The Reese Bass Thread

[bRRRz]

yeah, try beefing them up a lot before filtering them. saturate, distort, widen, compress multiple times before you run notches through them or formant filter them.

Word I've been, but I've been using some automated notches to give some movement early on to it too, but only really subtly and it didn't impact the sound much. I don't really start widening after I split the frequencies, though? (not in this example mind you). Wouldn't a stereo expander mess up a oslid sub?

Yeah I knew someone woudl say that and... this was done after I'd removed a bunch of EQs. The sound is pretty much intact and I did fairly little to it hmmmm. I agree though, it DEFF has that over-EQ'd sound to it

What's your synth source?

Massive!

don't stereo expand the sub. split the sub and midrange part of the bass completely and only enhance the mids/upper mids - highs. what waveforms were you using in massive?

[mthrfnk]

Try adding a seperate sub and compressing in a seperate saw bass on the low end.

[Genevieve]

Thanks, yeah that's what I've been doing. I basically only process the mids and highs, the sub is the reese with a compressor on it with the signal turned to mono and low-passed. I only start routing the sub back in at the very end. Maybe I'll try just using a pure sine instead too.

I'll try adding another saw at the end.

I've been messing around all afternoon and it's already sounding better. Basically doing the same I did before trying to fat it up but just go overboard with it.

[bRRRz]

yeah, just use a pure sine wave for the sub. always worked for me.

[eightyseven]

Okay... this is the general (but semi-detailed) synopsis of what I'm doing for that sound. Be warned, it's not for the faint of heart / beginner

I tried to be as detailed as I could without giving everyone the exact settings on everything (that would've taken DAYS to write a tutorial on anyways), but PLEASE keep in mind that there is by no means a cookie-cutter way about any of this, and none of this should be taken as law - a lot of this is left up to experimentation and trying new things too!

*runs to kitchen, takes gravity bongloadz*

1) MAKING A BASE-REESE SOUND

This is the BASE sound that I originally programmed in Sylenth1 (+ the sub-bass layered underneath / slightly compressed together) - https://dl.dropbox.com/u/86830/Reese%20 ... 0Reese.mp3

I would suggest practicing this, because if you can't synthesize your OWN basic reese... then what're ya' doing here?! <3

Here's a picture of the final patch (part A oscillators and part B oscillators)
Part A - https://dl.dropbox.com/u/86830/Reese%20 ... rt%20A.png
Part B - https://dl.dropbox.com/u/86830/Reese%20 ... rt%20B.png

As you can see, there's nothing SUPER crazy about my patch, minus a few clever filtering tricks. There's also an important ADSR envelope that is connected to the MAIN filter cutoff (AB). Basically what this is doing is giving the first attack of the note a slightly higher cutoff (like a bark) that tails away super slightly into the sound when a note is being held. See the ADSR sliders to get an idea of the envelope I've created.

Next I made a super simple sub-bass patch in Sylenth. Again, if you can't do this... Here's what it looks like in Sylenth. https://dl.dropbox.com/u/86830/Reese%20 ... ffects.png
^^^
PS - the distortion box is ticked, but there was nothing turned on. pay no mind to it

After that, I have some slight (SLIGHT!!!) saturation BEFORE the EQ (which is just a high-shelf, since this IS a sub - I HP'd it at ~90hz), which is important because it will slightly add warmth / harmonics to frequencies that exist at full-dB, instead of adding that to frequencies that have been partially / fully cut out. small-kind limiting just for a bit of loudness (no compressor on there, don't want to squash the delicious sub too hard yet), then Utility to simply make it MONO. DON'T EVER FORGET TO MAKE YOUR SUB MONO

After that, the base-reese patch needs to have a low-pass filter that cuts at the same frequency that you high-passed the sub at. These two, separate channels will both get sent to a bus where the signals are combined, then slightly compressed (low attack, med. - long release, maybe -4 to -11 threshold, depending on what you're going for).

THAT is your basic (kind of) reese sound that will be used for a long, intense, delicate process. Hence why it needs to be so FAT!

2) WIDENESS (AKA MAKING THAT SHIT PHAT)

After this step my reese sounded like this - https://dl.dropbox.com/u/86830/Reese%20 ... o%20LR.mp3

So what I did first is make two audio channels in Live, then route the audio from the base-reese Sylenth1 channel into BOTH channels. There's an identical effects chain on each that consists of a high-pass filter that cuts off any frequency below ~150hz and then Waves Doubler, which is a chorus plug-in. If you don't know the basics behind a doubler/chorus, Google it They can widen the sound on their own a bit, but after that I also turned the pan on each channel in separate directions and turned the ms-delay on each channel until I found a sound that works. As you can see in the next section's picture, these two channels are then routed into the same bus that the sub and base-reese channels are routed into. Basically you just massively phased the fuck out of your reese and made it ridiculously huge. Good job yo'!

Still with me?

Now we move onto effects, round 1... FIGHT!

3) EFFECTS (PART 1)

Here's what my reese was sounding like after this step - https://dl.dropbox.com/u/86830/Reese%20 ... ffects.mp3

SO! We'll first refer back to either picture A or picture B, in which we can see that an audio rack containing an effects chain has been turned off. Turn them on and you've got the sound above. Obviously, the last EQ in the chain is the one that takes out all of the low-end, as well as removes harsh frequencies with SUPER careful notch/bell-subtractive EQ'ing... You're probably going to have quite a few of them at this point Keeping that in mind, the effects chain goes... PSP Mixsaturator for some quirky, yet amazing warmth / saturation - use this carefully / slightly. Then an EQ to tidy up some frequencies, then AVOX Warm for some tube-modeled saturation (use CAREFULLY), then TAL Chorus-LX that is BARELY audible, use extremely carefully. After that, it's just the EQ that I was talking about above. The compressor is used EXTREMELY gently as well to give it some thump, but not squash it.

After ALL of the stuff mentioned so far, the sound coming out of the "BASS BUS" in the pictures was the one posted at the top of step 3

I think that's all I can do for now... I'll come back later with the fun part... resampling!

This is flippin' fantastic! I PM'd you but didn't get a reply

Care to share how you modulated and FX processed this?

Seriously the best tune I've heard on the forum man.

Hey dude! Sorry, I've been super MIA since my interwebz has been down Anyways, I'll try and get the second part of this tutorial up by tonight or tomorrow. Thanks for the love on the track, it's almost done now - just been working on it the past week'ish. Really means a lot to me

[Augment]

Looking forward to that second part man!
bigup

[Thatoneguy1224]

After about 6 months of sound designing, i have achieve the sound in my head for my reese basses, with a few dozen patches across 3 DAWs and and 6 Vsts!

Now my question isn't so much about making a sound or how to make something with a VST, its about moving the sound so it can follow a set path a want it to do. For a example of this check out the video around 1:05


I think i remembered someone telling me that after resampleing a sound to put it in Reaktor and doing things to it there? Some kind of sampler? I dont know to much of that but it would be cool if any of you sound wizards can share your knowledge with me

[bRRRz]

what exactly do you mean by "moving the sound"?

[Thatoneguy1224]

what exactly do you mean by "moving the sound"?

i know its a hard question to really understand but what i mean is the sort of LFO feel but still being about to revert it back to a phase like sound like in the song.

[mromgwtf]

Use a low pass filter with LFO after processing

[mthrfnk]

Manually automate filters and chop up your samples.

[efence]

basically the whole base sound sound is done. just add different filters, efects and saturationto polishish the variations

[Genevieve]

Automate everything? Pitch, filters, etc?

[DubMikey]

Automation.

[Thatoneguy1224]

Ok i hear the automation card being played a lot but i have a question to that. I have filters and such but is it best to place the resampled bass line into a sampler to automate it with a LFO Option? And a side question, does anyone have any recommendations on samplers of choice or does something like the on in Live work fine?

[DubMikey]

Ok i hear the automation card being played a lot but i have a question to that. I have filters and such but is it best to place the resampled bass line into a sampler to automate it with a LFO Option? And a side question, does anyone have any recommendations on samplers of choice or does something like the on in Live work fine?

Turn the different knobs manually until you get the kind of movement you are looking for. Now, automate that knob.

[Aufnahmewindwuschel]

you dont have to resample you have to bounce

[bRRRz]

You don't have to use lfos. Instead you can just draw an automation for the filter cutoff and anything else.

[Thatoneguy1224]

you dont have to resample you have to bounce

You know, i have heard those terms being thrown around interchangeably more often than i hear GANGNAM STYLE being blasted at a pre-xmas party (TOO MANY FUCKING TIMES) Can you please tell me the simplest difference between Bouncing and Resampling?

[Hircine]

you dont have to resample you have to bounce

You know, i have heard those terms being thrown around interchangeably more often than i hear GANGNAM STYLE being blasted at a pre-xmas party (TOO MANY FUCKING TIMES) Can you please tell me the simplest difference between Bouncing and Resampling?

Bounce = bounce the audio. for example, convert a midi note to a wav file.
Resample = Apply a FX lightly several times while bouncing a new file instead of adding another instance of the plugin. This way, you can do some extreme shaping to your sound without having it sounding dog shit because you cranked a plugin. You also get to save a lot of cpu because you don't have 9584958 instances of the same plugin running.