Smooth chill bass

[TheMaestro]

Hi. I need some know-how about making and fx/mixing a smooth bass like the one at 0:16 in this tune. It's there like a drone, but it's not over powering, but still bass-y.

[FarleyCZ]

To me it sounds like very filtered sawtooth. So filtered that almost just the fundamental frequency is playing. No filter envelopes. A bit slowert attack on amplitude. Or maybe it's just a sinewave with some really nice gentle saturation to generate that one overtone. It's definitelly not complex in any regards. Just very tastefully used.

[Benedict]

I agree that it could well be a simple waveform like Saw, Sqr, Puls with lots of filtering to minimize but not totally get rid of overtones that help pull it through. Esp seeing they probably push (EQ) an overtone and not the fundamental.

What most miss in these situations is that the drums & bass are likely bussed together with a compressor so that they work together - Glue - which comes from getting the right balistics (att & decay) for this very piece go it grooves and feels smooth.

[cryophonik]

To me it sounds like very filtered sawtooth. So filtered that almost just the fundamental frequency is playing. No filter envelopes. A bit slowert attack on amplitude.

Yeah, that’s pretty spot on. This is a commonly used bass for this style and it’s there to lay a foundation for the piano and pads more so than to add movement or interact with the kick and other rhythmic elements. Think Moog, 2 sawtooth oscillators slightly detuned to fatten them up, 4-pole filter with little or no resonance, and some drive into the filter. It’s possible that there is a little suboscillator dialed in as well, but I’m listening on earbuds and can’t hear it if it’s there.

[Hooskter]

There it’s simple — just a square wave and a low-pass filter with a cutoff around 300 Hz, maybe even lower.
There are also plugins like Waves R-Bass that add harmonic saturation, or Oxford Inflator and FabFilter Saturn, which help make the bass more readable and smoother.