Hi all,

I was just dabbling in some psytrance and I'm trying to work on my bassline skills. If you take a listen to the sample, please leave me some feedback on the bassline. Too muddy? Too soft? Just right?

http://strikeclub.phpwebhosting.com...psychedelic.mp3

Cheers.

It's hard to judge without hearing it in mix with other stuff, but I think it will fit nicely. (but who am i..)

quote:

Originally posted by Beijer It's hard to judge without hearing it in mix with other stuff

Hmmm, how much other stuff were you looking for? It's already got the kick, some light percs, and a couple of synth parts with FX... Not finished by a long shot, but its not exactly bare either. Thanks for listening though .

its not nearly loud enough (neither is the kick imho) and it just doesnt have presence. it sounds in the rear of the track whearas it should be a little more forward and centred (i do this with compressors). likewise with the kick. listen to agni hotra (glowing flame records) if you get the chance. theres a couple of tracks on that (in particular ortax - goosehunter and fractal glider - avalancher) which show you what i mean. the bass is centred and it is thick and loud (in some cases it powers straight through the kick (which is why in alot of psy, kick drums have this knocking, high pitched squelching kind of quality to punch through and remain present over the massive, constant basslines). i would recommend hard compressing that bass. get a spectrum analyser and there should be a big chunk of it around 40 to 100 hz. most of it peaking around 50 to 70. you might want to bass boost part of that region if its not there or its presence is weak then compress the lot with a threshold thats set around the lowest dB level of this bass region (again consult spectrum analyser).

im in the process of writing a psy tune too and i fattened up an albino by hard compressing it with high ratio + a bit of gain to keep it peaking, whacked a fruity filter on it and filtered out some of the highs, upped the resonance slightly for a sharper, squlechier kind of tone. then compressed it again (hard, low threshold, low ratio no gain). always kept centred.

theres also another compressor on the master channel of my drum/bass track so its going through 3 compressors. i think your bass could do with a bit more fatness. the kick needs more presence too and cuz its psy have the bass in 1/16th notes! fast rolling driving basslines are what fuels a good psy track!

Well Deriv, as per your suggestions, I compressed the bass and tweaked the kick. I also changed the bass patch because I wasn't quite happy with the old one. As for the 16th notes... they already were 16th notes...

Here is the new sample:
http://strikeclub.phpwebhosting.com...sychedelic4.mp3

did you listen to that ortax tune? i singled that one out on agni hotra because its BASSY and warm and the energy from this really keeps the track moving.

theres something about yours which is still flat. its very 2 dimensional. if you experiment with compressors you will find that you can sort of move your instruments around with them. for instance i found with compressors that i could move leads and hihats more into the front of a mix and spread the bassline out in the centre. its quite unusual. basically the kick you have is like a laser - theres no bass to it! you cant here that 60hz sine thud! come through. the bassline in the second one is better and more audible but again. it lacks that energy which is so essential in psy. i would suggest layering another bassy kick drum with the one you have, or build one from scratch.

they arent that hard to build. just use a proggy like soundforge. select synthesis. then FM. then generate a sine wave at 60 hz. it'll hummmmm quite nicely (you can make nice basslines out of this with the volume envelopes too). to make it into a psy kick drum, open the pitch envelope then draw a linear downward slope so the pitch bends down. then pitch envelope it again but curve it this time. different curves give the kick different kinds of properties. concave curves make the kick drum rounder. convex curves tend to produce kicks that have more of a squelching laser kind of quality. experiment and see what you come up with here. compressing one of those hard and bringing up the gain and threshold can turn it into a slightly duller (but louder) thudding kind of sound. i find this quite desireable.

basswise i find i have to compress it multiple times with filters and/or EQ adjustments in between to really warm it up.

this one is a single instance of albino in 1/16ths:



single oscillator set to sine wave. monophonic. centred. but its had the living shit compressed out of it. the ortax tune i mentioned is even *warmer* and the kick is more prominent (very well produced track).

if i take all the compressors off it, its slightly more audible but its reeeeaaally thin. doesnt have the warmth. hmmm. i may actually have overcompressed it a bit because it squashes the gong into...well...this mushy kind of sound. if you are gonna put a compressor on your master channel its probably best to do so in a project with only the kick and bass. then render and import both into your main project. stops the compressor from fooking your other instruments. its tuned very very low (root note is E2 - looooooow) so its encroaching on sub territory but you want your bass to be touching that anyway (around 40 to 50 hz). if compressed right you can amp it by a pretty huge amount. crank up your monitors and the air in front of you starts to vibrate. thats what you want! i would also whack a limiter on the master channel to stop stuff like the hats and the pads from setting huge peaks. also means you can bring your bass and kick up cuz you'll conserve headroom

I don't know if it was mentioned before (lazy me) but your kick and bass overlay each other when played together (philosophical, isn't it? ) This doesn't sound good.

1. Try either to avoid playing bass and kick together (simply delete the bass note when the kick plays - as you can hear in my track advertised below ;-) ) or

2. work with side-chain-compression: the bass-volume will be reduced when the kick plays. In this case you have to work carefully with eq to make sure that bass/kick-frequencies won't overlap to much. Otherwise you will get a muddy sound each time they are played together.

I prefer no 1 because it's much simpler

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hate to hijack your thread but Derivative do you have any samples or full tracks i could listen to?

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Whow, Derivative, very powerful kick/baseline. Nice work!

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