how do I recreate this 808 bassline, best I've ever heard

[trsreagan3]

My question is how do you go from a sine wave to an 808 like this? I have spent at least 20 hours trying to get it close. When I look at the waveform it looks like it has been heavily compressed. I'm not sure how he gets it to stick out so much in his track. Even when I cut out all of my other frequencies below 90 hz, and put this channel at the same level as my kick in the mix I can never get it to stand out like this. I can get it to stand out with long notes, but am having trouble getting it to when it is on 8th/16th notes like this. here is the track "12th planet-68".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F03YB42z3_E

[jetpack]

All I hear is a sine or 808 tail with a slight wobble on it. Am I missing something?

[ChadDub]

Look at the song with a visual EQ or a frequency analyzer, is the bass JUST a sine? It doesn't sound like it to me.

[Eat Bass]

could be chad. even if you loop the tail of an 808, they still have some color. i've been using looped 808's for my basses recently and on frequency analyzers they never show up as just 1 peak. its usually quite a large peak but gets slightly wider. so probly just an 808 or a sine with some distortion or saturation or whatever for some color.

[trsreagan3]

Ya I have looked at it a few times with spectrum in ableton. most of the notes hit at 54hz with the occasional dip down to 43 hz. all of the notes appear to be a sine as the waveform comes to a point. However using a high pass filter though I can still hear the top end of the bassline all the way up to a little over 300 hz which leads me to believe there is some kind of layering of synths going on. I have tried leaving a clean sine underneath and then saturating another high passed sine over the top but this did not seem to work.

[mitchAUS]

Looped single cycle 808 with mild tape saturation, I used the warm tape setting in saturn and pushed the dynamics knob (compression) about mid way and got a pretty pleasing tone. Some of the harmonics were making it sound no where near sub by enough so i used the 3 band eq in saturn to cut the highs and mids. I experimented with some feedback around the 60hz mark and that seemed to really focus the fundamental tone when playing in the sub bass octave. 808 wave form brought out more harmonics then I anticipated. In the exs24 I pushed the overdrive to about 20% to try focus in on some of these and used a 12 db lp filter at around 40% and the resonance to about 20 to pull it back. I routed the resonance to a lfo that with the amount barely touched. This sort of made the bass hovering either side of the note giving it subtle movement. The rest of the sound is just modulation of filter cut off, you can hear a filter open every now and then. Its not just a change in volume, you can hear a definite change in timbre and thats what inspired me to play with the saturation in both saturn and the exs24 itself. Seems pretty powerful on my monitors but i don't know how much power i have sacrificed playing with saturation and a little modulation, sounds good though so I'm not too worried. Should also note I've shaped the amp envelope to have a little punch at the start. The sustain is only at around 2/3, short decay and I've given it a slight attack and release. When automating/modulating the cut off you do need to lower the resonance a bit as well or you get that acid ring sort of sound.

[Eat Bass]

Looped single cycle 808 with mild tape saturation, I used the warm tape setting in saturn and pushed the dynamics knob (compression) about mid way and got a pretty pleasing tone. Some of the harmonics were making it sound no where near sub by enough so i used the 3 band eq in saturn to cut the highs and mids. I experimented with some feedback around the 60hz mark and that seemed to really focus the fundamental tone when playing in the sub bass octave. 808 wave form brought out more harmonics then I anticipated. In the exs24 I pushed the overdrive to about 20% to try focus in on some of these and used a 12 db lp filter at around 40% and the resonance to about 20 to pull it back. I routed the resonance to a lfo that with the amount barely touched. This sort of made the bass hovering either side of the note giving it subtle movement. The rest of the sound is just modulation of filter cut off, you can hear a filter open every now and then. Its not just a change in volume, you can hear a definite change in timbre and thats what inspired me to play with the saturation in both saturn and the exs24 itself. Seems pretty powerful on my monitors but i don't know how much power i have sacrificed playing with saturation and a little modulation, sounds good though so I'm not too worried. Should also note I've shaped the amp envelope to have a little punch at the start. The sustain is only at around 2/3, short decay and I've given it a slight attack and release. When automating/modulating the cut off you do need to lower the resonance a bit as well or you get that acid ring sort of sound.

saturn is the bees knees huh? funny saturn made me hate audio damage kombinat, but then it made me love it again. cuz saturn is so much more usable and the saturation sounds so much warmer and just more realistic. but then it made me realize kombinat does still have its place, when i want some true grit without over saturating and shiet.

[mitchAUS]

Looped single cycle 808 with mild tape saturation, I used the warm tape setting in saturn and pushed the dynamics knob (compression) about mid way and got a pretty pleasing tone. Some of the harmonics were making it sound no where near sub by enough so i used the 3 band eq in saturn to cut the highs and mids. I experimented with some feedback around the 60hz mark and that seemed to really focus the fundamental tone when playing in the sub bass octave. 808 wave form brought out more harmonics then I anticipated. In the exs24 I pushed the overdrive to about 20% to try focus in on some of these and used a 12 db lp filter at around 40% and the resonance to about 20 to pull it back. I routed the resonance to a lfo that with the amount barely touched. This sort of made the bass hovering either side of the note giving it subtle movement. The rest of the sound is just modulation of filter cut off, you can hear a filter open every now and then. Its not just a change in volume, you can hear a definite change in timbre and thats what inspired me to play with the saturation in both saturn and the exs24 itself. Seems pretty powerful on my monitors but i don't know how much power i have sacrificed playing with saturation and a little modulation, sounds good though so I'm not too worried. Should also note I've shaped the amp envelope to have a little punch at the start. The sustain is only at around 2/3, short decay and I've given it a slight attack and release. When automating/modulating the cut off you do need to lower the resonance a bit as well or you get that acid ring sort of sound.

saturn is the bees knees huh? funny saturn made me hate audio damage kombinat, but then it made me love it again. cuz saturn is so much more usable and the saturation sounds so much warmer and just more usable. but then it made me realize kombinat does still have its place, when i want some true grit without over saturating and shiet.

Yeah it is such a useful tool. Saturn is awesome in terms of usability as it lends itself well to subtly. Before i got it my favourite technique was to take two vintage eq emulations and boost say the high mids with one and then pull it back at the same frequency with another. Worked especially well with the psp classic eq. I would turn saturation on, boosting quite aggressively wherever i found a sweet spot in the source and a pultec emulation, really any eq other then the one I had boosted with. Even when using eq's with no saturation there different q's and the points i boost and cut not being identical seemed to change the balance of the sound slightly. A fun thing to play with anyway

[trsreagan3]

guess I'll be looking into the saturn vst then. do you think it provides a reasonable advantage over the stock ableton compressor, overdrive, filter, and saturator? I understand its probably much easier to come out with a quality sound with saturn though, but it comes with a price.

[mitchAUS]

guess I'll be looking into the saturn vst then. do you think it provides a reasonable advantage over the stock ableton compressor, overdrive, filter, and saturator? I understand its probably much easier to come out with a quality sound with saturn though, but it comes with a price.

Its not about what you use. Just uses subtle settings with the saturator.I haven't used ableton for a while, i switched to logic late last year. If i was to recreate the same thing with ableton stock plugins i suppose my signal chain would be something like :

EQ-->Overdrive-->Filter-->Compressor-->Saturater-->3EQ

I thick using camel crusher (which is free) would be a good choice of compression in this chain, seems pretty similar to the saturn one. Really basic controls. I can't remember if saturater has a wet/dry control but you can just set up a rack to give you a dry/wet balance if the saturator sounds too harsh. The first eq isn't really essential, i just have a habit of starting my chains with eq's. I would consider an eq after the filter. If some undesirable harmonics come out after the signal is saturated it would make sense to me to attenuate these before you compress and saturate the signal. Th 3eq is a good way to cut the highs and mids.