Basslines

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tom real

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Hi there, am a relatively new producer and am even newer to the Psy Trance Scene and am keen to find out the best way to engineers a fully throbing psy-type bassline. I really want it to stand out.. can anyone offer me any advice?

Also alien0type squelchy noises .. where do you guys get these from...?????

any help much appreciated.
 
"squelchy noises" covers a lot of ground tbh :)

generic acid squelch: strong lowpass filter, high resonance, no distortion (unless tube amp or other "analog/musical" distortion). but you're probably thinking of...

generic psy squelch: saw wave with a quickish pitch envelope over several octaves (attack/decay to taste), heavily filtered (usually bandpass or highpass)... other waveforms have different characters

some quick fix bass info: the easiest way to have your bassline really stand out is to give it enough volume (relative to everything else). then run it together with the kick through a smooth musical compressor (preferrably hardware but blah blah blah etc) for a tight & detailed sound, but try not to lose the kick... it's all too easy to fall for the compressed sound, so it is possible to take it too far :)

have fun :)
 
make sure the kick+bass are eq'd so they're not fighting over the same frequencies. Maybe use eq to add a little peak to the bass where the 'satisfying throb' is but be careful and check on different speakers :cool:
and like matt said a bit of compression works wonders
 
i jus t wrote out a huge thing n then accidentally deleted it :(
but heres my two cents... A1 synth for basslines (vst that comes with cubase), dont want to give away too much :P just make sure ur playing with filters, EQs and volume envelopes (attack/decay/sustain/release etc.)
and i wrote a whole thing about how i'm sick of people tryin to be original by puttin out bassline patterns that havent been done before. the standard basslines in psytrance (16-note, offbeat, second two notes every beat etc.) work well with psy, and the original stuff sounds so much better with the psy basslines and fresh sounds on top. my rant is based purely on hearing so many tunes with shit basslines. i'm a bit pissed so i cant think of examples except the first section of commercial hippies 'where dreams come from'. notice how much better the tune gets when they drop in the standard dk-duh-duh-dk-duh-duh. i'm SOOO for the progression of psytrance, get us outta the rut that standard full on has fallen into. but enough of the shit groove-less basslines.
tired of people rantin about how 16-note basslines are boring. theres been so many times on the dancefloor when the tune falls to just a tappy kick and a monotone 16-note bassline, and for years its almost always sounded so good!
whatever makes us move i guess....
...full flight and light travels...
alex
 
The Phonographist said:
<a href='http://www.psy-trance.co.uk/psyforum2003/index.php?showtopic=1429' target='_blank'>http://www.psy-trance.co.uk/psyforum2003/i...?showtopic=1429</a>
Click to expand...

:no: :no:
 
oh yeah and make sure that you never put a bass note and the kick on the same beat. for a 16-note bassline you ALWAYS actually have 3 bass notes after the kick, not a note on the kick. this is standard precedure.
:)
 
AlternateContinuum said:
The Phonographist said:
<a href='http://www.psy-trance.co.uk/psyforum2003/index.php?showtopic=1429' target='_blank'>http://www.psy-trance.co.uk/psyforum2003/i...?showtopic=1429</a>
Click to expand...
:no:
Click to expand...

That link's for the old version of the site (no longer existent)

There were three threads that I remember....

http://psy-forum.co.uk/psyforum/viewtopic.php?t=700

http://psy-forum.co.uk/psyforum/viewtopic.php?t=2166

http://psy-forum.co.uk/psyforum/viewtopic.php?t=1429

Any better?

J.
 
Fromem Ory you make music making sound like cooking recipes........the world will not explode if you put a bass note and a kick together........i thought trance was about experimenting, not following someone elses rules. Fine people want advice on where to start an thats all good, but if you wanna make anything more exciting than Skazi style powerwanking, you'll be wanting to deviate from the beaten path, for your own creative sanity if nothing else..........just my 2 cents
 
Audio Realism Bassline.

Perfect VSTi for generic bass sounds

Also - for a throbbing bass sound try sidechaining it to the kick.
 
Drat Mafia said:
Fromem Ory you make music making sound like cooking recipes........the world will not explode if you put a bass note and a kick together........i thought trance was about experimenting, not following someone elses rules. Fine people want advice on where to start an thats all good, but if you wanna make anything more exciting than Skazi style powerwanking, you'll be wanting to deviate from the beaten path, for your own creative sanity if nothing else..........just my 2 cents
Click to expand...
i respect and agree with what ur saying in some parts... i just think that some tunes have been coming out recently which have really groove-less shuffly basslines, and i feel its an attempt at being original, especially when the rest of the tune is pretty standard sounding. i'm not a big fan of skazi-style power wanking too, i write most stuff at 140-144 and almost never above. maybe i should have phrased it better, but i was drunk at the time :P
also... the thing about putting the bass note and a kick together, thats something any decent psy producer knows, as placing a bass note on the same note as the kick actually degrades the quality of the kick. its not opinion, its mainstream technique that the person who started this thread should know, cause its hard to learn about makin psytrance n it took me ages to pick up on little things like that. in my opinion, there are certain 'rules' to making a certain kind of music, very few of them, and some made to be broken. like i said, i'm allll for originality, especially at this time where the psytrance scene is in an originality-lacking rut. things like the kick n bassline thing tho, that is a general rule.
...full flight...
 
also, by squelchy alien noises do u mean that lovely squeak which can be found in astrix and alien project tunes, like DNA (rmx) by alien project? im still on the journey to find that sound, then i want to turn it into something else. i like the sound cause it is very characteristic, it sounds like little animal talking some wierd language. my friend joe does a lovely squeak which sounds really human. i will tel you when i know how, all i know at the moment is it has to do with filters and pitch bending. theres a knob in fruity loops on each channel called 'pogo', that gets u on ur way :)
...full flight...
 
I am sick and tired of the 16th bassline pattern with no notes on the kick. I am guilty of doing it my self in the past, but no more!
It's not a general rule anymore, its just an overdone formula.
I am also tired of sawtooth bassline patches with the usual EG modulation amount on the filter.
Bass notes on the kick means that you are totally free to play whatever bassline works for your tune.
Basslines that have notes for longer than a 16th, slides through notes, pitch bended notes...etc, are FAR more interesteng than the ol' kbbbkbbbkbbb pattern, which was a good idea, but I've listened and danced to it for years and now I'm just fed up with it.
Use the right kick and bass patch and playing notes over the kick will work much better than having no bass notes on the kick.
Compress them and keep them under control to avoid the levels hitting the coverters' ceilings and all will be fine.

Peace out.
 
fwiw i never pay the slightest attention to having kick+bass simultaneous

if you are totally incapable of getting a well produced tune with concurrent kicks+basses then I think you must be a bit shit because I can think of dozens of brilliant tunes which put the bassline wherever works best, musically, not strictly kbbb all the time.
 
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