KVR Audio

wiooi · Post by **wiooi** » Mon Jun 04, 2007 9:35 am

Gday,

I have been producing electro house of late, and im trying to emulate the sound guys like D.Ramirez and deadmau5 gets(aiming too high perhaps?). I like a 'simple' dirty bassline that fills a large frequency band, however I am at a loss as to how guys like ramirez make their sounds so dynamic. have a listen to 'pleasure me' on his myspace for example... www.myspace.com/dramirezmusic

Can anyone listen to this bassline and understand what hes doing with it? its always moving around all over the place, however how I start to achieve something like this I do not no. My sounds tend to end up alot more plain

My first thoughts were that is was a series of pitch bends.... but im sure there is alot more going on there.

IF anyone can point me towards a tutorial or something that mentions how stuff like that is achieved it would be much appreciated!!!

Cheers

Wiooi

chaseDESTROY · Post by **chaseDESTROY** » Mon Jun 04, 2007 4:28 pm

maybe i havent listened to enough of the track (its playing now) but this bassline (for pleasure) seems pretty static to me, its all the other stuff that thats creating the movement. this bassline could easily be recreated, use a VA synth set in unison mode w 2 osc's detuned from one another, set your play mode to legato and turn up the portamento a bit. the rest of the changes are to filter cutoff and resonance, and from time to time it sounds like he is changing the decay time on the Amp Envelope ho make the last note of the sequence hang for a second.

to me all of the movement in this track comes from aux percussion/synth effects that are heavily panned in the stereo field.

as far as a tutorial, i dunno what to tell ya.

wiooi · Post by **wiooi** » Tue Jun 05, 2007 8:37 am

Cheers, ill have a look at that tonight.

Having listened to it again with what you said in mind, i am refering specifically to the ripping sound he is getting on the bassline, almost like its speeding up - but its not a change in pitch.

One of my thoughts is that he may be using that 'voice / mono unison' effect, some syths have, but I have not really understood what that is to this point.

Now figure out how hook'n sling does his..... perhaps i should just give that one up!

d4dirty · Post by **d4dirty** » Wed Jun 06, 2007 1:34 am

Depends what your trying to describe here... It is dificult to pull of in a VST becuase these guys own really expensive synths... dificult but not impossible.

Getting the low frequencey filled bass is easy.. single OCS (Add more to taste later) SAW played reall low.. add lots of compression and permento.

What you need here is a synth with a really hot filter. Albino 3 is a good choice, its filter is like silk and perfect for the job.

Add in slight delay with a high freq cutoff, this excites you high freqs just a little.

Add a little overdrive, or slight bitcrush and you will have something really close

for the final touch your going to need what i call a bubble effect.. that ripping sound your talking about. So far i havent found an easy way to do this using a vst but i am working on it. You can rewire into reason and use the vocoder as an EQ. There is something about that vocoder that seems to color the sound and give it that ripping bubbleing effect you are after.... but i will post when i find a better way of doing it

Chris Walton · Post by **Chris Walton** » Wed Jun 06, 2007 7:42 am

I'm listening to Pleasure.

There are actually TWO basses going on - there's a sub bass, and the higher filler bass.

The Sub bass can be done with a sine or a filtered triangle or whatever you feel like.

The high bass is, I think, two saw oscillators, one at a higher octave, going through a static lowpass filter at a relatively high cutoff with some resonance and delay, and the bass frequencies cut out.

Oh yeah, and portamento is your friend. As is Taurus, its great for those fat electro bass lines.

d4dirty · Post by **d4dirty** » Wed Jun 06, 2007 11:51 am

Taurus.. is there a VST emulation of it?

chaseDESTROY · Post by **chaseDESTROY** » Wed Jun 06, 2007 5:53 pm

can you post an audio example of this bubble effect recreated with reason you mention? im not sure if i follow you.

d4dirty · Post by **d4dirty** » Thu Jun 07, 2007 1:55 am

I can't post the example because its not mine to post (i didnt make it and i don't own reason).

But the effect is like it takes your bass sound and adds a ripping quality like you get when you rub your finger on a baloon.

I don't think that the reason trick is the right way of achieving this, it probably has something to do with the phasing of the oscellators.

If your really interested in finding out more we have a bug thread aimed at this sound at audiopioneers where we have come pretty close to makeing it...http://www.audiopioneers.net/forum/show ... php?t=2396

LXNDR1 · Post by **LXNDR1** » Thu Jun 07, 2007 4:08 am

d4dirty wrote:Taurus.. is there a VST emulation of it?

there is, it's Smartelectronics free VSTi, i'm sure u can find references to it on the forum, or better yet in the plugins reviews

afreshcupofjoe · Post by **afreshcupofjoe** » Mon Jun 11, 2007 4:05 am

The bass in that song sounds like a roland tb303 to me, maybe layered with another 303 or anther synth. There are many 303 emulations available as VSTs. D16 and Audiorealism make the best ones. The pitch sliding you hear is something that the 303 does naturally, but the effect can be simulated by just tweaking the portamento on any VA synth and overlapping notes. The changes in the sound that happen throughout the song are just a result of tweaking the filter and envelope settings on the synth while the pattern is looping.

afreshcupofjoe · Post by **afreshcupofjoe** » Mon Jun 11, 2007 5:46 am

d4dirty wrote:I can't post the example because its not mine to post (i didnt make it and i don't own reason).

But the effect is like it takes your bass sound and adds a ripping quality like you get when you rub your finger on a baloon.

I don't think that the reason trick is the right way of achieving this, it probably has something to do with the phasing of the oscellators.

AnywayIf your really interested in finding out more we have a bug thread aimed at this sound at audiopioneers where we have come pretty close to makeing it...http://www.audiopioneers.net/forum/show ... php?t=2396

I couldn't download the example because the link was to a members only forum, but I downloaded the track being discussed, "He Doesn't Love You - Hook and sling," and I hear the rippling sound you are talking about. Seems to me like it's just a narrow pulse through a bandpass filter that's heavily automated. I tried it in synth1 which has fairly harsh sounding filters and got it pretty close. I didn't program the filter automations because I'm far too lazy for that, so I used a phaser to give it some movement instead. Still I think it's pretty close, and I have no idea what in the world you guys are talking about in that thread. It would be cool if you could post the audio clips here so that we could follow what's going on in that thread.

Anyway, here's my shot: Synth1 ripple bass example

Sorry to hijack the thread. I don't really see how any of this is relevant to the original post, because I don't hear the same ripple sound in the original example. It just sounds like your standard 303 to me.

But that Hook and sling ripple sound makes for good discussion too.

wiooi · Post by **wiooi** » Tue Jun 12, 2007 1:36 pm

thats a good effort, is that just 2 saws as your source? Portamento obviously, doubt Hook n Sling uses the phasor but im sure he spent more than 5 minutes on it also

Would be good to hear those other efforts??!?!

afreshcupofjoe · Post by **afreshcupofjoe** » Tue Jun 12, 2007 10:10 pm

wiooi wrote:thats a good effort, is that just 2 saws as your source? Portamento obviously, doubt Hook n Sling uses the phasor but im sure he spent more than 5 minutes on it also

Would be good to hear those other efforts??!?!

Filtered saw for the sub and a pulse for the throaty part.

I'm also still curious to hear the other peoples examples from the audiopioneers.net forum d4dirty posted about. The forum is private, so I can't actually hear the examples. I really want to see how close they got because I can't figure out how in the hell they made this sound with two detuned saws!? I'm clearly NOT hearing detuned saws in the Hook n Sling Bass, but they seem confident that they nailed it somehow using detuned saws and a vocoder? Need to hear this. Where did you do go D4dirty?

d4dirty · Post by **d4dirty** » Mon Jun 18, 2007 12:28 pm

As promised, link to the Hook n Sling preset.

This is the preset without the bubble throaty effect. If anyone can modify it to have that be my guest, otherwise i am going to try another synth that i think can do it.

http://d4dirtyrecords.com/myblog/hook-n ... ets-2.html

wiooi · Post by **wiooi** » Mon Jun 18, 2007 3:24 pm

What version of albino are you using d4? Won't open on mine.. (v3) Albino gives out such a nice sound, but i find it restrictive when it comes to modulation. I would love it we could dump the albino sound generation / filters into the z3ta format....

Anyway I still don't think this bubble effect is what ramirez is doing in this song... Its more like a portamento trick where hes using one silent note to affect the audible note, but thus far I havnt been able to get it to work effectivly. There is something similar going on in a few Chris Lake songs as well. Its that subtle variation between the notes that makes them good producers. Ive even tried varying waveforms, modulating phases, everything - im sure its not THAT hard.

Ive got a few sweet basslines at the moment, but I want them to have that feeling like the notes are jumping around, when its effectivley a monotone midi sequence. I will figure this out!

Until then.. Maybe it is just a pitch bend....

Doing it like Ramirez