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Psytrance bassline synthesis

What are some good techniques to get that deep bass sound that I hear in a lot
of tracks by artists such as yourself, Lyktum and E-Clip?

Specifically how do you go about synthesizing one (also what are common synths
used) and what extra processing that goes on top of the raw synth sound. Lastly, do
you bounce the sound to an audio file once you’re happy with it and edit it further
there or do you keep it as a midi file the entire way through the track creation.

Lastly you may want to edit this out but do you teach music production over Skype?
Jack

Ah, the bassline. How many thrills in this word among music producers! Some
producers seem to think they own a certain sound, but those sounds had been

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 used since the 80s, using pretty much the same technique. Jack, I cannot speak
on behalf of E-Clip or Lyktum, so I’ll tell the way how I do the bassline.

Formally speaking, the bassline is one of the simplest sounds in Psytrance Recommended synths

music. Unlike of Dubstep bass, for instance, where you need plenty

of modulations, canonical Psytrance bass requires much less. Basically, all you
need is just a few building blocks of synthesis: single oscillator, filter,
and envelopes. You can use pretty much every synthesizer for this. 

So, let’s take the initial preset of your favourite synth. I’m using Sylenth1 (which,
by the way, finally got 64-bit version support), but again, this is only a question
of personal choice — you can recreate that bass in many other synths. For this
demonstration purpose, I took some random kick from my samples library
and placed MIDI-note of the bassline on note D1.

Initial preset, o beat bass on D1

Sounds very basic and primitive so far, but that’s okay. The first thing I gonna do
is select Saw wave shape (Sylenth1 uses Saw by default, but other synths may
use Sine or other shapes in their initial presets), and drop down the pitch by one
octave down. If you use more than 1 voices in the oscillator, make sure that
“Retrig” option (or whatever it called) is turned on — it forces all voices to start
at the exact same location on the waveform every time a note is played; it
prevents voices to be out of phase.

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 Now I gonna apply Lowpass filter with 24dB attenuation per octave — it gives
a slightly faster/sharper cutoff comparing to 12dB. Play around with cutoff
frequency up to your taste. Then I gonna route filter cutoff to modulation
envelopes. Now let’s take a look at ADSR. The bass sound should not have
fade-in, nor fade-out — so we drop down Attack and Release parameters down
to zero. Sustain would give a long “body” of the sound, which we no need here
much either. So the only parameter left to play around is Decay — I would give it
around 30% of the maximum value. And pretty similar settings to oscillator
envelopes.

Here is the summary look of what I have done so far:

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 Bassline with lter envelopes

This is it — the essential foundation. Tiny details could be tweaked further up

to your taste, but I satisfied so far. Skipping to one of your questions ahead, —
yes, I do bounce the bassline. This is also called resampling. Different DAWs
requires different actions to make resampling, but the general idea is to change,
to “bake” our bass from MIDI into solid WAV state. I believe, it gives more
consistent sound, more predictable and aggressive velocity. Also, it may save
your CPU if you experience a lack of performance.

Once a single bass note is resampled, I put that sound into Sampler and then
build a desirable bassline pattern. So it goes like this: MIDI → resampling
of single note → resampled piece of sound into Sampler.

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 As you can see, I have three tracks here. I do recommend to keep your original
MIDI bass, don’t delete it, just leave it muted or “frozen”: you might want to go
back and change something in the source.

It sounds like this:

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 Bassline resampled

Quite nice, but need to EQ it a little bit. Usually, I remove that kind of “mud” Psytrance bassline equalization

at around 300 Herz and gently boost lower harmonics. Since I’m using the note
of “D”, the harmonics will be at 73 and 147 Hz.

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 Bassline resampled with EQ

This is it. You can also play around with velocity, and give some “character”
to bassline by adding a pinch of distortion, compressor, or any other device up
to your taste.
Bassline velocity variation with extra processing

Remember, this is not a ready-to-use recipe (although, you can use it), but rather
I would like to give understanding of the process, so you could create a bass
that suits your needs, with a personal touch.

I hope it helps.

Lastly, — no, I don’t teach music production over Skype, although I do realize it
might be even profitable. The purpose of the “Advice” series is to make
mechanisms of music production and industry a little bit more transparent
and easier to understand. I would like to make this knowledge wide open, hence
why I prefer blog posts rather than personal talks on Skype.

Read also: How to make a punchy bassline

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 2139   2015   # Advice   # Kick and bass   # Music production   # Sound design

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 This post is a part of the “Advice” series. I’m happy to advise on such topics as music
production, sound design, performance, management, marketing, and career advice in the
music industry and beyond. Send me your questions via this Google Form.

Live and DJ sets ← Ctrl → The Wikisinger’s reverb di erence in action

5 comments
Luis Mejia Lopez 8 mon
I really liked the guide for low, follow the steps to the letter, and achieve a similar sound to the step
where are added the e ects of process,

I compress my bass, but the sound can not get this in the sample of auido, and added that “extra”

tool that I use to achieve that “ nishing” nal and powerful bass my greetings from Mexico Daniel ¡¡¡

eLeS Dyzer 8 mon

Hi, thanks for your explanations, but I think you forgot to mention or explain what you do with
the ADSR mod env 1.
Cheers.

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 Daniel Lesden 8 mon
No, I didn’t. The modulation envelopes explained in this paragraph:

Now let’s take a look at ADSR. The bass sound should not have fade-in, nor fade-out —
so we drop down Attack and Release parameters down to zero. Sustain would give
a long «body» of the sound, which we no need here much either. So the only parameter
left to play around is Decay — I would give it around 30% of the maximum volume.
And pretty similar settings to oscillator envelopes.

Alex 8 mon
When you do the resampling is best to do just a 1/16 note or maybe a full note with 2 bars
for example.

Daniel Lesden 8 mon

Usually I do resampling of 1/8th or 1/16th note. No need longer since the bass sound itself is
short due to small amount of Decay and Sustain parameters.

Some good comments has been written on Facebook too, so I’ll put that link here.

Simon Wiskowski 8 mon

I understand why you boost certain fundamental tones in the bassline to create more punch,
but what if the bassline changes notes and isn’t the same note for the entire song? Do you still use
the same EQ? Thanks!

Daniel Lesden 8 mon

Simon, in that case I would simply re-sample bassline with a di erent EQ settings, let’s say, one
sample would be “F” note boosted at 88 Herz and another one is “A” note boosted at 110 Herz.
Then I group all Samplers into a Drum Rack.

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 Anastasia Laser 3 mon
Thanks for this, its really saved me from ddling around all night with Sylenth1 to  nd the bass, only
to be almost back where I started because I would have changed something that I didn’t need
to and have to start all over again. It gives a really puncy bass without drowning everything else out.

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