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-- what's wrong with this bassline?

what's wrong with this bassline?

Hi all,

After a couple of finished songs send it to various producers and Djs the feedback I have says that my basslines has not enough "presence" or "body", "they need more movement", "they need to be more alive", etc. so I said to myself to create a loop with drums and percusion, and a typical bassline like those I use to have in my songs.

There are 3 basses, one sub off-beat with eq+compresion+sidechain, one mid bass rollin with eq+compresion+a very little delay+sidechain and another off-beat on a higher octave with eq+compression+delay+sidechain.

I would appreciate any tips, or corrections on this not just the bassline, maybe you want to suggest me something related to drums and precusion.

Here's the link:
http://www.zshare.net/audio/6601683159f7bc55/

Thanks in advance.

You said yourself , its not present , its too quiet and too far back in the mix , im not a fan of the ASOT bassline but i can tell its none present , my tip is to stereo seperate the high end of the bassline and turn the volume up!so it is prominent and dosnt interfere with the lower end sounds.

Nothing sounds "wrong" with the sound itself to me, but the pattern is just not very interesting and doesn't make me want to dance. There's no groove there.

you could maybe add more LFo's to it. or even open up the cutoff with a Lfo.

Kick is too heavy.

homie J what are you currently using for your bass synth?

Thank you all for the replies,

msz: for this one I use just sylenth1
ps: sorry my ignorance but what does that "homie j" thing means?

quote:

Originally posted by beamrider msz: for this one I use just sylenth1

Try using the bitcrusher effect on it.

quote:

Originally posted by Subtle Kick is too heavy.

agree
if you lower the kick then consequently that bassline will become louder

Nothing wrong with that bassline.

What you should probably look at though is to get some separate patches and write some more interesting bass hooks on top of this one and just use this as the meat of the track.

Perhaps just bring down the kick a touch.

Cheers
Nem

quote:

Originally posted by Nemesis44 Perhaps just bring down the kick a touch.

...and maybe bring the bass up a touch? It's definitely a kick/bass balance issue here IMO.

Actually kick is peaking at -4db or so, and basses are around -10 db
and there is nothing in the master bus (compressors, limiters, etc)

as some of you said I think there is kick/bass balnce issue and something wrong with eq also, or maybe velocity on the rollin bass to create some movement??

quote:

Originally posted by beamrider Actually kick is peaking at -4db or so, and basses are around -10 db and there is nothing in the master bus (compressors, limiters, etc) as some of you said I think there is kick/bass balnce issue and something wrong with eq also, or maybe velocity on the rollin bass to create some movement??

You should possibly consider having a separate buss for kick and bass to come together so that you can compress them as a separate component on the track.I will sometimes even stick a bit of gentle limiter on the buss too.
Together I usually have them peaking at about -8db. Will give you a bit of room to work with later. But your kick is coming in too hot in my opinion.

And as cryo correctly pointed out, also bring up the bass a bit.

Cheers
Nem

quote:

Originally posted by beamrider Actually kick is peaking at -4db or so, and basses are around -10 db and there is nothing in the master bus (compressors, limiters, etc) as some of you said I think there is kick/bass balnce issue and something wrong with eq also, or maybe velocity on the rollin bass to create some movement??

Don't look at the faders for an idea how loud it is. Loudness depends on many things; If you compress this bassline with a big ratio and a very short attack (and a quick release) the initial transients would be much higher than before, so you'd see it peaking at say -6 and it would still sound (in terms of loudness) almost exactly the same.

Though, in your it's clearly too quiet compared to the bass. Apart from that there's nothing wrong with the bassline.

I'd personally would maybe put something on top of it - just the top of another bass playing an octave higher with a different melody to compliment it, with the filters open and a ping pong delay on top... Also, I'd sidechain it a little harder also.

quote:

Originally posted by Nemesis44 You should possibly consider having a separate buss for kick and bass to come together so that you can compress them as a separate component on the track.I will sometimes even stick a bit of gentle limiter on the buss too. Together I usually have them peaking at about -8db. Will give you a bit of room to work with later. But your kick is coming in too hot in my opinion. And as cryo correctly pointed out, also bring up the bass a bit. Cheers Nem

Just out of curiosity; how many buses do you usually have on a track? I find myself enjoying the digital domain too much I think Because I have separate buses for hihats, kick, bass, leads, fx,... then I have buses for sidechaining the bass, the leads, hats, etc... Even if I don't actually need as many, it's cool to be able to control the volume of all the hihats/hihats/etc... at once. So my projects look rather ridiculous in terms of number of tracks, buses

Thank you all for the replies.

By now I�ve tried the following:

Turn kick level down, now is peaking at -6db, boost around 3.5Khz the mid bass and turned up a few dbs all the bass channels.

Now I hear a diference withthe other loop, do you guys think now is sounding ok?

what do you think about percusion?

http://www.zshare.net/audio/66031186c6d5a313/

thanks in advance

quote:

Originally posted by beamrider Thank you all for the replies. By now I�ve tried the following: Turn kick level down, now is peaking at -6db, boost around 3.5Khz the mid bass and turned up a few dbs all the bass channels. Now I hear a diference withthe other loop, do you guys think now is sounding ok? what do you think about percusion? http://www.zshare.net/audio/66031186c6d5a313/ thanks in advance

Still to quiet. Either boost the bass 2db or lower the kick 2db. I think the bass sounds OK and all other elements levels are OK, but the kick is too loud.
Put a limiter with threshold of whatever the kick is peaking and export an 8 bar loop and put it in your playlist. Then listen to some pro stuff and switch between some pro track and your loop. You'll hear how loud your kick is compared to other tracks.

quote:

Originally posted by vikernes Just out of curiosity; how many buses do you usually have on a track? I find myself enjoying the digital domain too much I think Because I have separate buses for hihats, kick, bass, leads, fx,... then I have buses for sidechaining the bass, the leads, hats, etc... Even if I don't actually need as many, it's cool to be able to control the volume of all the hihats/hihats/etc... at once. So my projects look rather ridiculous in terms of number of tracks, buses

I use quite a lot.

Will have one for each element in the track so that I can control it better, then I will route all the element of a particular type to one singular buss so that I can control them as a group, lets say Hi Hats or lead sounds.

Then on top of that I will also route all hi end stuff to one buss and kick, bass and percs to one buss as well which I will compress to make things sit tighter in the mix.

I also have delay on a separate buss, room verb and big verb respictively on their own buss too.
That way I can route all elements that I want to have those effects to the same effect which gives the track a better feel of one-ness in terms of the space that it occupies.

That said, I will usually write each part before I apply effects unless the part is dependant on the effect to give me the characteristic that I am after.

It all varies on what I am doing.

Cheers
Nem

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