fx for electro style mid range bass

[chaserawr]

I'm very scared to post on this forum. So sorry if this has been covered I've read alot of the production bible and almost 30 pages deep into this forum. Watched some tutorials played around blah blah blah.

Im really digging ravey electro style bass, with some grit.

I've found that working with Massive less is more. I've played around with a few bit crushers and I'm not getting very good results, Its not clean or bright enough.

I'm thinking some distortion would be good but I'm also getting more filthy results than bright metallic ones.

What fx would really bring out that cleaner sound in my bass?

I'm also on FL studio, and been using their plugins for effects.

Sorry of this has been covered.

[DJ Crackle]

always good to post a sample of something close to what you're looking for, or at least reference something

[yummy]

U BETTER BE SCARED

just kidding dude. if you're finding distortion to be too harsh and filthy, try using overdrive instead, or perhaps resample your bassline with very subtle amounts of distortion for warmth. to bring out a cleaner sound you might wanna try frequency splitting your bassline and using some subtle effects such as an exciter or something on your high-mids and high frequencies, again some subtle overdrive or tube warmth, possibly widening the high frequencies a bit and perhaps using an EQ to SLIGHTLY boost some of the frequencies of your sound.

also, being mindful of the other sounds in your mix (where they are in the arrangement and where they are sitting frequency wise) will help your bass stick out, ie, avoid frequency clashing, use good gain structuring, etc

[Sharmaji]

single squarewave, mono, portamento. some distortion.

that's about 80% of it...

[paravrais]

single squarewave, mono, portamento. some distortion.

that's about 80% of it...

sad but true..

[lostcosmonaut]

Been gravitating towards this sort of bassline for a while now, my advice would definitely be to experiment with FM Synthesis. Get a synth like FM8, Sytrus or Operator, start off with a square wave and try modulating it with sine waves, either at the same pitch as the original square or at octaves above or below - doesn't necessarily have to be exactly the same pitch but I find this is best way to keep it sounding more 'metallic' than 'noisy'. Bit of chorus on top of this can fill it out, might want to layer a sub underneath too.

[Swanwickk]

Been gravitating towards this sort of bassline for a while now, my advice would definitely be to experiment with FM Synthesis. Get a synth like FM8, Sytrus or Operator, start off with a square wave and try modulating it with sine waves, either at the same pitch as the original square or at octaves above or below - doesn't necessarily have to be exactly the same pitch but I find this is best way to keep it sounding more 'metallic' than 'noisy'. Bit of chorus on top of this can fill it out, might want to layer a sub underneath too.

yeah you can get some really nice metallic sounds using fm synthesis

[spectrum1]

i have a friend whos a pretty well known electro 'grind' producer with the really distorted basses.. he uses massive , and mostly the built in effects like sine shaper, also something that really helps is the phase knob on massive, select an oscillator for it then turn it up until it sounds like those electro basses, then just add distortion

[chaserawr]

word up. I will be playing this weekend got some great suggestions here.

What about pitch bending automation I feel like I heard that ALL the time, Thought that would be a cool effect something original compared to putting an LFO on the filter cutoff.