district wrote:been working on this sorta thing for a minute now, i'll show you how i do it but i use cubase so you'll have to bastardise some of the techniques and plugins for ableton.
using massive you want settings along the lines of this:
osc 1 has the standard initialised square - saw 1 waveform, i've put the wavetable postion all the way to the right (5 o clock) so its just a pure square wave and set the intensity and amplitude to about 1/2 o clock on the dials. i've pitched this down an octave and set the filter settings on the right so it's only being sent to filter 1
oscillators two and three are both using the va - pulse saw pwm waveforms and are detuned (one + 0.25 and the other - 0.25) both are being sent to filter 2. note theres not too much wulse width modulation going on. you only need a little bit.
i've dragged the filter 2 routing to serial and set a lowpass 2 filter on filter 1 and a scream on the other. by separating the sub oscillator with the detuned oscillators you get a stronger low end, it's not wobbling up and down like the pwm oscillators and basically means that you've got some dynamics in the lower mid frequencies but the subs still punching through. (this methods pretty similar to how most people did it on the old juno synths)
other things to note on the patch, got a hard clipper on insert 1 which has been placed infront of filter one, (see pic 2 for routing) a classic tube distortion on fx1, just to bring out the harmonics a little bit and some chorus (settings also on pic 2) on fx2 just to thicken it out, makes the patch a bit wider. (its worth playing with for a bit too just to see how far you can stretch it)
now you've got your patch set up you need to do a few things to bring it out a bit more.
if you wanna be anal you can save a few multi shot samples of your patch say 8 bar loop playing one long note for the duration (i tend to use C2 sometimes A or F)
in this instance i've just used c2 though.
you wanna export the midi loop from your patch back into your daw as an audio mixdown, and then duplicate the audio loop onto three channels.
we're gonna separate it into sub, mids and highs so using a decent eq ( i'm using the waves rennaisance EQ's, they'r ok but not very strong so i've used two on each channel like this...)
(gonna have to copy and paste this image link in, its too big for the forum)
http://img843.imageshack.us/img843/7968/eqsx.jpg
the first channel has two req's on the inserts low-passed down to 300 hz, note its got a sharp cutoff too on the filter
next channel has the mids so it's low passed and high passed so only 300 hz - 3000hz is coming through
and lastly, you've got your highs, everything abover 3000hz.
usually i'll stick a limiter on the sub channel, but in this instance it's already pretty weighty so we dont need to (if you used more chorus or different effects you may have to. cos i used the hard clipper in massive earlier its not needed)
mid range channel i've put cubase's native plug in amp simulator hardly doing anything to the initialised patch just boosting it and giving it a touch of overdrive. LESS IS ALWAYS MORE. when you're resampling like this it's loads better to apply slight effects rather than caking it all on we just want to get some more harmonics in the sound here. again heres a pic of the settings just so you can see how i've done it
cos' we've just distorted it we need to put another mid filter on, it just tidies up any artefacts the amp sim might have placed on the low end and top end and keeps the sound tight for those frequencies (dont want any distortion on the sub atm)
some of the braver production heads on here may go for a bit of chorus on the the mids as well but i'd advise only a very slight amount
high end channel, gonna put another amp sim on, boost the drive and overall volume a bit as well here, the tops are gonna be the quietest so they'll need a bit of amping just so we can get them in the mix.
again make sure you're putting eq's after each stage of processing, keep the frequency bands nice and tight dont go mad with the distortion. cant stress this enough.
added a very short reverb (one of the cubase legacy reverbs from the good ol' days of sx) short decay, small room low in the mix, just to spread the sound out a little bit and a really slow phaser. clock the dry/wet mix signals on them all. you dont need much
(again, gonna have to copy and paste this image link in, its too big for the forum)
http://img340.imageshack.us/img340/9076/hiend.jpg
you wanna solo all three channels and export that as a single waveform now. if you've done it right, it shouldn't be peaking on the master out but it will probably sound a bit harsh on the tops, we're gonna sort this out now.
now you can either choose to go back and repeat the previous methods adding different effects like phasing and filters to the different frequency bands and start getting some neurofunk style bass stuff or you can load your wav into a sampler and start playing with it like that.
i'd recommend the freeware sampler shortcircuit, it's a vst so will work in ableton or whatever other daw you've got and its a little lighter on the cpu than kontakt i find. (also running a shedload of these is loads better than a tonnes of massives or albino's or whatever you're using)
get it here! --->
http://vemberaudio.se/shortcircuit.php
fire a track up with shortcircuit and load your newly multisampled wav in. once loaded should look like this:
what you're gonna have to do to get it playing across your keyboard is bring your low key right down to c-2 or whatever (you probably wont get further than C0 anyway) set your root as C2 (or whatever note you saved it as on the midi editor earlier!) and shoot the high key right up so it's mapped across the whole keyboard. it's also worth setting the velocity sensitivity from -30db to 0db so its hitting at the same level each time, its a bass not a hi-hat you want it punchy each and every. pitch benders might wanna knock the pb range up to 12 so you can fuck about a bit more in the automation later on.
i've stuck a 2-pole lowpass filter on mine so it's a bit deeper but still sounds like a classic reese. cos its a 2 pole filter you're gonna get some of those low mid harmonics slightly poking through, giving it a bit of character and helping it stand out more in the mix (it's also gonna give off the impression your bass is a bit louder. this is also a good thing.)
and finally to give it a bit of movement ive added a sine wave lfo which is keytriggered and moving at a rate of 0.401 hz (the number isn't important, just the fact it's nice and slow) and its moving the cutoff on the filter up and down very slightly (check the modulation routing window) you only need it moving by a touch, drive the depth up and its gonna start opening the filter up more but it's also gonna knock the lower end out on the second part of the sines cycle (to avoid this change the bottom scoop on the step lfo so its just a straight line, you'll get this cutoff opening that keeps the low end in but just growls ever so slightly)
other finishing touches, maybe set the voice mode to legato and stick a bit of glide in using the portamento. just have a play with it. i'd say learning how to make a decent reese is as important in this sorta production as learning to ollie on a skateboard.
hope this helps, any questions i'll try and answer em. sorry if its a bit patronising at times, tried to explain it all so you understand why everythings been done. knowing the process is nothing compared to understanding it and then being able to fuck about with it and just lording it over bass sounds.
anyone wants to hit me up i'm on soundcloud @
http://soundcloud.com/district
twitter:
http://twitter.com/District2019
and myspace:
http://www.myspace.com/district2019
allow the spamming, writing this up was long!
I'm such a wasteman.
