Smooth, Wide Sub With Nice Harmonics

[ZlepNo]

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Hey,
I recently heard this track ("ANGEL") by Sam Gellaitry, and it has a very nice bass.
https://soundcloud.com/samgellaitry/ang ... al_sharing

I've head this kind of bass a lot, but have never been able to make it myself, and I haven't found any preset with it. It sounds like it's very simple, which is why I'm puzzled as to why I can't get that specific sound?

This is the closest I've come:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... sp=sharing (https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1yEDXU_c7KsMhzCvcenfnDzPDKLRIYjMp?usp=sharing)

There's an example track (A few different versions) and pictures of how I set up the bass both in Vital and also in the FL studio mixer.

I find it hard to find that sweet spot between it being smooth and also having those nice harmonics. I don't know how to describe them, but you can hear it in "Angel". Either I find my bass smooth, but the harmonics are missing, or I get more harmonics, but the harmonics don't sound right and the bass becomes too dirty.

I've noticed that sometimes a bass has a lot more harmonics/distortion than you'd guess when you solo it, and they just get tucked under the other instruments when you play the whole track, giving it a nice rumble-like quality.

But ANGEL doesn't have that many instruments. It's very dynamic too. And the bass is a lot more audible on worse speakers too because of those harmonics.

Idk if it might be the waveform, distortion type or what, but I know that I've followed serum tutorials on Vital before where you can clearly hear that Vital processes sound differently than serum.

I appreciate the help

(I got a note on my pot saying that certain links are automatically protected, does that mean you can't visit my google drive link?)

[Benedict]

It seems to me that you are working from one axis only where the target has several-many things happening at once (very processed).

The first thing I note is that the target has a stereo chorus or similar which helps it to keep moving. This is more obvious in headphones. There is also a lot of compression and an Env shape that has decay whereas yours seems more on-off.

Very often the bassy vibe is made counterintuitively. You think to make it more deep you EQ as low as you can go. This is not practical seeing that takes a lot of energy (level) to even begin to work and most speaker systems just can't deliver that at all. The method is to boost on the overtones. This is why people keep saying to overdrive your basses as that creates stronger overtones which appear better on most speakers.

The other thing most (very oddly) avoid is that the 'smooth bass' trick is exactly that, a trick from understanding psychoacoustics - how the human brain processes sound. Odd how that subject is studiously ignored in places like this so ppl fail over and over. Anyway, you can't win boosting at 40-60hz but you can win easier boosting at 80-120Hz, or even at 16-240Hz. Every time you go higher, you have less energy cost. The reasoning is that the brain will hear the overtone and reason OMG that harmonic is huge, that means that I must be hearing the fundamental super effing found and it makes that in the brain for free! It makes it really clean as it is a fantasy as such. The listener feels a lovely smooth bass that appeals to them but it isn't entirely there. Try this with an EQ leak at the first harmonic (2x whatever the note fundamental) and then High Pass everything under. You still feel the sound as being warm and deep, esp elsewhere where your conscious mind forgot the game and can't do an A-B. This is also why many kik sounds click more than whump - or click to lead you to the whump.

[ZlepNo]

It seems to me that you are working from one axis only where the target has several-many things happening at once (very processed).

The first thing I note is that the target has a stereo chorus or similar which helps it to keep moving. This is more obvious in headphones. There is also a lot of compression and an Env shape that has decay whereas yours seems more on-off.

Very often the bassy vibe is made counterintuitively. You think to make it more deep you EQ as low as you can go. This is not practical seeing that takes a lot of energy (level) to even begin to work and most speaker systems just can't deliver that at all. The method is to boost on the overtones. This is why people keep saying to overdrive your basses as that creates stronger overtones which appear better on most speakers.

The other thing most (very oddly) avoid is that the 'smooth bass' trick is exactly that, a trick from understanding psychoacoustics - how the human brain processes sound. Odd how that subject is studiously ignored in places like this so ppl fail over and over. Anyway, you can't win boosting at 40-60hz but you can win easier boosting at 80-120Hz, or even at 16-240Hz. Every time you go higher, you have less energy cost. The reasoning is that the brain will hear the overtone and reason OMG that harmonic is huge, that means that I must be hearing the fundamental super effing found and it makes that in the brain for free! It makes it really clean as it is a fantasy as such. The listener feels a lovely smooth bass that appeals to them but it isn't entirely there. Try this with an EQ leak at the first harmonic (2x whatever the note fundamental) and then High Pass everything under. You still feel the sound as being warm and deep, esp elsewhere where your conscious mind forgot the game and can't do an A-B. This is also why many kik sounds click more than whump - or click to lead you to the whump.

Thanks for the advice. It didn't make it clear to me, but I now see that the harmonics are much more important to focus on than the actual sub or fundamental. I've definitely noticed this before as I mentioned about noticing bass sounds being "Tucked" under then rest of the instruments, but I never knew how much brain trickery was involved with this kind of thing haha

[Benedict]

It takes time to feel this stuff, esp if you make the usual mistake of thinking that mixing is about acquiring technical Tipz n Trix as that stops you from realizing that mixing is all about feel and experience is the difference here. You cannot force that.

Listen to Andres Scheps talking here and it is all about feel, he even deliberately skips off gear and technicalities as he is a Master and being a Master is a Yoda thing, not a list thing. Ignore the genre etc and just listen to feel how a Master feels. This is how I work and talk too.

[Mushroom Sounds]

Hey, I'll try to give a few tips on what I hear (cool track btw) :

- The smooth chord synth hits at the same time as the bass, which gives this "wall of sound" effect
- The smooth chord synth is very stereo wide, which psychoacoustically feels "closer", "in your face"
- The sub bass itself doesn't have a lot of harmonics as those are carried by the synth
- The sub bass has a short pitch drop (using an enveloppe on the oscillator pitch) which help it "knock" and make it stand from the synth
- The tuning of the track plays also, has the sub has a magic range regarding how speakers are able to reproduce frequencies, which is between E0 and G0 (under 40 Hz it's hard to hear on average speaker, above 60 Hz it is more a chest "pock" than a sub)

Cheers

PS : definitely a vibrato on that sub, which adds a sense of intensity