Classic Jungle Bass Sound

[justjoe313]

Want to make a bass sound similar to the early 90s jungle bass, seems fairly simple but haven't quite got it. Any suggestions would be nice just hoping that it's possible to do it digitally.

Cheers, Joe

[Rottweiler]

well mate what you need is pretty much a sine oscilaltor, maybe a bit of disotrtion. f you want 808ish booming sine try to aplly a not too strong pitch mod on the oscillator with an envelope generator.

[justjoe313]

Cheers mate. What kinda distortion are you using? I have been experimenting with that and it's not the same at all, was trying with a bit-crusher and filtering the results but that doesn't seem to work. I think there is a filter envelope aswel but I cant get the original sound.

[Kriminal]

sounds like you want the reece/reese bass ???

[Rottweiler]

well distortions are tricky animals, brother, bit crusher can by good to take away the digital shine from sounds, but for sine wave i would recommend you a simple overdrive, that will be fine really.


btw with that pitch mod thingie you can really give a sine bass its 3 dimensional depth and character, it will come alive. also if you feel you can use square waves, lopassed it will give you a juch more hollow sounds, moore moody if you like.

also if we are talkin about pitch modulation dont forget you can for example apply a ligth lfo pitch mod to your sound in the sampler. you can export it and then reload to the sampler so wehn you are playing higher nortes the pitchmod / the "pulsation" will become faster, it will further enchance the feeling.


cheers

[Rottweiler]

sounds like you want the reece/reese bass ???

well jungle is more about the subbas imo.

[justjoe313]

That's the basic sound but there's definatly more to it, will have to keep experimenting and see what turns up. Will try an post an example. Thanks for the help.

Surprisingly most of the old school jungle doesn't seem to have that much proper subbass, certainly by the standard set by much of the dubstep about today.

[Rottweiler]

That's the basic sound but there's definatly more to it, will have to keep experimenting and see what turns up. Will try an post an example. Thanks for the help.

Surprisingly most of the old school jungle doesn't seem to have that much proper subbass, certainly by the standard set by much of the dubstep about today.

no its simple really producing jungle for years. jsut show me a tune you want to recreate and we will do it .

cheers

[Rottweiler]

also, dont forget about the jungle musci history lol.

early jungle was produced by mixing sped-up hiphop breaks and reggie basslines.

so just copy sme midi off the net and use the basslines melody under your drumbreak and yu will hear instant jungele.

happy raving...

[justjoe313]

Cheers for that about the reggae basslines, never knew that. Know anywhere easy for me to upload the track?

[loomchild]

Actually, the reggae basslines are played at half the break's bpm. Classic jungle had a breakbeat played back at around 160 bpm. If you speed up a reggae track to that, you'll end up with a bassline that is way too fast. Keep it around 80.

Also, as Rottweiler said, the typical jungle bass was usually a resampled 808 bassdrum . The relatively bad quality of most samplers back then was giving it a strong aliased sound that helped it cut through the mix better even when no distorsion effect was used. You could try resampling an 808 kick in your audio editor to get a similar effect.

[justjoe313]

Cheers for the help, much appreciated. Sorting out a Reaktor ensemble to do some live jungle, got the drums sorted already and doesn't sound like it should be too hard at all to build a synth to handle the bass once I've got the sound I'm after. Another Sampler to drop in some ragga samples etc and I'm sorted. Know any good sources for ragga samples and original jungle vocal samples?

[hakey]

There's a famous patch on the old Yamaha DX100 that was often used too - if you look in Banks and Patches (here at KVR) there's a patch for FM8 uploaded by Michael Russo and named 'Solid Bass' that should, in theory, recreate the original DX100 patch perfectly. Orbital used the same patch quite a lot in their earlier stuff too - it provides the bass for the intro of 'Chime' if I remember correctly.

[loomchild]

You should check "the grid" on the Dogs of Acid forum. I've seen several posts related to vocal samples from ragga/reggae tunes.

[Rottweiler]

Actually, the reggae basslines are played at half the break's bpm. Classic jungle had a breakbeat played back at around 160 bpm. If you speed up a reggae track to that, you'll end up with a bassline that is way too fast. Keep it around 80.

Also, as Rottweiler said, the typical jungle bass was usually a resampled 808 bassdrum . The relatively bad quality of most samplers back then was giving it a strong aliased sound that helped it cut through the mix better even when no distorsion effect was used. You could try resampling an 808 kick in your audio editor to get a similar effect.

well i said SPED_UP BREAX and REGGAE BASSLINES, which means exactly what you said mate , halftime basslines at originals tempo plus double time breaks sped up.

cheers