Ed Rush and Optical: Snaggletooth - Sounds, Genre, Guidance

How to make that sound...
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Heard this song today on Pandora while working out:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0JB5_Uu7DCU

I am in love with just about every sound in this. I want to try and write some stuff like this.

Help me with verbage so I can look stuff up:

Is this genre Drum n Bass?
What do you call these kinds of Bass Patches?
Is this a standard drum beat?
I looked up the album and it says it came out in 2009, but I would call this more of a "older" bass sound, am I wrong?

Help me make the sound:
I think there are probably about 10 or so different bass sounds in there rather than one. Do they have names that will help with search terms?

I'd like to start working on the one at 1:28-1:32
I think he uses the same again at 1:56 - 2:00 with some kind of added overdrive?
Any tips are appreciated.

I use Komplete 7.
Playing with Massive now and seeing what I can do.

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Yep, old school drum and bass. "Amen" breaks and hoover bass parts, amongst others. I remember once upon a time that http://www.dogsonacid.com/ was a good place to go and learn about d'n'b. Give that a shot. I messed around with it in the past but never made anything worth putting out in the wild. Good luck to you...
Invisible Asps

Darker Music for a Brighter World...

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Ed Rush and Optical Make their bass sounds from samples. Samples particularly old analogue synths such as Moogs, Juno's, Jupiters, some select soft synths as well, but the key is all in the processing, their sound is EMU Ultra hardware sampler, and Mackie 32/8 analogue mixing desk. The gains on the Mackie when ride em high, and parametric EQ'd on the channel strip the synth of bass sound is playing through, gives great distortion...sample that into the emu, put a 4 or 6 pole low pass filter on the synth of bass sound, along with a few other emu tricks..i use an Emu E4XT Ultra Sampler still....has a presence you just cannot get in just using audio.

Resampling resampling resampling...processing processing processing...and dynamics, clean mix, but distorted sounds...this should be everyones goal...the bible..

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As already said, that's proper dark Drum & Bass. Their album Wormhole blew everything else away, and was far ahead of it's time. Them and old school Bad Company (their later stuff isn't great imo). Those guys set the standard, and it still sounds a lot better then most of the DnB produced today.

If your looking for that sound it's going to be hard to replicate it without hardware. As they used lots of bass layering, the EMU6400 Ultra (its filters are incredible), an Access Virus (pretty much the standard at the time), and utilized the overdrive from the mackie desks (as OP stated). Plus, they are at the top of their game. :)

There's a couple of decent tutes on youtube that may help you out. Have a gander for Icicle's C.M. master class. It will give you an idea of how it's done in the digital realm - He's not quite in the same league, but it's still a great insight into the genre.

Another class tune form the early years:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBNwpMFVWnA

Here's Fracture and Neptune talking about some of their production processing with the EMU.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yheX4yr ... ults_video

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That's really all there is to it, it's not complicated at all, the gaining of the synth bass is key, along with a proper musical sounding distortion, which to me is the hardest part these days if you don't have a tube preamp, or a mackie desk to gain up and add top end analogue grit/fuzz (the pleasing to the ear type). When I first started making drum n bass in 1999, you pretty much had to have a full analogue studio, so I am fortunate to have over 80 gigs of samples from my old synths that I gained up on the 8 bus Mackie on the way to being sampled into my Emu. So even using the EXS sampler in logic, you can't tell a difference if I'm using my Emu or not due to the samples already being ran thru the Mackie and Emu. You want the bass to hum, and have a low end grit around 200hz, that same sound should have big sub and bass all the way from 20hz up to where you have the filter steady around 175-250hz, throw the same sample in another channel in your DAW's Sampler, and put it on a band pass or high pass to layer it with the lower bass sample, so you get the high end grit and you gotta process that with a parametric EQ , dip out the mud so it doesn't interfere with the 1st bass track, and mess around with modulating both tracks filters and resonance, portamento, and boom. I think I'm going to start using my Emu E4XT again. Check out my tracks they are all up on you tube..

Corrupt Souls

Same processing as old virus and Bad Co. I just started making tracks again, and am now using mainly all logic with plug in's..the hardest part these days is finding a good distortion plug in that sounds like true analogue grit Warm and pleasing squishy squelchy fuzz, but old tube modeling amps such as waves, and the Overtone DSP's Pultec 2TCa is the shit.

I stopped making dnb in 2006 because the masters just making clowny shitty tunes, really jaded me with the overall quality of new tracks being released, not proper serious hard dark sharp funk with calculated destruction and melody, and mid range that's not overdone. Ed n Op fiinally did 2 sick ass tunes though, i think in 2011...Ride the Beast, and Crackball. Dom is coming back hard too, and I'm back in it to win it. Time to bring back the real dark funk! :love:

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I'd agree... Drum and bass has become so stale. And modern bass lines seem to be all about how many modulations can you get. Production has become key and making a good tune is nearly secondary. That's why I'm still stuck in the 90s...

You can definitely make greats tunes in the digital realm. No doubt about it... But I still agree with Fracture and Neptune, that the best overdrive you'll get is from the makie. And I've yet to hear anything that can compare to the Emu's filters in the digital realm.

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Bump an old one. This was an interesting read. There are some good interviews on youtube with Edrush and Optical too.

They used a pro-one and an oscar for loads of bass so they say.
Massive, Serum. Diva, Repro-1, HIVE, Spire presets, Reason ReFills more! https://NewLoops.com

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