How do you make a bass growl?

tpantano · Post by **tpantano** » Fri Dec 31, 2010 12:48 am

How do you make a bass purr?
How do you make a bass howl?
How do you make a bass roar?
~tpantano

Honestly though, how do you get a bass on the growlier side? Specifically, what's modulated? I'm guessing it's pitch since on an electric bass the strings are pretty large and vibrate a lot, but I'm thinking there's more to getting that warm growly sound.

Example,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dkik97YkiE0
starting at 0:32

X-Trade · Post by **X-Trade** » Fri Dec 31, 2010 1:05 am

Nope, its nothing to do with pitch.

In any vibrating string there will be a slight variation of pitch, but that is not what gives it the 'growl'.

It is mainly down to filter and drive settings. You want a steep (24db/o) lowpass with low-medium amount of resonance with a lot of EG to the cutoff. For the particular example you gave, the drive should possibly be pre-filter, at that sweet-spot usually around 18-28 depth that gives it a bit more bottom end.

I'm sure you can figure out the envelope settings yourself, but that part is very delicate. You need to leave the filter open enough so that you get enough through in the sustain section.

For the waveform I'd use a sawtooth or pulse (with a bit of modulation from the EG?), or the slap-bass sample on the Radias or slapbass DWGS wave on the R3 is actually probably better. And on the 2nd oscillator a triangle or sine wave tuned to -12 semitones (octave below).

Actually for that sound I'd be tempted to use the pulse with on an EG that decays faster than the filter EG (probably using EG3 there).

meatballfulton · Post by **meatballfulton** » Fri Dec 31, 2010 1:51 pm

As a bass player myself I'll confirm X-Trade's comment that "growl" is shifting harmonic content not pitch variation.

tpantano · Post by **tpantano** » Fri Dec 31, 2010 6:46 pm

Are you sure it's EG? It sounds like something's vibrating, which would make me think its LFO... but maybe that vibration in combination with the EG dropping is what gives it that rough growl

X-Trade · Post by **X-Trade** » Fri Dec 31, 2010 7:06 pm

Its the resonance of the filter combined with the EG dropping which causes it. Resonance itself is an audio-rate oscillation, which may cause 'beating' like two detuned oscillators as it passes the harmonics.

A bit of drive is probably adding further 3rd harmonic distortion, but on that sound particularly there is another steeper filter after the drive which gives it that 'funky' wah-wah ish sound, also part of the character. On the R3/Rad you can't put the WS between the filters, unfortunately, but there is the wah or envelope filter effects.

By the way I am a bass player too. A modulation in pitch would be more 'twang' I think.

tpantano · Post by **tpantano** » Fri Dec 31, 2010 7:20 pm

X-Trade wrote:Its the resonance of the filter combined with the EG dropping which causes it. Resonance itself is an audio-rate oscillation, which may cause 'beating' like two detuned oscillators as it passes the harmonics.

A bit of drive is probably adding further 3rd harmonic distortion, but on that sound particularly there is another steeper filter after the drive which gives it that 'funky' wah-wah ish sound, also part of the character. On the R3/Rad you can't put the WS between the filters, unfortunately, but there is the wah or envelope filter effects.

By the way I am a bass player too. A modulation in pitch would be more 'twang' I think.

I guess I didn't play for long enough to really look into and recognize what was causing what when I played

tpantano · Post by **tpantano** » Fri Dec 31, 2010 8:01 pm

hmm. Even with some keytracking, I can only get it to growl at C2 and below, and then any notes below C1 are sloppy, like a string wayyyy too loose... C3 and below sounds much to fake, but I really need C1-C3 for a proper bass range, IDK, ideas?

winstonsmith · Post by **winstonsmith** » Sun Jan 02, 2011 4:17 pm

Some excellent advice in this thread already - choice of wave (one with harmonics) and detuning those waves against each other will give you the sound to shape (as X-Trade rightly points out).

After that, you'll want to make the sound bigger and fatter and this is where width and unison etc come in.

But to specifically answer your question:

tpantano wrote:How do you make a bass purr?

Use waves with lost of harmonics, detuned against each other to generate more harmonics. Now whack a hi-pass filter over the top and modulate that with LFOs/envelopes (I am doing something very similar in my other thread: http://www.korgforums.com/forum/phpBB2/ ... hp?t=57733).

Combing that low pass over those harmonics will give you a purr :]

This video gives more of a wobble but it also has the purr, just make it wobble less and you are there!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEBe6lkMEbk

tpantano wrote: How do you make a bass howl?

Well this one can be helped with portamento and pitch. Get the settings right (i.e. the right range over the right period of time and you can get a whizzing / whooshing (howling?) type noise by holding one note and then hitting another an octave or three up while holding the first. Sync other things up like resonance and filter cutoff and you should be able to cook something up :]

tpantano wrote: How do you make a bass roar?

Well, I think it comes down to quality drive and distortion. I think you;'ll enjoy watching this:

http://organicbeats.co.uk/blog/fracture-neptune-part-2/

:]

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How do you make a bass growl?

How do you make a bass growl?

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