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-- how are psy basslines made?
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how are psy basslines made?

Fast, broken, kinda sounds like an arp used, but probably not. Any tricks to psy basslines?

Basically for Full-on style (about 140bpm) it's:

| K b b b | K b b b | K b b b | K b b b |

(K = kick, b = bass note)
(use a 1/32 quantize, leaving one space between each note)

you can do any variations on the bass note, but try to mantain the note time position...

Also, I find it helps to run the bass through some distortion. That makes the sound a bit harder and more grumbly.

most psy basses are either:

1) a 303 or 303 clone (like audiorealism bassline)

or

2) steinberg VB-1

protoculture uses a 303 type sound for nearly all his basses (like in silicon sound and silicon sunrise). thats just a saw wave teebee with no resonance, set to play 1/16ths (even on the kick drum) with an accent on the 3rd, 7th, 11th and 15th note. just make sure you stick a compressor on the bass and duck the threshold between -10 and -25db with the ratio on 2:1 or greater.

other examples of psy 303 basses are: fatali - city of god, space cat - deep rising, beathackers - transpose, cosma - cusanem, hallucinogen - LSD (this one is a square wave, not saw wave)

cosma uses VB-1 for alot of basses. its a bit lame but most of them use the 'synthie' preset and stick it through a load of valves and exciters to beef it up. but im not complaining because cosma's tracks deliver on the bass anyway. VB-1 sounds quite 'solid' even when you play it below C3. it still sounds quite solid on C2 whereas most other synths tend to break up in this range. but VB-1 is a real 1 trick pony and it is so limited in programming terms there isnt that much you can do with it.

examples of psy VB-1 basses: voice of cod - just a ride, cosma - people on hold, cosma - the time has come

nearly all psy basses will have processing on it. in the case of just a ride, theres a shit load of post processing to get VB-1 sounding that good.

normally this will be with some degree of compression and overdrive. also run it through some tubes of valves or low frequency exciters to warm it up a bit if it is lacking. although with 303 basses, less is more. cosma's bassline for cusanem sounds like a saw wave teebee with a touch of distortion and thats it.

Hey. Funny this thread pops up like this . Just a few days ago I got bored and tried to make a psy song :P. Not sure if its worth checking out but I used that stuttered kick like everyone is mentioning and it sounds pretty psy if you ask me. It goes K b b b K b b b and so on. The bass instrument needs to have pretty much a square envelope with no release (or very little) and for variation, you might mess with the decay and sustain. I used 24th notes in the stutter (or in other words, there was a 32nd rest in between the bass notes). I didnt use a 303 sound for the bassline though but hey, I'm not big into psy and I'm definitely not a psy producer so :P.

My Take On Psy

Cheers,
Zac

I love this board. Thanks for all the info. Track sounds good Zac, good intro, smooth shit, I can tell you are a good producer. I have LSD + a Hallucinogen disk, never thought of it as psy, always thought of it as techtrance cause of the other sounds he uses, but yep, Kbbb!

A 303 bassline isnt really psy.....its more acid if you really exploit the 303 sound.

But in the end......as diginut would say......there are no rules

303 makes it sound like acid. Yep. I can see that.

Here's a try at psy with the 303 anyway. (ABL Bassline)
is the kick type normal for psy, and how's the compression?

http://www.soundclick.com/bands/pag...m?bandID=446461

Well first of all the kick isnt strong enough, its kinda weak. And second the abss sounds really static and unalive.....so the trick is to play with the filters with automation, so with resonance it sounds like its moving. heres something i did in 2 minutes:
http://s61.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=...OD37GJYN5LWGFSI

and delay on the bass works with acid but usually not with fullon psy basses. Reverb and delay should be applied carefully on bass, coz it can amke your song sound muddy

gr8pe, that's nice movement. Seems like you'd have to work the rest of the song around it, you'd maybe use slow sweeps if you had a lead + other things going maybe? or just be good about your automation timing.,

Heres a sample from a track I've been working on. Uses the VB-1 with simple compressor to give it some oomph.

www.ionization.net/psybass.mp3

I prefer to use the VB-1 or Vanguard (Nu-Nrg or Direct Punch patches are good starting points) 303 clones tend to sound more like goa as far as I'm concerned which is cool, but dont really give that low end oomph from the ones I've messed around with.

quote:

Originally posted by Axolotyl 303 clones tend to sound more like goa as far as I'm concerned which is cool, but dont really give that low end oomph from the ones I've messed around with.

I hear that. I'm going to bust out something with the vb-1 after work, I'll check out your example too.

Rebirth 2 is ment to replicate a 303 isnt it?
I think some one posted that it was free for download a while ago.
You could make some basslines then export but thats abit of a pain.
Atleast its free.

quote:

303 clones tend to sound more like goa as far as I'm concerned which is cool, but dont really give that low end oomph from the ones I've messed around with.

but protoculture, fatali, space cat and beathackers are not goa trance.

also you are doing something wrong if a 303 clone cannot put out low end oomp. you can devastate all with audiorealism bassline when you send it through some valves.

This is a bassline made with ABL. I've been listening to all the responses. I'm trying to get the hang of using effects. I don't have monitors or decent headphones really, so I'd like to know if it sounds fine and if the bass carries enough oomph to make everyone happy. The perc is a loop that's been fx twisted 9 ways to sunday, but not chopped, ending up still kinda sounding normal.

file called Psy I bassline test

http://www.soundclick.com/bands/pag...m?bandID=446461

quote:

Originally posted by Derivative but protoculture, fatali, space cat and beathackers are not goa trance. also you are doing something wrong if a 303 clone cannot put out low end oomp. you can devastate all with audiorealism bassline when you send it through some valves.

Yeah fair enough, with enough processing, you can get anything to sound good. I guess a better distription would be that 303s tend to give a more synthetic feel? Whereas VB-1 tends to give a slightly more bass guitar feel. All the South african producers for example use VB-1 Rinkadink, Shift, Broken Toy.. I just tend to prefer that sound a bit more myself.

quote:

Originally posted by greenskydj This is a bassline made with ABL. I've been listening to all the responses. I'm trying to get the hang of using effects. I don't have monitors or decent headphones really, so I'd like to know if it sounds fine and if the bass carries enough oomph to make everyone happy. The perc is a loop that's been fx twisted 9 ways to sunday, but not chopped, ending up still kinda sounding normal.

There's almost no low end in that bass-line. You should process it a bit more to get more oomph. Other than that, it's pretty nice.

There are types of basslines:
1) Deep basslines: They are full of reso and punch. They take lots of space in the mix and fill up the track.
2) Subs: Airy & really low.
3) Rolling: Basicly it's the kbbbkbbbkbbbkbbb but you can make intervals and change, and do what ever you want. Those kind of basslines are usually clicky.
4) Other: Any other bassline that you can think of can work here.
5) 303ed: Well, as it says...


Omer

You can replicate a 303 with just abut any bass sound if you add the right effects. Try finding a filter with autowah function and put it on a high feedback BP or formant setting with the autowah cutting down sharply. After that a good quality distortion or overdrive. Maybe a light metalizer and/or flanger and hey presto, you have a 303 sound you can call your own.

kind regards,

Charlie Darwin

well.. I think I got something for you

3 different basslines in 1 file:
- Full On Bass
- dark, dominant rolling bass
- Deep Darkpsy Bass

the mp3 file here.
http://s54.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=...5F156VJ2F4Q8Y36

.flp project file here...
http://s54.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=...GM37G2MXTU6Z90W

you will need
- ReFX Vanguard (for the bass)
- Anwida Soft C1X Compressor
- Anwida L1 Limiter
- SideKick2 (available here: http://www.twistedlemon.nl/ )
for the best quality

For a more advanced KBBB format you could try a;

K
BBBB

format with the kick and bass through the same compressor. You'll hardly hear the first B but it will add to the kick nicely.

quote:

You can replicate a 303 with just abut any bass sound if you add the right effects. Try finding a filter with autowah function and put it on a high feedback BP or formant setting with the autowah cutting down sharply. After that a good quality distortion or overdrive. Maybe a light metalizer and/or flanger and hey presto, you have a 303 sound you can call your own.

the principle is easy but in practice it is very difficult to replicate the sound of a 303 exactly. it should be easy because its just a single oscillator (saw/square) with a simple amp decay envelope, fed through to a saturated, resonant 3 pole filter. and thats it.

problems occur when trying to copy the specifics.

firstly, portmento on a tb-303 is somewhere between linear and exponential, is affected by amplitude envelope decay and only glides once. i.e. you cannot slide up and down and do so repeatedly.

secondly, the saw wave on a tb-303 is inverted and is very smooth. the square wave, if i recall correctly, isnt really a pure square (partly why every teebee clone has failed to accurate emulate the square wave). i think it is 2 rectified saws (???) or a rectified saw/square. dont quote me on that but its definitely not a pure square.

either way, the only synths i have managed to come close to emulating the square wave is an access virus b and (to some extent) linplug albino - both of which allow you to mix waveforms within themselves. for the virus i had to mix a saw and square using oscillator 2 and mix in a bit of pure sine on oscillator 1 just to emulate the characteristics of the single 303 square wave oscillator. the saw wave was easier to emulate and i got almost exactly there using a mix of mostly saw with a bit of sine on oscillator 2 then mixing it in with oscillator 1 set to pure sine.

thirdly, the filter is a heavily saturated 18 dB/octave 3 pole jobbie. so if you dont have a synth that can switch to a 3 pole filter, or emulate a 3 pole filter, then you are out of luck.

fourthly, replicating some of the quirks of analogue instruments is very difficult. 303s have unstable tuning. the pre filtered output distorts when you increase the volume above 8/10. the attack transient is non linear and it does not start isntantly (i.e. there is a short attack phase). additionally the built in 303 analogue distortion is difficult to emulate.

so far i have made a very close emulation of a 303 (without distortion) using an access virus b. this is probably the only synth i have used that is capable of doing so since it can:

1) mix oscillator waveforms
2) emulate a 3 pole filter (enable series 6 for a 4 pole and 2 pole filter connected in series, then turn filter balance to 3 or 9 o'clock)
3) saturate the filter in a variety of ways
4) allow you to add movement and randomness to the sound with its mod matrix which helps when trying to recreate instable tuning to make it seem more analogue

the only thing that cannot be done is a perfect emulation of the 303 portmento behaviour, since the virus doesnt have very extensive portmento editing features. and personally speaking, the attack transient on the 303, which i have never been able to get right. despite all my attempts at recursively modulating both amp/filter envelopes.

additionally, you will never truly be able to replicate the programming method of a 303 without using a synth that has a step sequencer, and even if you did have that, it probably wouldnt be able to emulate portmento slides and accents properly. you cant do the step sequencer on the virus but you can build slides and accents - you just need to use 3 separate patches for each and swap between them in multimode (pain in the arse).

either way, this is my best attempt:

[[ LINK REMOVED ]]


(note: its the second sound in. apologies if the tonal balance is off on all the sounds - since moving to dublin i no longer have monitors)

and it is still a little bit off. as a side note, alot of the lead instrument sounds in psytrance are based on 303 sounds - this example is part of the melody in the fatali tune: city of god [alchemy records]. alot of the squelchy sounds you can hear in LSD, or Silicon Sound or half of Space Cat's tunes are also usually from a 303. amazing how many different types of sounds you can get from an old monophonic synth.

my square wave emulation is not as good and i dont want to put it out yet because its a dead giveaway. audiorealism bassline is still the most accurate digital recreation of a 303 to my ears, both in terms of its saw and square. although the saw is closer than the square. the filter isnt quite right yet but heres hoping the AR guys nail it in a future update.

the bottomline is that creating 303 sounds on a real 303 is laughably easy - it really is a case of fumbling the cutoff and resonance pots and pressing record.

recreating 303 type sounds on digital instruments varies from difficult to impossible depending on the digital synth you use. you can make half arsed 303 type sounds on alot of synths that can generate a saw or a square wave but they only sound like a 303 up until you actually listen to it next to a real 303. then you realise its miles off. its the same deal with supersaws. you think its easy to make them on synths other than a JP and they do sound supersaw'ish. until you size yours up next to the real thing and realise they sound nothing like each other.

Thats a pretty good one there cybernetica. This is a very interesting thread. The psybassline is a tricky one indeed. I spent hours a while back trying my best to get it down and here is what I was able to come up with. I'm curious to know what you think. Its as close as I've been able to come.

Magnus Psybassline

A lot of the psy people I know use Realism Bassline, VB1, and EnergyPro.

You can use the
K
B B B B

sequence, but you should put a sidecompressor (I'm using the TC Compressor) on the bass...

In my songs i'm using this type of configuration, but it depends of the size of the kick... If the kick is short, the end of the first Bass note will be heard, but if the kick is long you have to take care with compressor configuration, because you may lost the other bass notes (by example an high release)...

You can also check my 2 song until now on:
www.eletronz.com

what's a sidecompressor? you mean a compressor w/ a sidechain? what would you chain to?

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