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This is something I've been battling with for a while, and I'm still playing on both sides of the fence to figure out which way suits me best. I have 2 approaches to doing basses/mids:

1. Play a bassline and then build up the sound and play with it or
2. Create a sound I really like then try and make it fit

The problem with the latter is that I often have trouble making it fit, but I usually get my best sounds doing so. Meaning - I get a cool sound, but often it just doesn't work for the tune, whereas if I go with the former - it works for the track but I'm not 100% with the sound.

What do you do/how do you approach this kind of problem?

I've recently been making a lot of sounds in another project file specifically with a certain song in mind, then sampling them and shoehorning them in. Takes a bit of jumbling stuff around to make things fit together, but I get a lot better results than if I try to create basslines in the project I'm working on. Also resampling/layering becomes super easy if you're doing it in a seperate file. It depends on what kinda stuff you're making aswell.

Also, if the sound doesn't fit, sample it, store it away somewhere and pull it out for another project.

I still always make a drumloop first but. after that I create a sound and then I try to play some notes.
But then again you can already set up the mood with a proper drumloop, thus it will be easier for you to create a sound around it.

One thing I changed recently was separating the sound design and arrangement process. I'll have a session of making a bunch of bass stabs, sounds and reprocess them and keep them in a folder then when I've got the structure for a tune ready and all the drums sorted I'll have a browse through these sounds and find a bass sound that I've made that fits.

This is has made my tracks and mixdowns 10 times better.

I always start off with a drumloop + percussions, so get a feeling of what the track is going to be like.
after that I start making some melodies for my bass and then I try to make a bassline sound that fits nicely with it.

I generally start off with the drums and then get a solid sub bass part going. That way I have some sort of structure to build on. Sometimes I'll come up with a melody while playing the piano, start with that and then add sub/ drums. Synths always come later in the process but my music is more percussion/sub dependent than loud synths. So it generally goes like... Melody, Sub/Drums, Re-arrange/expand the melody, Synths

Maybe get all your sounds down as one shots first, imagining how they'll sound in context. Play them in a sampler and compose. Then at the end EQ so that they play nice.

My overall life advice is that the whole is not the some of the parts, you want to make the master output sound as good as possible, not the constituent parts.

same thing happens to me. everytime i try and make a bass for a certain song i end up with a bass that doesnt fit but would be great for another tune. ideally i try to just get a song idea in mind and try and make a bunch of basses that fit and then try to work with those. sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.