How do you make big fat bass?

I know that's a very generic / subjective question... but what plugins/keygroups have you found to give you really big fat bass lines and subs when using MPC in standalone?

Have been working on a nu-skool breaks tune and struggling to get a really big bottom end. Currently using Oddysey for a mid bass (Woddy Bass pre-set) and Bassline plugin (Round Sub preset) for the sub.

I'm sure a lot is down to mixing, compression etc. but just thought this would make an interesting conversation to hear how people are doing it

e,g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNQErYXPgak

Mixing is probably the single most important thing to do properly to highlight a sound.

You've only got so much headroom, and each frequency can only have so much volume to it... sounds that are close neighbors can help emphasize a sound if used properly, but can also make a track sound muddy.

My advice... without knowing more about what you're doing... is mix your kick drum and your bass drum to -9db to start, and send pretty much everything else to -20db. Just see how it fits from there. Certainly tweak sounds up and down as you want to either enhance them or pull them more into or out of the mix, but typically whatever sound you're trying to showcase you want to mix higher up. The struggle is that low frequency content like kicks/bass need to be louder because otherwise they lose pretense, while higher frequency content can be quieter and still have pretense in the mix. I am massively over generalizing with all this, but just trying to help.

Panning is critical for placing a sound in space for the listener, but can also be a good trick for creating more frequency room for a track. Are your claps and snares clashing with each other? It might be a good idea to pan one left and the other right. This can free up frequencies or help give emphasis to instruments that may struggle to hold their own.

Next up is filtering. Depending on what you're playing with for sounds, you may want a high pass filter on your kick/bass to cut out some of the low end that you might not be able to perceive or hear, as it may be stealing headroom... on the other hand this can be terrible advice as well because pulling out that low end can really change the presence of a sound... read up on it, there are plenty of articles written. You'll just need to use your ears here... but you may want to filter or eq sounds so that you can give each instrument it's own space to play in. The caution is that if you get too carried away you can whittle a sound down to nothing, as removing harmonics can make it sound hollow.

Then there is reverb, some songs/genres do not use reverb at all, but I personally find that just a tiny bit of reverb can go a long way of setting a listener's stage for where and how they should listen. Reverb can also help to make it feel more like all of the instruments are playing together in one room, at least think about it.

Taking all of the above together, volume/panning/filtering/reverb... it helps position where instruments are on a "stage", and let's the listener know if an instrument or voice is right in their face, off to the side, way in the back, etc. For what you are describing, A bass that has more volume, is panned to center, little to no filtering, and likely super light on reverb is going to potentially feel like it is right up in the listener's face compared to other elements that may be panned, softer, and have more reverb.

Anyways, hope some of that helps, and good luck!

The quickest, shortest tip I can give in terms of a big fat bass:

Start with a square wave that has a wide pulse width.
This gives you 1) a hefty sub and 2) a lot of harmonics you can start carving/EQing/effecting etc.

I always liked the trick on physical gear of taking either the L or R output, and putting it back into the input. A super quick way to thicken a signal... or cause phase cancellation issues

mmm for whatever subjective reason, i find that both odissey and bassline are not my fave mpc plugins to make bass. i tend to prefer tubesynth and hype. tubesynth for analog-like stuff and hype for more hi-tech sounds (fm and wavetable especially). i probably have to spend more time on odissey (never worked with any Arp synth before, neither real ones nor virtual emulations) but i find it a bit thin somehow... bassline well, never really clicked with it, while i always liked tubesynth's gritty character. i usually start from the mixer, raising the sub oscillator level and lowering osc 1 while silencing completely osc 2, so i can start tweaking osc 1 till i like it. then introduce osc 2 and tune it against osc 1 (fifths, simple detuning, other intervals, depends on the sound i want to create). then i mess with the filter and the various saturation stages till it sounds right.

You could try adding saturation and/or distortion as well, especially helpful when not 100% wet.

Tube Drive, Lo-Fi and Distortion (each from AIR) provide you with good and easy starting points for shaping those bass lines.

I use Bass autosampled from a Roland Mc707, they are already fat but if I want them to be even more, I use compression with fast attack and release and a quite high ratio (6-8:1).
Also saturation or a pinch of distortion can help.
I noticed that Bass Synth tends to be out of tune and I don't use it anymore.
Anyone has same impression?
Why are its basses out of tune?

When it comes to bass nothing gets you there like real analog.
1] cheap analog synth $100-300
2] cheap analog mixer with compression $60-200
Filter out all the highs, small boost to the low end
Analog Compression really helps make it punchy
3] I record bass & kick to MONO & use that motherducker.

After that, it’s a matter of mixing properly with your drums, loops,etc.
There are lot of books/articles but NTAO advice covers it well

BTW – bass synths are ideally monophonic.
Ex. Moog
Most of the “character” from the LFO & filter

DokBrown wrote:BTW – bass synths are ideally monophonic.
Ex. Moog
Most of the “character” from the LFO & filter

the envelopes are a key point as well. if you are after punchy, percussive basslines you need exponential curves for the decay and release stages of your envelopes (both filter and amplifier).
not every synth has them. if you want to add punchyness, an additional pitch envelope might come in handy to add that THUD at the beginning of the note. in that case, exponential decay its key to get the sound right (the same when you synthesize kick drums, you NEED an expo decay pitch envelope for the transient).

for those reasons i LOVED both the addition of pitch envelope and tweakable curves\slopes for the envelopes in the last firmware updates! even on pre-existing bass or kick patches, you can emphasize transients and punchyness just by adding a little bit of very short and very exponential pitch AD envelope...

Layer your instruments. If you want a fuller orchestral effect. A couple playing the same thing in unison really pumps chit up.

I find nomatter what I do it is just not the same as using a synth that has real bass to make the walls shake.. it is easier at least to just get a synth with monster bass.. moog is always a go to.. I don't have any moog but have quite a few analog's with incredible bass. My artisan trentassette had the sickest bass I have ever heard, followed closely by my microvolt.

I've actually been layering the drum synth kick plugin with sampled bass patches to great effect. This allows more subtle high end with your samples, and keeps the lows consistent and solid. Typically to save resources I'll resample them together.

Also tubesynth can sound alright if you really tweak the hell out of it. Here's my polysix fat bass patch.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1g-9YZc ... sp=sharing

You gotta feed it a lot!

I layer PWM and sin waves with a little detune and a hint of chorus.