i this sounds really wrong. I guess the unison is already in the oscillators then (hypersaw?) :lol:

REMIDI: This is more like a bass synth...meaning that this sits right on top of the actual bass sound(often a sine wave, or triangle..can use saw but not the best for very low sounds)

so yeah...chorus in these type of sounds are almost a must these days, as long as you don't apply chorus to the bottom part of the bass sounds.

hmmm now i know what u mean.... i think only marc or ben can confirm this....



yeah that's it :D we can dream :lol:

Hey Hatembr, that sample was taken from "Agnelli & Nelson - Holding Onto Nothing (Deep Mix)" - amazing trance tune!


I see your point, MADSTATION :wink:

The actual "bass" sound is pretty hard to hear in headphones; but that bass synth does sound pretty sweet, doesn't it? :D

Good bass is all about layering....

-REMIDI

http://fileserv4.soundclick.com/fast...eoforchids.mp3

thats a tune i wrote which is pretty bass heavy. the virus you already is a MONSTER bass machine.

the one in this song is just a single instance of albino though. sine wave bass. low resonance, low cutoff. in key of E around C2 kind of range. theres 2 fruity compressors on it. a fruity filter and in addition to that theres another fruity compressor on the master channel. everything above 6,000hz is shelved off (using a fruity parametric EQ). overall its had the living fucking shit compressed out of it and as a result its fairly thick. my recommendation is if you cant get 'liquidize your organs' kind of bass straight out of an ms2000 (and lets face it, theres not many patches you can build straight off that just 'work') then consider using various EQ, filter and compression tools to really fatten it up[/quote]

Wandering Kid: Great sample you got there! I love the various synths and overall composition ! It's well produced as well...bass is a "bit" muddy tho, well its not muddy but its very low in the mix(not in volume, the actual notes) and its less punchy that the typical full on basses found in psy-trance. You got some GREAT stereo image going as well, very good sample actually. Love it!


I'm not all that much into psytrance(mostly into trance and hard trance, as well as some breaks) but I've done a really short goa-like type of track once(done in 2-3 hours, strictly fruity+vsts): www.madstation.net/mad-psytrance.mp3

Great topic, it's nice to see many different views and concepts regarding bass sounds!