Horsepower Productions style wobble (not tone clone thread)

[dubbyconqueror]

I am very new to world of dubstep producing and easily one of my biggest influences to get into this has been Horsepower Productions. For my wobbles I've generally been using Sawer in FL, and I'm still really experimenting with different sounds. I was wondering if I could get some tips on how to get this old school subtle kind of wobble tone.
For example, around 2 minutes into this song:


and all around the second half of this song:


I don't want to clone or copy their bass sound of course, I'd just like some tips as to how to make this kind of wobble tone, mostly as a learning experience. Thanks in advance.

[hasezwei]

i'd say use an envelope for your filter rather than an lfo. slow attack, slight resonance on the filter, low notes.

[dubbyconqueror]

i'd say use an envelope for your filter rather than an lfo. slow attack, slight resonance on the filter, low notes.

So you're saying I should use a low pass with no lfo and essentially get the wobbly sound manually, just by playing the notes with a low attack? I'll try it out, thank you. For some reason I never really thought to get a sound like that without an LFO

Now that I think about it though, that makes sense, as in most of the wobbles like that it only goes through one sweep stage per note played as opposed to an LFO wobble.

[hasezwei]

i'd say use an envelope for your filter rather than an lfo. slow attack, slight resonance on the filter, low notes.

So you're saying I should use a low pass with no lfo and essentially get the wobbly sound manually, just by playing the notes with a low attack? I'll try it out, thank you. For some reason I never really thought to get a sound like that without an LFO

Now that I think about it though, that makes sense, as in most of the wobbles like that it only goes through one sweep stage per note played as opposed to an LFO wobble.

exactly. lfo's have (had) their purpose in dubstep but in general envelopes allow for more precise control over the sound. they're also usable for virtually any purpose whereas lfo's are more of a one-trick pony (even in brostep the hypermodulated lfo madness has been pushed away by resampled basslines and sustained screechy notes).

nice taste btw

[dubbyconqueror]

Alright, so I think I'm starting to get this. Can this essentially be used in place of an lfo, by resampling and changing up envelope settings? I'm just trying to make sure I'm getting this. This might sound like a dumb question, but is resampling just sampling on filtered note and manipulating it to make a bassline? Well, or rather, sampling a bunch of differently enveloped notes and creating a bassline?

And thank you

[hasezwei]

Alright, so I think I'm starting to get this. Can this essentially be used in place of an lfo, by resampling and changing up envelope settings? I'm just trying to make sure I'm getting this. This might sound like a dumb question, but is resampling just sampling on filtered note and manipulating it to make a bassline? Well, or rather, sampling a bunch of differently enveloped notes and creating a bassline?

And thank you

nah m8 no need to worry bout resampling as of yet
if you're using envelopes you can just draw your notes in midi as the envelope will get triggered at the start of every single note as opposed to having one long note wobbling with an lfo (thereby sounding like a staccato of notes).

of course you can bounce out a couple notes with different envelope settings and play them back with a sampler but i don't think it's necessary especially not when you're going for something in the style of horsepower. if you wanna change your bass sound over the course of the track i think it'd be easier to just automate synthparameters in your sequencer or assigning different stuff to note velocity and draw the notes accordingly.

resampling is generally just useful if you're going for very complex sound designing that will bring your computer down to it's knees if you load up all the required fx at once, or when you're wanting to pitch a sound after filtering etc is applied. it's mostly done with prolonged reese-style sounds, and almost always goes along with other advanced techniques like splitting your sound into frequency bands and applying different fx to them et cetera.
it's also a nice way to archive complex bass sounds so you won't have to load long fx chains if you want to use them in another track, just bounce out a couple notes of your bass and sample them in another project (most likely to process them even further)

but as i said, you shouldn't worry about resampling if you're not going for a specific sound (iE heavily processed reeses/growls/whatever). it's not a magic solution to problems and definetly not something you should do to every sound.

[dubbyconqueror]

Ok, I'd just seen some talk about resampling bass and such so I guessed it was more of a basic method. Yeah, I don't think I really need to worry about that for what I'm doing. Thanks again for all the help.