I need BASS!!!
 

I would really need help with my basses. I make trance (hard-trance, psyche) and techno. I just can?t get good, usable bass sounds out of my virus (or MS2000, thou I just got it a few months ago). I mean those really subby, punchy and dark :twisted: trance basses you hear on Infected mushrooms work or in numerous hard-trance records. I know infected use Novation Bass-station but I?m little low on cash right now. I?ll buy it as soon as possible. In the mean while I?m trying to keep my workflow on so if someone makes trance (anykind will help) please post me a INIT-patch or something to help me get the point. Or some hints perhaps. Or some ready made patches to tweak. MS2000 patches would be nice too if someone owns one. I know it?s perfectly good for basses but haven?t figured it out yet.

The fatness comes not from one single patch my friend....

Try making a relatively fat patch.....record it as audio, copy that track three times and divide each bass track so that each one deals with a different range of the frequency spectrum (ie bass track 1 200Hz and below, track 2 200Hz-3kHz, and track 3 3k-12k)

Then find a balance between the three, send it out to a valve Compressor, then into a valve EQ, fuck with it, distort it, get creative!!!!!

Then, come back and tell me you cant make bass fat....

bassline is all about eq.

I know you can work wonders for bass in the mixing (EQ, compressing), but my real problem is working when making songs. You see, I mainly use hardware when making tunes. So I need some good bass patches for my Virus or MS2000 to keep the creative work rolling. Trance is about the sounds and if I can?t see the big picture when I start making music, my song will end up not so good. It?s about my working habits. I need that good bass that fits in to my song in my memorybanks in the minute I start making something. Then I can easily get my songmaking rolling and forget about the rest. Then the mixing part is more easy and I won?t need to do much for the sounds anymore when I?m ready to record.

Cut the useless crap and get to the point. I need trance basses to store into my memorybanks. Please Send a MIDI or tell me how to do it myself. I know all about mixing, I?m studying it in a polytechnic school. (I don?t mean to be rude :wink: )

here is how i usually work my basses either on the Virus or the Discovery2.2 which sounds like NordLead (and infected do have a nord btw, i don't think they make their basses on the cheesy bass station)

for trance, basically i do it this way:
- 2/3 saw waveform, the first at 12' and the sec at 0'
- sub osc to middle
- analog boost and eq !
- fast filter decay, 0 sustain and 0 release
- u can also add punch (not too much tho)
- use unison and set detune and panspread to 0, slightly detune the 2nd osc
- u can also sync the 2nd osc and alter its semitone by 1 to 7, this can also make a nice effect on the sound
- etc etc etc etc

Discovery has special envelopes, they are very agressive and fast, so setting the filter attack to 3 or 5 instead of 0 and very fast decay can make very nice effect on the bass sound.
When I use Discovery, i always add a second layer of sine wave behind the initial sound to make it deeper.


u can combine all these tips to get a unique sound, u can mix saw and square waves, too, PWM........... man u have so many choices :D

i'll do my best to post some patches i made tonight or tomorrw!

Yeah, I also think it's better to get your sound going in. I can almost always get the sound from the synth, without having to rely on too much EQ. Compressing a synth bass usually means that you did a poor job in the ADSTR structure, why more people don't know this I haven't figured out, but needing to treat a synth bassline for dynamics just means that whoever is behind the wheel isn't doing their job (unless you're going after the artifacts of brutal compression).

Why don't you list 5 or 6 patches that come close to the sound you have in mind, and we can see what needs to be done with them.

Find a bass patch, literally any bass patch, or pretty much any/all lead patches (with a short attack and short release), too.

Add the sub-osc and whack it up.

The FM feature is my favourite weapon for rich bass on the Virus...

Make sure the Osc2 sync' button is disabled, then use the FM amount knob. - Turn it very slowly (one value at a time) and tune it to the sound you're hearing, while repeatedly holding or hitting a key/note. There's a dozen or so sweet spots on a whole sweep of the FM amount knob, depending on the Osc2 detune value (play around with the detune control - it acts like a "fine-tune" to the FM amount, but it doesn't have to be any way surgically perfect to give nice sonic results - far from it) and the chord structure you're using for the song, and this will add some really nice additional harmonics to underlie and strengthen the bass patch before it goes to be filtered + processed.

After that, use the filter-env control(s) to start with full attack and (moderately quickly) sweep downwards, and then set a filter envelope-amount (depth) of around 64, and add a little resonance (not too much). Lower the cutoff knob until the sound starts with a little higher/mid freqs before sweeping downwards (as specified in the filter env). It'll add a little punch to the forefront of the patch and will control where the resonance will sweep from/to.

Inject a distortion model (start from an actual value of 0 at first to keep it subtle so you can hear the differences between the models, and then when you've found a nice distortion type gently raise it up), and this will bring out the raw-sounding FM harmonics from earlier and give it some real bite. Maybe add a little saturation, but not a lot. Valve emulation stuff isn't all that good for low-EQ's/bass, imho - it makes it woolly and loose. I tend to find valve/saturation is best suited to mid-range sounds.

Finally alter the resonance, the cutoff, filter-env, (etc.) a little to taste, to get everything to balance and flesh out. Add analog-boost and tune it, etc.

Thank you Timo and Hatembr. Really nice tricks there. I?ll be in touch again after I get into my synths again. In the meanwhile keep posting your ideas here. Someone got any Patches to share?

As far as my understanding goes the unison won?t have any effect besides making the sound louder if both detune and panspread is set to 0. This will only alter the amplitude of the output wave (sound) since it?s actaully a copy of the original wave you add to a completly indentical wave. The point of unison is to add slightly different waves to each other to make it sound fatter or like a choir of voices instead of one voice. Am i missing somthing here or am i completly wrong :?: :?

yes that is correct!! Setting them to 0 will only make the raw sound louder and thicker, i usually do it this way instead of doubling the audio track in cubase! ;)