The Official Growl Bass Thread

[shim]

Thank you. you are very funny. i just wanted to put some more information out there.

While I appreciate the time and effort you put into that post, it surely must be a lot more simple than that. I mean, i doubt Skrillex would have researched all that to create his sound, he made it by accident (or so he says) while recreating a Noisia sound.

i full understand that he probably made this bass totally randomly, but at the same time in attempting to recreate it, its really helpful to analyze the wave forms and what creates formants and stuff.

the things im trying to put forth are really simple and easy to recreate. im just trying to put forth the information that will help people in creating these sounds

[PhotonOfficial]

While I appreciate the time and effort you put into that post, it surely must be a lot more simple than that. I mean, i doubt Skrillex would have researched all that to create his sound, he made it by accident (or so he says) while recreating a Noisia sound.

i full understand that he probably made this bass totally randomly, but at the same time in attempting to recreate it, its really helpful to analyze the wave forms and what creates formants and stuff.

the things im trying to put forth are really simple and easy to recreate. im just trying to put forth the information that will help people in creating these sounds

True, i'm sure it will help a lot when put to practice. Personally, I think that the base sound is more important than the FX. EQ modulation is actually pretty simple; just automate a peak in the 200-600Hz area and one in the 1-2kHz for the vowels. It depends a lot on the sound you begin with to make a good growl, although i do think that distortion plays a big part in creating growls, specifically cabinet style distortion. Pitch bends are also extremely useful for creating vowelly type sounds.

[nanocloud]

Hook, I for one am really intrigued by what you're putting forth with that post; I'll read it in more detail when I get him. Thanks for taking the time with all that!

[RhodeRachel]

+1 hookjunior, excellent post with some really intriguing insights! I have messed with EQ formant automation before but I just can't seem to get it right... I'd like to give it another go. What techniques would you recommend as far as the nature of the automating goes? Like, If you have a peak at 600Hz for example, would it be best to sweep it upwards? To 1K? 5k? Stuff like that. I guess it really depends on the initial sound itself, but is there any basic pattern or formula to start off with when it comes to automating EQ for vowel formants?

[PhotonOfficial]

+1 hookjunior, excellent post with some really intriguing insights! I have messed with EQ formant automation before but I just can't seem to get it right... I'd like to give it another go. What techniques would you recommend as far as the nature of the automating goes? Like, If you have a peak at 600Hz for example, would it be best to sweep it upwards? To 1K? 5k? Stuff like that. I guess it really depends on the initial sound itself, but is there any basic pattern or formula to start off with when it comes to automating EQ for vowel formants?

The main growling usually comes from a peak automating between 200Hz to around 900Hz, and for specific vowels, a second peak is set higher to lets say, 1kHz. I only automate the second peak very slightly at the end of a note to create different sort of vowels.

[Mazak]

I made this bass today.

Made it out of a burp lol


Soundcloud

[claudedefaren]

I've got several growly sounds in here I'll gladly explain if anyone would like!

Soundcloud

They start at 1:29

[Method]

Ive been practicing heavy duty resampling as of late, it feels like the amount of work i'm spending on just one growl is too much, but maybe the results speak for themselves. Ask and ye shall receive:

Growls by themselves:

Soundcloud

[nanocloud]

Ive been practicing heavy duty resampling as of late, it feels like the amount of work i'm spending on just one growl is too much, but maybe the results speak for themselves. Ask and ye shall receive:

Growls by themselves:

Soundcloud

Pretty sick actually, any tips on what you did during the resampling stage?

[claudedefaren]

Is anyone else's soundcloud widgets not working? None of your widgets are working for me, nor is mine

[shim]

so for making good vowels the first and most important part is making sure you have a wave that is a formant shape like i discussed in the long convoluted post. this just makes sure the waveform you are imposing vowels on does already sound like a voice.

as for modulating the EQ there are really no rules, but i like to have a few simple thinks to ensure the waveform is able to be modulated in a bunch of interesting ways.

Soundcloud

for this growl it was really simple i made a really simple wave in fm8 and modulated the brightness to emulate a low pass filter and i have 1 eq with a notch in it right after the instance of fm8. this sweeps back and forth and is mostly there to make the wave for interesting and not so predictable. i distort after this to add in frequencies that the notch filter is nuking. after this i have 1 eq with a huge bump going back and forth between 100 and 600. again after this i distort. (when i say distort i usually mean only distort the high end.)

the purpose of these EQs is simply to change the waveform, where the distortion levels everything out and makes it sound almost like a wave table if that makes any sense.

[Method]

Ive been practicing heavy duty resampling as of late, it feels like the amount of work i'm spending on just one growl is too much, but maybe the results speak for themselves. Ask and ye shall receive:

Growls by themselves:

Soundcloud

Pretty sick actually, any tips on what you did during the resampling stage?

Basically I started with a simple reese sounding patch with a decent amount of distortion on the mids (Which can be achieved either through omhicide or band splitting):

1. Make sure the reese or growl has good base movement, this can be done with portamento/midi notes. Maybe it goes up in pitch, maybe down, maybe all over the place, just give it a specific movement, this is important.
2. Bounce it out, maybe compress it if you like, and run it through BiFilter2 Bandreject on full resonance, at this point you need to automate the cutoff of the filter to move in a similar fashion as you gave it with the midi.
3. Bounce it out again, this time feel free to add more distortion if you like, its up to you, but add a WoW filter and another bifilter2 with the same settings on this round. WOW filter on band reject, vowel mode, resonance at about 70-90 depending on what sounds better, and again, give the sound movement with WOW and Bifilter according to it's original movement, you want to emphasize that original movement with these filters.
4. Repeat ad infinitum until satisfaction.

Some optional additions to the resampling stages are flanger, phaser, chorus, whatever else you want to give it to add movement or crunch, distortion is always good too, just don't overdo it.

[Mazak]

so for making good vowels the first and most important part is making sure you have a wave that is a formant shape like i discussed in the long convoluted post. this just makes sure the waveform you are imposing vowels on does already sound like a voice.

as for modulating the EQ there are really no rules, but i like to have a few simple thinks to ensure the waveform is able to be modulated in a bunch of interesting ways.

Soundcloud

for this growl it was really simple i made a really simple wave in fm8 and modulated the brightness to emulate a low pass filter and i have 1 eq with a notch in it right after the instance of fm8. this sweeps back and forth and is mostly there to make the wave for interesting and not so predictable. i distort after this to add in frequencies that the notch filter is nuking. after this i have 1 eq with a huge bump going back and forth between 100 and 600. again after this i distort. (when i say distort i usually mean only distort the high end.)

the purpose of these EQs is simply to change the waveform, where the distortion levels everything out and makes it sound almost like a wave table if that makes any sense.

Sounds great man. Will have to try that out.

[RhodeRachel]

I've got several growly sounds in here I'll gladly explain if anyone would like!

Soundcloud

They start at 1:29

Good shit dude! I would love to know how you made the growl specifically at 1:34 that sounds sort of Noisia/KOAN Sound-ish. Been trying to replicate a sound similar to that for the longest time and you clearly know more than I do as far as making it goes! Nicely done.

It reminds of the sound at 1:09 in this song:


Would SOOOOO love to know how to make that!!! Or anything close to it. You really captured that vibe at 1:34 in your song, please let me know how you made that sound! Love it man, so badass.

[mthrfnk]

Updated this track of mine, tried to improve the squelchy growls

Soundcloud

As always, details if you want.

[dblaze]

so for making good vowels the first and most important part is making sure you have a wave that is a formant shape like i discussed in the long convoluted post. this just makes sure the waveform you are imposing vowels on does already sound like a voice.

as for modulating the EQ there are really no rules, but i like to have a few simple thinks to ensure the waveform is able to be modulated in a bunch of interesting ways.

Soundcloud

for this growl it was really simple i made a really simple wave in fm8 and modulated the brightness to emulate a low pass filter and i have 1 eq with a notch in it right after the instance of fm8. this sweeps back and forth and is mostly there to make the wave for interesting and not so predictable. i distort after this to add in frequencies that the notch filter is nuking. after this i have 1 eq with a huge bump going back and forth between 100 and 600. again after this i distort. (when i say distort i usually mean only distort the high end.)

the purpose of these EQs is simply to change the waveform, where the distortion levels everything out and makes it sound almost like a wave table if that makes any sense.

Sounds great man. Will have to try that out.

what waveforms were you modulating in your fm8 patch? any formant waves?

[claudedefaren]

I've got several growly sounds in here I'll gladly explain if anyone would like!

Soundcloud

They start at 1:29

Good shit dude! I would love to know how you made the growl specifically at 1:34 that sounds sort of Noisia/KOAN Sound-ish. Been trying to replicate a sound similar to that for the longest time and you clearly know more than I do as far as making it goes! Nicely done.

It reminds of the sound at 1:09 in this song:


Would SOOOOO love to know how to make that!!! Or anything close to it. You really captured that vibe at 1:34 in your song, please let me know how you made that sound! Love it man, so badass.

Thanks man I'm flattered! Well, I always struggle to do it right when people just type what they did, so I made a bunch of screenshots from the synth all the way through the FX chain. I used FM8 and Ableton stock plugins:


http://i.imgur.com/lW7lv0b.jpg
(sorry, it's too big that the forum won't let me inline it)



Hopefully that is helpful for you to recreate that sound? Let me know if you need help. On most of the other growly sounds I used FabFilter Volcano since I realized it was way easier than the auto-filter rack I made in the screenshot below.

[claudedefaren]

Oops surety, just realized i forgot to include the mapping of the EQ8 rack.. will take a screenshot of those values later

[ephyks]

Okay, I'm slowly starting to get this. I can hear some of the deep vowels coming from FM8, but I'm having a difficult time isolating it. I've read that the secondary modulation in FM creates the vowelly overtones.

So say I have the FM matrix in front of me. I route E into F. Then I route D into F. D is my secondary moduation, as I make that the high harmonic, put the waveform on 10th format, and turn the ratio up to 58-62. I then modulate E, which has a ratio of 1.5. I get a pretty generic "yeeeeuuuueeehhh" I then route C to D, and give C a ratio of 2. I now get "yeeeeeaaaaauuuuggggggghhhh".

Here's to demonstrate my problem.

Soundcloud

I can't tell if I'm into something, or this is just an dead end. I can hear something back there, but it's so cluttered with high end noise.

[Method]

Okay, I'm slowly starting to get this. I can hear some of the deep vowels coming from FM8, but I'm having a difficult time isolating it. I've read that the secondary modulation in FM creates the vowelly overtones.

So say I have the FM matrix in front of me. I route E into F. Then I route D into F. D is my secondary moduation, as I make that the high harmonic, put the waveform on 10th format, and turn the ratio up to 58-62. I then modulate E, which has a ratio of 1.5. I get a pretty generic "yeeeeuuuueeehhh" I then route C to D, and give C a ratio of 2. I now get "yeeeeeaaaaauuuuggggggghhhh".

Here's to demonstrate my problem.



I can't tell if I'm into something, or this is just an dead end. I can hear something back there, but it's so cluttered with high end noise.

Everything is modulating everything too much, thats where the white noise comes from.

Take a look at this video to get a good basis for fm8 vowel growls:

Soundcloud

This will get you the vowel part, maybe not as much the growly part youre looking for but its a good start.