Ez peeps, this is a cut n paste job from a tutorial I posted over on alternatingfrequencies. I know I don't normally post anything very useful on here so I hope its of some use to somebody somewhere.
Less of a tutorial and more of a 'rough idea' thing.
here you go:
Mornin' all.
I thought it about time that I actually contributed something that MIGHT be of some use rather than just halfwit commentary and/or sharkshaking all over the place.
So here's a little bass tutorial.
Please excuse my rambling/going-off-on-little-tangent style.
I'll be using Kontakt 3 & Cubase SX3 but really it doesn't matter what you use, the same shit applies really. Just substitute anywhere you see Kontakt or SX3 with 'sampler/DAW of your choice'.
If you need any pointers on Kontakt, RTFM or failing that just ask.
I'm aiming here for a bass that tears suitably and has a fair amount of movement in it but is still um, clear sounding if you know what I mean (but still dirty)
You will need:
A reese or some other kind of nice base[sic] sound
[optional] nice clean sine sub
A DAW
Kontakt
Bear in mind that any values quoted may vary with taste/your sample/what you are trying to do. So take anything from this you want and apply it in your own way. There is no hard and fast, set-in-stone way, you have to play with it to get it to sound controlled and right for your purposes. The same goes for the FX (and routing/signal path thereof).
I'm just telling y'all what I did to get a particularly good sounding bass.
So, load up Kontakt.
Now, I've done this using a variety of starting samples, got good results with really big fat reeses from z3ta+ with subtle notch filtering/some more subtle fx but got more of what I was looking for (for this particular bass) by using just a straight saw wave (bear with me).
A saw wave on its own, whilst having some harmonic content, just isn't gonna rip it. So I detuned it (a little) in Kontakt via the Unisono/Portamento preset in the script editor. Still not much but it worked for me. (plus my PC is shite so I'm always up for a bit of CPU saving, I need all I can get)
Anyhoo. Pick a nice reese/fart/dog growling/whatever and whack it into Kontakt. Its up to you if you want a multisample or not, sometimes you can get good results using a really low note pitched up slightly but be very careful how high you go because depending on the original frequency content (eg. if you have notch sweeps and chorus all over the shop or its heavily detuned) when you pitch it up past a certain point it'll sound like somebody is pissing in your speakers/headphones and gnawing your ears off.
So yeah, either way, map your sample(s) accordingly.
Onto the sub. Either save your current 'reese' instrument and load it in as another instrument or load a clean sub in the same manner.
If you want a nice clean sub layer, use a nice clean sine wave. If you want a bit more character, I'd suggest lowpassing your reese (note: ensure that you are using a rich reese sample for this, not too heavily detuned and preferably with a sine layer in there) and perhaps layering with another sine to add some weight.
SIDE NOTE: for a good low end in this manner you can low pass the reese and then hipass it so that you lose the low sub, then layer with the sine to ensure no low end phasing that will fuck up the universe. This is derived from a tutorial I saw on making a more modern non-sample-based 'terrorist' style bass (subfocus I think it was)
Moving on. Solo your sub, play a few notes, add compression/limiting to taste/if it needs it, just make it consistently loud WITHOUT ANY DISTORTION
Try to make sure your sub has a sharp attack, you can get this to an extent by using a pitch envelope and setting 0 attack+sustain+release and a very short decay as well as with judicious compression. (you can do this on your mids too if you want). I usually do this before I import into Kontakt.
Its a sub ffs lol, roll your own
Solo your reese. Open the wave editor and loop it wherever you want (or not if its a long sample).
Add some saturation in the group inserts. How much you apply will depend on your original sample but we're not aiming for full on distortion/speaker damage here (seriously), so be subtle. You can go back and tweak it later on anyway.
Next, high pass at around 150 Hz (or bandpass at 1.5 kHz and make another hipassed at around 3.5 kHz. up to you if you want to separate your mids n highs, I don't in this particular case)
Now you want to go (relatively) mad with FX, in the group inserts I added phasers, BR (notch) filters with saturation (VERY subtle) in between.
Modulate these relatively slowly and preferably offbeat to add some interest. Can't stress the subtlety enough.
In the instrument inserts I used phasers, chorus, flangers, reverb, delay. Again, slow modulation, everything twisting in and out of one another. Again, be subtle (getting it? lol)
Next, I played a nice long note in SX3 and exported it, loaded this back into Kontakt and you guessed it - rinse and repeat.
The difference here is a 2-pole (12 dB) LP filter as the final effect (or at least near the end of the chain).
I modulated this via a flexible envelope with 'retrigger' off. You can assign it to your control surface or whatever and tweak it that way, no rules, use yer ears as always.
If you are not subtle, this whole exercise will sound like a sack of cold shit.
If you are, play some low notes and bang your head softly with arm raised and hand in 'devil-horns' posture.
Add some legato 'n' portamento and play some low and high notes. Bang head harder.
Now play a bassline you like and export a few bars of it.
OK, VST time.
Import as audio and duplicate twice. LP, BP and HP. Beef up your lows again if needed, you know what to do.
I'll tell you what I like to do to my layers, don't take my advice on it though, go and experiment.
Mids:
anything goes really (well, almost lol), I like to add some heat with Vintage Warmer 2
Filter-wise, usually Tone2 BiFilter, Antares Filter (though I'm not so fussed on that to be honest for some reason), FabFilter Volcano etc
I'll add various combinations of flangers, choruses (WTF? chorii?!), phasers, 'verbs, delays etc.
Hi: didn't do anything in this case but I don't usually add too much to the highs, if I do its even more subtle
So yeah.
Try duplicating the mids and panning left and right a little (thanks Ketz). You can do it with the highs too and add some subtly different fx settings in each for some mad shit, or automate the panning so it kind of swirls around.
Once you have your disgusting bass down to a point that suits you, when it comes to putting it in the track, duplicate the bass and try a hipass on one and a lowpass on the other and automate away to your hearts content.
POINTS TO REMEMBER:
1. Be fucking subtle!!!!!!!
2. Saturate before filters.
3. Be fucking subtle!!!!!!!
4. The idea is simple. Perfecting it is hard. Practice.
5. Have fun.
I hope this has been at least of some use to somebody, feel free to point out anything, add anything or shoot it down in flames.
If you don't believe that my bass was decent, ask Ketz lol.
I could do screenshots if you really need them but there's nothing overly complex in there.
Use your ears
Chris
EXTRA BIT AT THE END:
Also, when you've got something down that you like/got your technique down to some degree etc. THEN you can start to use UNSUBTLE FX and modulate in peculiar ways. Just make sure it still sounds controlled.
Oh yeh, did you know you can modulate sample start in Kontakt? Well, you can in K3, I assume you can in K2 as well (and obviously in Reason cos they more or less thought of everything there hehe, and most other samplers too)?
I'd always thought you couldn't but after all, there it was staring me straight in the face.
Found that out while trawling the Grid last night.
If you get a nice morphing bassline down (or even just a mad twisting reese), make sure your instrument is in Sampler mode (as opposed to DFD or time machine et al), click on 'Mod' in the Source module, then 'Add Modulator...' and add whatever modulation source you want to use (eg. MIDI cc for modulation via your control surface), then assign to 'sample start' (using this method to control loop start/end etc. is also pretty cool).
Now play something while twiddling your controller - w00t.
That kind of explains some shit off the Teebee and Calyx Anatomy album (not that any of my shit sounds remotely as good as that lol)
__
Astrocyte - Kill em All, Track #10 from Team_174 "Off World" LP (FREE)
Nice one Chris
I might as well cut n paste my bit regarding the twisted bass methods as well: Feel free to combine both methods as there is a lot of cross over, experimentation is key
Neurofunk is the much sought after sound by many DnB producers, some see it as the "holy grail" of sub genres (myself included!). After hours of experimenting I have found some tips that will hopefully be of help to some of you
Please don't think of this as the "be all and end all" - far from it, in fact these types of basses are all derived from a lot of self experimentation (that doen't include touching one's self lol!) with enough perseverence I'm sure you will all find some gems
So that said these are some techniques that helped me get closer to that desired twsited sound.
Start off with a reece sample (again refer to the synthesis threads of how to create your reece, detuned saw wave - split into low / mid / hi etc) it is really important that you start of with a really chunky sound with lots of harmonics as the more you process (esp with filters etc) you lost some of the sound so the initial sample needs to be as phat as possible.
Now you want to start experimenting with playing some long stretched notes and some short stabs, anything goes, have your sequence anywhere from 1 bar to 8 bars long (more would prob end up being too complicated 8 is pushing it, i tend to go 1 - 4 bars). play one note, play a meldoy, make loads of variations (I find keeping your first 1st level of processing as described below and then re-processing that in several different combinations can help you create some nice variations to the sound)
My 1st level of processing will be to run an LFO filter set to band pass with the lfo sync'd and lfo rate / amount adjusted to create a nice wobble. Export this sequence as a wav and reimport into ur sampler.
Next ensure the "bounced" sample is played at note C3 and streched (so all ur doing is playing the initial sound that you made at the right note with the correct lfo rate, playing the sample at another note will mess things up as it will play at a different pitch and cause it to be out of sync with ur tempo)
Run a simple notch filter thorugh this sample (automate to taste, one sweep, 2 anything depending on what kinda movement ur after) u should start getting some nice "morph" sounds at certain points during the sweep, play around as you will find certain "sweet spots" that will make your reece start to sound nasty
Export this sequence a 2nd time and reimport again into a sampler, again play on note C3 now start playing with your pitch bend wheel on the sampler, i noticed if u try to match the pitch bend to the "sweet spot" of ur notch filter sweep, the "morph" gets even more pronounced, its funny i really underestimated the importance of the pitch bend on making a neuro bass, as in effect ur bending the sound, ur naturally getting so much more movement in the re(esp wen u combine it with the other levels of processing). so ya ur naturally twisting the sound by bending it doh!
Now add some phase, mess around with your octaves (i found some pleaseant or should i say nasty surprises by simply lowering the pitch of these babies a whole octacve, even making ur initial sample with a very fast lfo rate and then pitching the whole sequence down an octave can make it sound daaaaaaarrk)
try adjusting the sample start and also reversing the sound u have made, good way of creating variations that can all be glued together to for a mad sequence
The main points to take if u are taking onboard comments from my technique are:
re-sample, re-sample, re-sample! each time processing your sound differently to create more movement
understand the importance of the pitch bend - it was staring me in the face the whole time, its pretty damn important imo
all ur mwawawa will come mainly from lfo filters (lol)
all the subtle morphing sounds can be acheived thru notch filter automation
personally BP lfo filter followed by notch filter automation has worked really well for me so far
feel free to take the same sample and high pass it and layer it onto the original sample to make the sound bigger and more textured
if ur losing "heaviness" of ur sound after each level of processing, don't be afraid to use compression / normalize / maximize / distort / saturate whatever to re-beef ur sound, at the end of the day ur main neuro bass will sit on the mids and you will have a clean sine sub sitting underneath it to make the whole thing full n phat anyhow
above is the method of creating ur mid bass - for sub u can go down several routes: u can make a simple sine sub (single sine wav, compressed etc) and program it to play the same notes as ur midbass OR u can take a copy of ur mid bass and low pass it, heavy compression, maybe a boost around 50hz ish to bring out the sub frequencies and so on
Try to make sure your sub has a sharp attack, you can get this to an extent by using a pitch envelope and setting 0 attack+sustain+release and a very short decay as well as with judicious compression. (you can do this on your mids too if you want). I usually do this before I import into Kontakt.
I might as well cut n paste my bit regarding the twisted bass methods as well: Feel free to combine both methods as there is a lot of cross over, experimentation is key 
