-=Mandari=-
Mandari
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Posted : Oct 21, 2013 09:43:34
hey guys,
so i´ve been not around here for pretty long time until recently. reading over few pages i came to the conclusion ppl might still dont know how to achieve this or that bass.
to put it all together and save you some time reading through thousands of antique pages of the "motherofallbasslines" thread, i decided to write these few hints down for you all.
at first, i want to mention the benefit of tuning your kick to your root. give it a try, should not be taken as a rule. why it´s beneficial? well.... i think you´ll quite get there ^^ can talk about that later. for now, my only intention is to leave the opportunity to stop with all those same questions all the time. a bass is a freakn bass, if you want to recreate a specific sound.... learn to listen! sounds rude, best advice i ever got.
long story short term, how to get my root you say... well, you decide for a specific bpm your track will be at. to get the root of exactly this bpm, you lazy folks go here:
i.e. the bpm is 148 (like that ), now you should get a freq. of 631,46hz, which fits nicely a D#4 with a slight offset of few cents. naaah, never mind, for now as you did not want to read and think about, those few cents wont harm.
"how the fkk did that guy get the note now you say?" well.... keeping it short.... go here:
now.... we got: bpm, its exact frequency and the relating note.
next step will be calculating the top and bottom end of your kick. so..... you got that frequency of your bpm/root, go ahead and double the freq. until you get somewhere comfortable. let´s say about 5khz top and something like 40hz bottom when you half it down. this will pretty much fit the exact root you took from your bpm. its just few octaves above/below, so still D#.
to adjust the duration of your kick calculate the length of a 16th note for standard kbbb. "how do i....." ok wait...
at this point i want to leave you something i experienced myself and which became 2nd in my top 10 hints i got ^^
MUSIC`S NOTHING FOR THE LAZY ONES!!!
this means your music will benefit mostly of your education. so if you stop taking yourself under pressure getting on stage, you will not just get there one day, you will stay there. what i write here is simple basic stuff, simple math one should come by alone. i mean its that easy like beats per minute/cycles per second...
there might be some relation ^^
anyways. you got that duration of a 16th now, set your envelope in whatever you´re using to pitch the shit out of it, keeping the somewhere 100ms duration. the 1ms difference keeps things tight ensuring the waveform to null at the end. if you dont know what nulling is and what im actually talking about, pls do yourself a favour, google, and LEARN!
finally, this is your kick. bazzism is an easy way to set this all up, anyways, imo it´s not that easy for beginners to get it sounding rich and fat.
now, bass is needed. well, it´s been discussed here few thousand times, basically it´s that simple:
osc, take whatever waveform you like (saw still beeing the standard most times here, at least standard kbbb), adjust the envelope according to the stuff you calculated above (i.e. 16th duration!!!). now what does an envelope do?
well, it shapes the sound, the attack determining when the sound (i.e. bass!!) coming in, the decay setting the duration to reach the amplitude set by the sustain. the release time determines how long the sound or the modulation (i.e. filter env.) decays after you let off the key of your controller/keyboard/synth/piano/steinway/whatever.... well ok, i think theres noe filter env or any other badazz modulation possibilities in a steinway.... but let´s leave that.
ok, you got that osc playing a simple saw wave now. you set it to your root (i.e. D#), set the amp env according to what you learned above (i.e. fast attack, decay=duration, sustain ?¿.... hmmmmm, you´ll get it i guess, no release). now this is your raw bass sound. go ahead to the filter env and think about how the filter movement takes place in the bass you want to achieve. basically it´s just setting that env to your like, routing it to the filter cutoff if it´s not already and play around with amount and decay. recently you learned what an envelope does, apply this knowledge!
now you got it! decent kick/bass. all work left is some cosmetics and creative work to get around that standard beeing told here.
now after you read all that sh!t forget about it! it´s just fkkn logic stuff which keeps you from being creative! it keeps you from learning to listen. you´ll be only calculating just to find that your music sounds produced and calculated... bare it in mind, keeping it as a guide, but dont take it too serious! it´s your track around, so much stuff out there is focused on kick/bass and the story around lacks.
you got everything you need, now go ahead and ask some serious questions, which have not been discussed to death. most questions here have no need to be asked if ppl would just really be willed to learn by themselves. its not to exchange knowledge like it´s been few years ago, it´s just a lot of peeps coming by in a hassle to get on stage fastest way possible to become the next goamaniac superstar.
i know that sounds rude, but ask yourself how you will benefit most and what really your intention of the question is. if you wanna know how a sound is achieved, you need to learn about the basics of this sound, all the possibilities to process it. if you dont know about them, you still got a lot to learn. basically theres not much about it, but you need to know what you´re dealing with and what you´re using and why you´re using it!
ok end of the novel, hope it kinda helped. seriously i just needed to release that maybe, cause it makes me sad opening this page getting like 5 questions same content how to achieve this ":::::.....::::::" it´s been a lot of fun here some while ago with lots of freakin discussions which held me up nights to read them. i know one shouldnt live in the past, take this just as something like an impulse, rude but true, to change the direction.
last but not least all this is really nice taken down by many of our fellows like tom cosm, billy cosmosis or psilocybian, which spent lots of time to create great tutorials for you guys to google or youtube, which just explains everything you need to know.
for this particular topic i like to leave this again:
now some of you may recognize how often it´s now been posted as an answer on many questions of this first page of the forum. looks dumb, but imo shows how often the same basic sh!zZle is beeing discussed.
hope you dont mind my opinion, it was not my intention to offend in any kind. just think about what you learn more from. a patch i send you or a page/book/tutorial explaining all the stuff in detail including the stuff around it. if you got that, ask yourself if i need to send you a link or if you are able to google it yourself. if we all would keep the questions we could answer ourselves, this forum would again become the great platform it´s been. pls dont get me wrong, it´s still great, otherwise i wouldnt mind, but i dont feel to take part here anymore, like many do too, because there´s rarely someone asking interesting, serious questions.
i know i wrote a long tutorial few years ago, which explained exactly this in detail, including a zebra patch. i posted this in all forums i was active in, cause that time already it made me mad how often ppl ask about it, not willed to look up themselves something which has been discussed everywhere to death. countless youtube links only for bassline stuff....
conclusion: no offence, just a hint all in one. you got everything now you wanted to know. some bass sounding different will be a different bass. learn to listen and you will know how one achieved that particular sound. learn everything, cause if you dont, you will always speak, work and believe the story of others! you adopt instead understand. understanding leaves you the power to select and evolve. now whats beneficial?
right.... dont mind the novel, might needed beeing said!
Taisto
IsraTrance Junior Member
Started Topics :
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252
Posted : Oct 21, 2013 13:03
Great man! I share the same opinion that first learn to listen. Training your ears for music is as important as eyes are needed for reading.. Of course blind people has their ways to read as well, but not without help.
So thanks for this help, cheers!
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Fakso
IsraTrance Junior Member
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12
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179
Posted : Oct 21, 2013 14:06
How about a video prog bassline tutorial?
I haven't listen to this stuff I made on other systems but on my cans it sounds like other prog basses sound on them
I'd make a video tutorial but I need to know how to record the sound with a certain program because with asio it does not work and with MME/direct it's delayed, I'm a lazy douche so anything easy is welcome https://soundcloud.com/noordzee-laborant
Sunrise Travellers
IsraTrance Junior Member
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585
Posted : Oct 21, 2013 14:11
I have this too in my mind to organise a bit better the forum with some sticky topics with tutorials, articles, tricks etc to refresh it and help more people especially the newcomers.
I'm in if you decide it
...into the wild....
-=Mandari=-
Mandari
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Posted : Oct 22, 2013 13:42
yeah that might solve quite some of the issue. the "motherof...." thingy has been quite helpful some time ago, but it was way less pages and easy to find.
clean sticky versions of those with according tutorials might save a lot of hassle. maybe even closed so we keep any discussion away from those. i dont like reading through something like 200 pages of bassline thread, so just stick and close them wouldnt be much of a benefit...
I'd make a video tutorial but I need to know how to record the sound with a certain program because with asio it does not work and with MME/direct it's delayed, I'm a lazy douche so anything easy is welcome
on my cans the low saturate mate..some cans i m not familiar with.. probably cause of the loudness chain/settings not suited otherwise it sounded good
frisbeehead
IsraTrance Junior Member
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Posted : Oct 22, 2013 19:12
there was a website with a calculator to the same purpose of this "tempo calculator", but was much better then this. with a disk failure, lost that bookmark forever - but this kind of thing is really useful in that it prevents us from using a calculator! (yes, a real one!) and specially good for setting up fx to, like reverb! cool stuff...
frisbeehead
IsraTrance Junior Member
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Posted : Oct 22, 2013 20:04
About this "one tuturial to kill them all" thing...
I think most people these days go about making sounds like they would learn how to cook: with a recipe!
To my mind it doesn't make much sense to determine the root note with that kind of math! The root note is just a choice! What the track needs is for the elements to be related in a pleasant way (not even saying harmonic here)! Not saying you're wrong here, it's just my opinion and would welcome further discussion on this subject
I think what Cosmosis says on a (also) recently posted tuturial about Bass makes much more sense: you need to be aware that low frequencies take some time to develop... Also, E, F, G and A notes are those present on a bass instrument so that's also relevant, along with a pich bend of 2 semitones (that's how much you get on a real thing to!) if you plan on using it. Second thing, that easily gets overlooked, is: bass is a monophonic instrument! So setting it like that should be a no brainer. Typical psytrance patterns are stacatto style, meaning: notes don't run into each other, so legato mode also doesn't make much sense unless, of course, you're planning on writting notes like that! If, however, you're after the steady and rock solid notes that always sound alike, turning this off and selecting the "retrig" option is also a must! Problem is, I guess, this options change names a lot depending on the instrument, like on Massive it's "hidden" inside the OSC menu, called "osc retrig", on Predator that would be turning the "free" (running oscillator) off and turning the "analogue" on advanced settings all the way down.
So we're talking two things here: one is having each note start exactly on the same phase cycle, so that each note starts exactly on the same place and sounds alike. The other has to do with "analogue drift", basicly a mild kind of detuning associated with old gear that would drift a bit in tune because of temperature or humidity!
This should be the first thing on the mind of anyone starting out: read the god damn manual! Look for this options within your instrument and make sure you turn anything that's related to imitating the "analogue behaviour" of the oscillators completely off!
While you're at it: search for some basics in synthesis! Learn what the frequency is, what the cycle is, what phase means, so forth and so on. Plus, use an oscilloscope! Seeing is believing goes a long way! For example: did you know that closing a low pass filter almost all the way down turns a sawtooth into a sinewave? Or what saturation on filter stage is actually doing to your wave shape? Or any kind of distortion/saturation for that matter? Or that you can dispense the use of either inserting math values on the envelopes (there's only so much instruments that even allow you to do that), because you can see in realtime if the notes are running into each other, how you're shaping the transient with the envelopes and if your release ends before the next note or runs into it!
Next in line would be some understanding that (in a way) most waveshapes like a sawtooth can be made up of the sum of partials - this means sine waves - whose frequencies are distributed in an harmonic way, related to the fundamental! So get some cool analyser that displays the frequencies and the correspondent notes, like free Span from Voxengo and start learning how to relate these two values. Plenty of things you can do: pick your cuttoff knob on the filter section and close it gradualy while watching the analyser, until you've filtered out everything but the fundamental. Watch your oscilloscope: that's probably closer to a sinewave now, isn't it? That's what a fundamental tone is: just one frequency, no harmonics, a simple sine wave. Could go on and on!
What I'm ranting about here is: you need to actually get a good understanding of how this stuff is interacting with each other and the impact your choices are having on many levels: on the wave shape itself, on the spectrum and the stereo image as well (next in line would be phase correlation, but not much of an issue for a sound that usually goes dead centre...).
This is all simple stuff once you get to grips with the basics and most specially if you embrace learning synthesis, namely subtractive synthesis, and take your time on it! Instead of following simple recipes that usually take for granted that people know the basics when in many cases they don't!
Djones
IsraTrance Senior Member
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267
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Posted : Oct 22, 2013 23:14
Quote:
On 2013-10-21 09:43:34, -=Mandari=- wrote:
at first, i want to mention the benefit of tuning your kick to your root. give it a try, should not be taken as a rule. why it´s beneficial? well.... i think you´ll quite get there ^^ can talk about that later. for now, my only intention is to leave the opportunity to stop with all those same questions all the time. a bass is a freakn bass, if you want to recreate a specific sound.... learn to listen! sounds rude, best advice i ever got.
long story short term, how to get my root you say... well, you decide for a specific bpm your track will be at. to get the root of exactly this bpm, you lazy folks go here:
i.e. the bpm is 148 (like that ), now you should get a freq. of 631,46hz, which fits nicely a D#4 with a slight offset of few cents. naaah, never mind, for now as you did not want to read and think about, those few cents wont harm.
"how the fkk did that guy get the note now you say?" well.... keeping it short.... go here:
now.... we got: bpm, its exact frequency and the relating note.
Uhmm ...I didn't get there Perhaps I missed something as I don't understand the related note theory.
Why would a track being 148 bpm's sound best when tuned to the note D#4?
Going by the Frequency to Note Calculator, any track from 142 to 150 bpm is related to D#4.
So that means most psytrance tracks, which are roughly between 140-150 bpm are only mathematically correct when produced in the key of D#?
-=Mandari=-
Mandari
Started Topics :
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655
Posted : Oct 23, 2013 00:31
-.-
well sorry bro, but this thread will not be about the basics. if that´s not been a joke, i really would appreciate if we keep it productive in here and dont talk further about that. i wrote this to show that something´s wrong which could be easily solved. im not interested talking about math or music theory or basic recipes for clandestine drag, naaah crack ääääh track cooking here... FUCK GENRES, LOVE MUSIC!!!!
http://soundcloud.com/mandarimedia http://banyan-records.com
-=Mandari=-
Mandari
Started Topics :
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655
Posted : Oct 23, 2013 00:34
Quote:
On 2013-10-22 19:12, frisbeehead wrote:
there was a website with a calculator to the same purpose of this "tempo calculator", but was much better then this.
i dont use them, it was more like a fun to google it for those not able. there´s no need, everyone has a simple school calculator, weither as tool, on pc, phone or elsewhere ....
frisbeehead
IsraTrance Junior Member
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Posted : Oct 23, 2013 06:00
Quote:
On 2013-10-23 00:34, -=Mandari=- wrote:
Quote:
On 2013-10-22 19:12, frisbeehead wrote:
there was a website with a calculator to the same purpose of this "tempo calculator", but was much better then this.
i dont use them, it was more like a fun to google it for those not able. there´s no need, everyone has a simple school calculator, weither as tool, on pc, phone or elsewhere ....
not to mention pen and paper, of course!
everyone knows beats per minute means 145bpm has 145 equal parts of the minute. being that hertz is how many of something happens within a second it's really simple math.
but... having a website at hand that presents you with everything at once is much nicer then that!
now, I'm curious about the tunning the low instruments according to this simple math thing. I understand what leads to those values. but you can have your root note placed on another note and have it sounding awsome just as well.
Djones
IsraTrance Senior Member
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Posted : Oct 23, 2013 09:43
Quote:
On 2013-10-23 00:31, -=Mandari=- wrote:
-.-
well sorry bro, but this thread will not be about the basics. if that´s not been a joke, i really would appreciate if we keep it productive in here and dont talk further about that. i wrote this to show that something´s wrong which could be easily solved. im not interested talking about math or music theory or basic recipes for clandestine drag, naaah crack ääääh track cooking here...
So now what?
-=Mandari=-
Mandari
Started Topics :
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Posts :
655
Posted : Oct 23, 2013 10:09
[quote]
... but you can have your root note placed on another note and have it sounding awsome just as well.
[/quote
for sure, you can place it anywhere you like and i NEVER said any different. it was about calculating the root, which is only this one note (i.e. D#4/25cent off). theres a reason i wrote one should forget about all this AFTER one understood.
never mind i wont go in detail here, cause it´s simply not the topic.
sure a site, sheet or anything you dont have to calculate all the time is just fine. i was just curious about why ppl have problems to google that on theirselves....
FUCK GENRES, LOVE MUSIC!!!!
http://soundcloud.com/mandarimedia http://banyan-records.com
-=Mandari=-
Mandari
Started Topics :
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Posted : Oct 23, 2013 10:35
Quote:
To my mind it doesn't make much sense to determine the root note with that kind of math! The root note is just a choice! What the track needs is for the elements to be related in a pleasant way (not even saying harmonic here)! Not saying you're wrong here, it's just my opinion and would welcome further discussion on this subject
well, maybe i was not that clear about that. my intention was to leave an idea of how to get the root of your bpm. that only one note which corresponds. maybe as a starting point to get any root at all. i never said this has to be taken as a rule and this should be THE root. i said it´s the exact root of your bpm. if you choose that or another one is completely up to you. but it in fact IS the only way to determine the root of ANY given cycle.
so theres two root note possibilities to be honest. one corresponding note to given cycle and the root note you´re free to choose.
there are a lot of points one could bare when choosing the root. logical ones, emotional ones, musical ones, etc. simple reason why i did not want to go in this basic theory stuff in this topic. its a really nice subject i´d love to talk about elsewhere, but does not fit the topic here. this in fact would be some discussion i´d love to see popping up. here. lot of things coming to my mind and i ask myself why we always choose on side over the other instead of combining things....
if im not right, im left. cheers ^^ im really sorry for anyone feeling offended, it was not intended. i know it sounds/reads kinda rude. but truth is not always comfortable, anyways the only thing which will set free. i apologize for not been able to think about how to reach my goal. instead of naggin around i should just write a topic with all that shizZle in one and either it will be sticked or not....
), now you should get a freq. of 631,46hz, which fits nicely a D#4 with a slight offset of few cents. naaah, never mind, for now as you did not want to read and think about, those few cents wont harm.
