THE Psytrance thread

[Distorted Horizon]

Btw since we have some more experienced people here, would you mind sharing your wisdom a bit?

Terrafractyl mentioned something about making vids etc.. How's the progress?

[andymcbain]

I've done some detective work with those nasty phase peaks that occur when you toss an eq to a bassline.

Well linear phase eq obviously fights with that. But when using a stock eq for example, I found few tools that can tame those peaks.most of the times, but nothing annoying.

What do you mean by "phase peaks" exactly? The phase of the bassline being shifted by using a non-linear phase EQ with a highpass filter for example?

I tried disperser on my bass but found the effect a bit extreme and difficult to control.

I'll create some subtle and nice sounding phase shifts these days using Fabfilter Saturn - placing two crossover points around the frequencies of the 2nd and 4th harmonic. It makes the bass note sound a bit more "tidy" to me

[Distorted Horizon]

What do you mean by "phase peaks" exactly? The phase of the bassline being shifted by using a non-linear phase EQ with a highpass filter for example?

Yes. When you set your bass track volume to -12dB and then add a highpass to (for example) 30hz. RMS stays the same but peak suddenly jumps to -7dB or -8dB.

Can be seen in a bounced audio as a big.. Peak

I'll create some subtle and nice sounding phase shifts these days using Fabfilter Saturn - placing two crossover points around the frequencies of the 2nd and 4th harmonic. It makes the bass note sound a bit more "tidy" to me

Hm.. I don't have Saturn but thought many times that I should test it. Maybe MMultibandDistortion would do the same?

Bitwigs EQ5 also has a knob labeled as "shift", which also tames that peak often.

[andymcbain]

Yes. When you set your bass track volume to -12dB and then add a highpass to (for example) 30hz. RMS stays the same but peak suddenly jumps to -7dB or -8dB.

Can be seen in a bounced audio as a big.. Peak

I getcha!

Always used linear phase EQ to highpass bass, then bounced the note(s) down to audio... so it's never been an issue for me. But that's just my way of working

I'll create some subtle and nice sounding phase shifts these days using Fabfilter Saturn - placing two crossover points around the frequencies of the 2nd and 4th harmonic. It makes the bass note sound a bit more "tidy" to me

Hm.. I don't have Saturn but thought many times that I should test it. Maybe MMultibandDistortion would do the same?

Bitwigs EQ5 also has a knob labeled as "shift", which also tames that peak often.

Probably - many multiband processors (as far as I'm aware) will cause some phase shift around the crossover points. This can be a bad thing in some cases, but useful when sculpting the tone of your psy bass IMO

[recursive one]

I wonder what monitoring do you guys use to control this kind of stuff.

I spent last two weeks at improving my basslines and ended up in removing all plugins from my bass synth chain except for the equalizier (a fellow psy producer with very good ears helped me on the eq settings)

[andymcbain]

For visual feedback I have a second monitor set up with a spectrum analyser and an oscilloscope running constantly. Monitoring wise I use Sennheiser HD650s and various sets of monitors (favourite being a pair of small Eve Audios).

Honestly though, you don't have to get into this level of geekery to make a decent sounding bass line. Many professional producers won't. I'm just a bit sad

[Distorted Horizon]

Andy would you mind sending a link here to your music?

I'd be interested to hear what are you cooking

[wickfut]

any idea how they made this bass sound @ 3minute mark ?

https://youtu.be/rx3NvQdZOQM?t=2m54s

sounds like a regular bpf type pulsewave sound , but seems in slow mode or something? formant filter?

[Terrafractyl]

Btw since we have some more experienced people here, would you mind sharing your wisdom a bit?

Terrafractyl mentioned something about making vids etc.. How's the progress?

Sorry I been super busy lately, on the road, have a quite new (and first) baby in my life. Making vids for Kvr is fairly low on priorities at the moment!

Here is Kick/Bass idea for the day though... Maybe someone out there has been doing this, or maybe it is common knowledge but...

For a while I have been using a fake kick drum as the source for the sidechain to the bassline.

This fake Kick is just a duplicated version of the actual Bazzism channel that I use for my Kick, but I do a few things to make it different...
(this is in cubase, and may be a bit different to set up in other hosts)

For starters I send the audio output of the fake Kick channel to 'no bus' so it cannot be heard in the mix.

Then I move the Cubase track delay slightly into minus. so this fake kick is actually happening 10ms or something BEFore the actual Kick drum in the track.

I also often make this fake kick have a slightly quicker decay than the real kick in the mix, as it helps make the sidechain nice and snappy.

This fake kick is then used to sidechain the bassline, instead of the actual audible kick drum. Getting the minus track delay number just right, plus the attack and the release of the sidechained compressor on the bassline all right and sounding smooth can take a bit of work, but basically doing this you can be 100% sure that when the first note of the bassline hits, the Kick has already been ducked by the sidechain.

WithOUT this minus delay, there is always going to be some delay from the sidechain + the attack stage of the compressor. so Kick and Bass will still be overlapping ever so slighty in time and competing for the same freqs in the mix. (and those are some important freqs!)
Seems a bit over the top I know but lets face it we have been going over the top in psy getting perfect Kicks and basslines for a long time now haha and it really does help IMO

While I set this kind of thing up in a track, I usually just have a bar or two in a loop and as I progress though the process of tuning the kick, bass and compressor to be just right I keep bouncing down the Kick bass (and fake kick so the sidechain is working properly) to a piece of audio in my DAW and look at it.

Really looking carefully at the end of the kick and how it interacts with the bassline and Also the end of the last bass note and how it interacts with the start of the Kick really helps.

hope that is decipherable! written in a bit of a hurry haha

[Distorted Horizon]

have a quite new (and first) baby in my life.

I'm quite sure that you don't mean a girlfriend So it has to be a baby that cries and poops.
Congratulations!!

My "babies" are 3 and 5 and they're super interested in synths Soon I'll start to lure the older one to practice some basic sound creation and maybe some simple music theory ^^

[Terrafractyl]

have a quite new (and first) baby in my life.

I'm quite sure that you don't mean a girlfriend So it has to be a baby that cries and poops.
Congratulations!!

My "babies" are 3 and 5 and they're super interested in synths Soon I'll start to lure the older one to practice some basic sound creation and maybe some simple music theory ^^

Thanks a lot!
We are now 5 months in, what a game changer.

but yeah I can't wait to start introducing my daughter to my modular synth, I have a feeling all those knobs and flashing lights will make it not dissimilar to a giant toy

[andymcbain]

Andy would you mind sending a link here to your music?

I'd be interested to hear what are you cooking

Here's the latest complete track I have online - https://soundcloud.com/groovetoads/groo ... d-deformed

Says it's a month old but it's actually more like 6 months. The stuff I'm working on at the minute is sounding a bit phatter And I've been improving on other aspects like my use of reverb, panning etc.

Would love to hear what you think anyway!

[recursive one]

Andy would you mind sending a link here to your music?

I'd be interested to hear what are you cooking

Here's the latest complete track I have online - https://soundcloud.com/groovetoads/groo ... d-deformed

Says it's a month old but it's actually more like 6 months. The stuff I'm working on at the minute is sounding a bit phatter And I've been improving on other aspects like my use of reverb, panning etc.

Would love to hear what you think anyway!

Sounds great, mate, trippy and fierce, top stuff! What synths did you use for the FM sounds?

We are now 5 months in, what a game changer.

Ha, my daughter is one month younger than yours They make some pretty trippy noises at this age, do they?

Thanks for your sidechaining tips, I commonly use sidechaining from a ghost kick on bassline but I wasn't aware of that timing trick.

[andymcbain]

Sounds great, mate, trippy and fierce, top stuff! What synths did you use for the FM sounds?

Thanks very much mate!

The "squeaky" FM lead is from a Nord Lead 2X - which can produce some crazy organic timbres from it's FM. Haven't heard anything else quite like it. Was a pain to sit in the mix though.

The fatter FM lead is straight out of Serum - which I love. It's sound has a lot of depth to it - especially when you start modulating.

And the first arp that comes in is from a Virus C - which I'm not so happy with in hindsight. I'd used the Virus internal EQ to boost the mids quite excessively which kinda thinned out the sound. Flat EQ from this point forward

[andymcbain]

Care to share any of your tunes?