Good oscillator choices for bass sounds?

[tuj]

stupid question: what is the m15 filter?

[qu.one]

you can't really put it that way. I find the cleanest "punchiest" (god I hate that word!) basses are often single oscillator. Just a clean osc through a good filter, that's all you need.

+1. AFG square sub out through a borg2 and i am extremely happy. can't wait to get that boogie... On a side note, the Anti-Osc can make some really great upright bass type sounds.

[Thonk Support]

most deep dub, techno and minimal basses are just clear sine waves that are hard to sepparate from kicks by ear...lot of people like basses that way...more "deep" than "fat"

that's very true, although from my point of view the most successful bass lines of that type will always have some element 1 or 2 octaves up from that low sub, even if it is only very very subtle.

[Limey]

The E 340 Cloud Generator saw tooth sounds amazing for bass and bass drum.

+1
e 340 is the definition of phat bass with 8 sawtooths and 8 sines inline.

[anselmi]

most deep dub, techno and minimal basses are just clear sine waves that are hard to sepparate from kicks by ear...lot of people like basses that way...more "deep" than "fat"

that's very true, although from my point of view the most successful bass lines of that type will always have some element 1 or 2 octaves up from that low sub, even if it is only very very subtle.

agreed...this is my kind of party!

[Karl Jeffers]

Cool trick:
Use 2 wave's 1 at 40Hz 2th at 60Hz. So root and 7th.
The brain now thinks the root note is 20Hz, an octave lower, but its not there. Iow more bass without the actual bass.

[Yohda]

Cool !

Is that the "missing fundamental" that the brain recreate ?

[Steevio]

the psycho acoustic effect works better when all harmonics other than the fundamental are present, ive never noticed it work with only two harmonics.

[Thonk Support]

I like the sound of that... anyone got any links to the theory or other implementations?

[worker8]

Cool trick:
Use 2 wave's 1 at 40Hz 2th at 60Hz. So root and 7th.
The brain now thinks the root note is 20Hz, an octave lower, but its not there. Iow more bass without the actual bass.

Unbelievable. I'll give it a try.

[Karl Jeffers]

I like the sound of that... anyone got any links to the theory or other implementations?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_fundamental

[anselmi]

this trick is for bass pussies...real bass men put another oscillator at 20 Hz and krunk its volume up!

[tuj]

this trick is for bass pussies...real bass men put another oscillator at 20 Hz and krunk its volume up!

And then your mastering engineer high-passes the whole track at 40hz...

[anselmi]

this trick is for bass pussies...real bass men put another oscillator at 20 Hz and krunk its volume up!

And then your mastering engineer high-passes the whole track at 40hz...

yeah, they all are on the same pussy-wagon!

[perky]

not with me as ME! i cut at around 30hz

[Karl Jeffers]

Miauw.

[Babaluma]

i only high pass filter in masterng if the client asks me too, i usually leave it untouched down to DC. when i hi pass i can often hear a negative effect on the bass frequencies due to the phase differences introduced by the filter.

sure it gives you more headroom for more volume, but i'm not really into the whole loudness thing, that's what your volume control is for...

[Thonk Support]

it can give you clarity down the bottom sometimes too though.. especially for vinyl.

[consumed]

bumping this fucker for good production posts

[stepwriterun]

Threads like this are what makes muff's great.

I can't really add anything to what has been said, but lately I've had a lot of fun trying to FM my pair of AFG's, recording the results and chopping up those bits for use in Live. There is one trick I recall reading about long ago though. Some producers would use the digital sine wave from an Akai sampler (this is s-1000 to s-3000 era) underneath the bass or kick to add depth, basically what's already been talked about previously but instead of using a VCO for the sine you're using the Akai single cycle sine waveform.

[kraku]

Wow! My thread is still alive after over two years

I read through this thread again after all this time and here are my thoughts:
I can see now how many good suggestions and ideas it contains. Many of the techniques I was already familiar with, but there were some new gems in there also. I didn't feel comfortable with some of the techniques back then, but they are now my daily repertoire of techniques for creating a nice bass sound.

Here are some of my favorite ways of creating a bass sound:

1 - Very basic static house bass:
Take only one pulse wave and tweak the PW a little bit off the 50/50%. This gives it more defined sound. Add lowpass filter without resonance to tame the highs to taste.

If you want, you can try boosting the sub-bass by adding a high pass filter to the signal path and cranking up the resonance. This however eats up the definition of the sub-bass and creates a more boomy sound.


2 - FM electro house bass Mk I:
Take two oscillators: OSC1 and OSC2.
OSC2 is playing 1 or 2 octaves higher than OSC1.
Sync OSC2 to OSC1.
FM OSC2 with OSC1.
Mix OSC1 & OSC2 to taste.

Things to try with this patch:

Use saw as OSC1 and square as OSC2. This should give you that drilling & ripping electro house bass sound you hear on the radio. If you use saw as OSC1 and sine/triangle as OSC2, you'll get quite smooth sounding drilling sound.

Try low passing the above to tame the highs.

Try inverting the phase OR lowpassing the OSC1 after it's done FMing the OSC2 to see if you get a more powerful low frequency from there.


3 - FM electro house bass Mk II:
Take two oscillators: OSC1 (saw) and OSC2 (saw or pulse).
OSC2 is playing 1-3 octaves higher than OSC1.
Sync OSC2 to OSC1.
Run the OSC2 through a bandpass or lowpass filter.
Crank up the resonance almost up to self oscillation.
Aggressively FM the filter cutoff with OSC1.
Set cutoff to taste.
Use OSC2 through the filter as the sound source. OSC1 is there only for modulation and syncing purposes.

This should give you a powerful drilling kind of electro house bass sound. Try tweaking the OSC2 frequency and filter resonance to taste.

Try adding a lowpass filtered extra oscillator to the sound if you feel it still lacks the low frequencies. Make sure it's synced to the OSC1.


4 - Massive full frequency spectrum filling bass:
Take Livewire AFG's alien saws or animated pulses output.
Tweak the PWM and PPM knobs to taste. Maybe even slightly animate them with LFOs.
Mix in a little bit of that sub oscillator if needed.
Profit!