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Bassline on Virus B
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DiMT
Started Topics :
8
Posts :
12
Posted : Feb 22, 2005 15:21
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Hello everybody! Don't get angry for one more bassline topic!  I really can't understand what's the problem for a long time. So, I have Virus B synth which I love much, but still can't get a fullon bassline from it. I usually make it this way: One Saw Wave OSC, 12db LP Filter, a bit resonance sometimes, then playing with different Cutoff, Env Amount, Env Decay And Sustain values. On Amp Env Attack is about 10-15 - it partly removes the awful click, Decay about a half, Sustain and Release are 0. This way I get a bass sound but it's very muddy and not so powerful at all. Then I begin to EQ it - cut the frequencies below 40Hz with highpass, above 3000 with lowpass - to minimize the click. Then I try to find frequencies that ade muddiness. It's always anear 120-130Hz, then I search for others - at the end I have about 8 Frecuencies notched a bit. After all my bass gets much cleaner - but it looses all it's power at all. So it's lost in the mix! But when I make a bassline with VB1 - it's VERY powerful and much cleaner to so I can do much less EQing. But VB-1 has very few parameters, so I can't get different types of bassline from it. Where do I go wrong? Maybe somebody use Virus for bassline and can help me? And thank you for reading all this shit!
BoM! |
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Ronaron303
Started Topics :
6
Posts :
157
Posted : Feb 22, 2005 19:43
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Hi DiMT.
You can chek the manuals and you will find that they say ,that you cant do a good bass with virus:)(i'v been reading that in VirusC manuals )but they show you how to do that anyway,so chek the manuals(sorry).
And try to add a Sine wave for more weight........
maybe it will help(some enhancers on bass Maxbass(Psp mixpack) and or Rbass?)
Are you using shorter notes?-Use 32+pause=16
as for one bar you put 32+pause+32+pause+32+pause+32+pause(maybe that will help too):)
But i never been use Virus for bass lines(sorry) |
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AvS
Started Topics :
9
Posts :
464
Posted : Feb 22, 2005 22:22
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You are not doing anything wrong. The Virus is useless at making fullon basslines! I've had my virus for about 4 yeard now and Ive come to the conclussion that you can get fullon basslines that are million times better with many softynths. VB-1 as you say or Synth1 (a bit clicky though) and the ESM (comes with Logic).
About the click you hear with your virus. You can reduce that by setting the "punch" value to zero (EDIT->punch).
Ok its not true that its impossible to make a nice fullon bass patch it just takes alot of work unlike Nordleads. 1 saw wave ->LP filter (12 or 24db) env setting, as youve tried with your virus.
I made som 'ok' fullon bass patches on my virus but there not worth the time they took me to make.
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Boobytrip
IsraTrance Junior Member
Started Topics :
39
Posts :
988
Posted : Feb 23, 2005 10:08
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Hi DiMT, You can get really nice basslines from your Virus. And in contrast with AvS, i find that i can create basslines with the Virus much easier then with most softsynths. The trick in getting a fat, clean bassline lies more in making smart use of the amp-envelope (no attack, shortish decay, about 80-90% sustain and a release of about 0-8). Most of the time i use a 'serial 6' filter with the first filter at about 40 and little or no resonance, the second filter is at 0. Then put some filter envelope on your filters and put ASR of this envelope on 0 and play a little bit with the ratio of the decay of this env and the env amount on your filters. Most of the time i use some (60-70%) 'punch' on the oscillators and quite a bit of analogue warmth in the effects section. I don't use the saturation of the filters. Sometimes i use velocity to drive the filter-cutoff a little (besides the volume).
The other trick in getting a tight bassline is smart programming (see Mike A's excellent tutorial somewhere on this forum). Play with the notelengths with quantize disabled to get it just right. Also, play a little with the velocity of your notes to squeeze some more groove out of them. Don't let your kick overlap with your bassnotes (shorten the kick) or use some side-chain compression to solve clashes between kick & bass.
Try to make an audio-mixdown to see whether you need to use some latency compensation: the bass could be lagging a bit behind.
I found that i don't need any eq or very little if i program my virus and my midi tracks just right.
hope this helps,
Daan |
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mexicancactus
Started Topics :
8
Posts :
31
Posted : Feb 23, 2005 11:05
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DiMT: the virus b is great for fullon bass sounds. here's the trick:
the virus has free-running oscillators - poison for fast basslines! to disable the free-running oscillators, do like this:
(1) go to osc section, enter the edit menu
(2) scroll until 'OSCILLATORS PhaseInit' which is 'off' in your patch, i'm sure.
(3) set it to '1' (which is almost no phase shift at all)
(4) program your bass patch as you did
(5) optional: bounce your bassline to audio and cut it to be more accurate than using MIDI
(6) process it a bit with eq, comp
(7) with this in mind, you can program fat virus fullon bass sounds in about 15 minutes
i hope this helped |
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AvS
Started Topics :
9
Posts :
464
Posted : Feb 23, 2005 17:40
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Quote:
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On 2005-02-23 11:05, mexicancactus wrote:
(2) scroll until 'OSCILLATORS PhaseInit' which is 'off' in your patch, i'm sure.
(3) set it to '1' (which is almost no phase shift at all)
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You cant say that 1 is "almost no phase shift at all". Values 1-127 sets a starting point on the waveform not how much the phase with shift every time you trigger the synth.
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mexicancactus
Started Topics :
8
Posts :
31
Posted : Feb 23, 2005 17:54
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Quote:
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On 2005-02-23 17:40, AvS wrote:
You cant say that 1 is "almost no phase shift at all". Values 1-127 sets a starting point on the waveform not how much the phase with shift every time you trigger the synth.
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AvS: If you set the PhaseInit to a fixed value, there will be no free-running oscillators anymore and you got a deterministic starting point on the wave of the oscillator, and that's what the goal was
To be precise:
(-) PhaseInit = 'off' -> The oscillators are free-running
(-) PhaseInit = 1 -> Oscillator 1 has Phase Offset 0 degrees.
(-) PhaseInit > 1 -> Oscillator 1 still has Phase Offset 0 degrees AND the second oscillator gets more and more phase-shifted compared to osc 1 with increasing PhaseInit |
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AvS
Started Topics :
9
Posts :
464
Posted : Feb 23, 2005 19:12
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You misunderstood me, and I must have misunderstood you.
I totally agree with what you just said.
I was not talking about the phase shift of osc 2 compared to osc 1 but phase shift when retriggerning the synth and I thought you were describing a 1 osc bass path.
So what confused me was that you said " 'ALMOST' no phase shift at all". Makes no sence with a 1 osc patch.
Hope you see what I mean. |
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mexicancactus
Started Topics :
8
Posts :
31
Posted : Feb 23, 2005 20:06
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yes you're right! we misunderstood each other, probably the most frequent reason for discussions in the forum
i think the problem is solved now the most important thing for me to tell was that setting this parameter away from 'off' to e.g. 1 makes the triggering deterministic which improves significantly the sound when triggering really fast bass notes.
many greetings, have a nice evening! |
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DiMT
Started Topics :
8
Posts :
12
Posted : Feb 23, 2005 23:46
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Thank you all guys for answering, this gives me some ideas that I will try!
2 Boobytrip: Do you use one or 2 oscillators? And filters: I've been always using one LP filter - Ser 4 or 6 mode with filter balance set to -64. Should i use 2 filters connected serially? You've said that filter 2 is set to 0 - do you mean cutoff 2 knob?
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DiMT
Started Topics :
8
Posts :
12
Posted : Feb 24, 2005 00:36
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Boobytrip
IsraTrance Junior Member
Started Topics :
39
Posts :
988
Posted : Feb 24, 2005 15:07
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DiMT, unfortunately i can't check right now because i'm not at home, but i think i use one sawtooth oscillator (sometimes two with the second being a saw or a square wave, but i don't mix it in too loud).
I set filter 2 to 0 (the middle knob position). With serial mode, this means that it has an offset of 0 to filter 1's cutoff.
I can post a preset somewhere when i get home.
What mexicancactus said about oscillator offset is also very important. Be sure to check:
http://www.access-music.de/downloads.php4?product=viruspowercore
There you will find a Virus Programming tutorial by Howard Scarr you can download for free. It has a chapter on programming bass sounds. |
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