16 levels basslines - pete rock, dilla, kev brown

yo, so for my bass i pretty much just do 16 levels bass. I got a slew of 1 note bass samples, sometimes if i find a good note off a sample, i use that too. BUt today i just got pissed off. i feel like i need to organize my sounds better or something and sometimes i just find 16 levels cumbersome when trying to find the right notes.

what do you all do? do you have 1 pgm with all your bass sounds in it (or at least the main ones)? or do you load up a new sound every beat? or do you really only use like 1 sub/sine bass? or what?

also, curious as to what you do as far as tuning. do you tune the original pad to the root of the sample? then turn on 16 levels? or do you just turn on 16 levels and just find the notes?

I was thinking of loading up a piano sound with same note so i can use that to find the notes to use in my bassline. i find it extremely difficult to find the correct main notes that go with the sample with a filtered bass note cause i can barely hear it. ya know? in the past i used a keyboard to find the ntoes, but I'm not rockin a keyboard.

any advice, ideas, or info regarding basslines, 16 levels, and that pete rock, dilla, kev brown 16 levels note on basslines would be appreciated.

peace

Most of the time I sample my bass(Squier jazz bass) straight into the MPC.I find the root note of my sample,sample that note and filter it around 10-20 and add a bit of resonance, and then put it on 16 levels. I find it is what sounds the best for Primo/Pete Rock kind of bass.
So maybe try to find samples of a real electric bass or buy a cheap one.

Sometimes I also use VST's, especially Arturia Minimoog V or Minimogue, they sound good for bass.

Sometimes I take a single bass note. In fact, it can even be any sound, I then select note off and make it loop. On the looping screen, I make my loop values really small.

So say the start point is 0, the end point would be like 500 (something around this, just try it, as I'm unsure about values off the top of my head). You should get a whining sort of noise, it could be a sine wave but I'm not sure. Now filter it and pitch the sound down until it becomes a sort of sub-bass.

Then I just play with 16 levels and find the right notes for the sample. Although you said 16 levels pissed you off... Hmm another method...

I guess you could copy the bass patch/sample to some pads and tune them individually in the program menu to each sample.

Also, if you have an S950, the test tone on that machine is **** dope as a bass patch!

find the root note before you filter if your having trouble hearing it.

basslines, one of the hardest things to write but when you've got a good one, you know it
i can never use 16 levels unless i'm working with a sine .wav but even then i prefer to just make a chromatic or scalar program. 16 levels does not show up well in grid edit so there is less visual feedback on the piano roll/comparison of the notes to notes on other tracks.

i like a good accoustic/realistic bass sound but i've been trying to get more synth basslines into my routine. i feel like you got to play a lot with envelopes or aftertouch/modwheel etc to get a "realistic" sounding synth as opposed to something that sounds like it's just being generated and played out of a speaker without any life or organics.

i often write the bassline in a higher octave than where it'll eventually sit, because it's easier to be sure that your sounds are in tune with higher pitches. tuning plugins are essential for smaples off record, especially if you're sampling at different tt playrates. you know all of this already.

sometimes i feel like basslines are where i sound the least like myself.
like in "the ballad of dylan owen" i have NO idea where that bassline came from. it just kind of lunged out of the keys at me but it doesn't sound like something i would write (i guess it does now)

Watching and listening to Kev Brown on videos as well as his commentary series it almost seems like he's so use to using the mpc in 16 levels that he knows the shape of the scale he wants to use by looking at the pads...the way a guitarist knows the shapes of scales by the frets and intervals between each note. He definitely has some basic music theory he's using but how he translates that to the Mpc and 16 levels is the part I don't know.

I find that laying a bass line differs so much from one song to the next so it hard to say exactly how I'll approach it. For me the easiest bass lines to lay are the ones where I can identify the scale being used in the melody. As an example if I know for certain the chords are built from the Major scale I'll typically go to the harmonic minor for bass line expression and thus I can get really expressive using 16 levels. However there are other times where I can identify the notes being played but the scale is unknown to me....in these situations it's definitely harder for me to come up with a really expressive bass line. I do have a secret weapon I use in such situations it's called "Chord!" for my Android device. Chord! allows me to put in the notes that I have identified and it gives me scales that match the notes(out of 70-100 different scales)...this app has been a life saver for me when the limited " music theory" I have isn't up to par. Chord also has a chord harmonizer...so if you know your song has a D minor chord it will give you all the subsequent chords built off D minor according to the interval you select.


for those with Android devices Check out Chord! here.

https://market.android.com/details?id=c ... rch_result

thanks guys, you are really helping me out.

Most of my basslines are passable, like you said nym, sometimes they just come out of no where. that happens to me, but recently i feel like i need to really improve my bassline game. I've focused on my drums a ton and its payed off. I really really am proud of my drum game. now im trying to get my bass like that. I know what to do, and have some decent stuff, but my current focus is to master that shit. if you know what i mean.

interesting app upright. im gonna check it out. thanks.

I just downloaded the kev brown commentary. im gonna check it out.

I definately feel like these guys are masters at basslines (kev,dilla rip,pete rock). and i think your right upright. its like he sees something on the 16 levels or something, or just knows it so well.

I by no means want to bite, or copy, but I think i can learn alot from them and they really really have some ill basslines. I've decided to cram my iphone with my favorite bassline tracks of theirs and just listen for a good solid week or two.

I did that once with dilla tracks. I put like 200 tracks on my ipod and just listened to them for 1 month straight to the point i was getting sick of dilla (wow right!). I actually don't make alot of dilla style tracks, i like to make more darker alchemist-esk tracks, but i think it definately improved my drum game (consciously and subconsciously).

peace

here is a good site ive found. alot of things I've already figured out (most of you guys prob have too). but i think its atleast a good refresher or inspiration. I especially like the part about patterns.

http://www.studybass.com/study-guide/


On a similar note, do any of you guys have commentary/links to discussion about "groove"? like grooving with the bass? etc.? or hitting the pocket, or call and response basslines, etc.?

peace!

Borat wrote:Most of the time I sample my bass(Squier jazz bass) straight into the MPC.I find the root note of my sample,sample that note and filter it around 10-20 and add a bit of resonance, and then put it on 16 levels. I find it is what sounds the best for Primo/Pete Rock kind of bass.
So maybe try to find samples of a real electric bass or buy a cheap one.

Sometimes I also use VST's, especially Arturia Minimoog V or Minimogue, they sound good for bass.

curious, is it usually just one note you sample? or do you try to play out the bassline on the real bass, then sample all the notes?

Ive got some pretty good bass samples, real ones, but sometimes when they are pitched up or down, the expressive ness gets lost. but maybe its just me sucking...lolz

Yes, most of the time I will only sample one note. But you're right, when it's too pitched up, the sound becomes strange. So, in that case I will sample other notes.

Another thing that is important on a real bass, and that you can't really do with 16 levels is ghost notes. It adds a lot of groove, so maybe try to find a sample of a ghost note on bass.

thought this blog had some good posts on groove:

http://groovesecrets.wordpress.com/page/2/

Bass is all about feel. If you're not feelin' 16 Levels then try something else.

Most of the time I sequence out a bass on one of my synths with the MPC or keys Then sample the loop.

Sometimes I'll sample a loop from my Bass guitar.

One hit notes don't do it as much for me... It always seems like there is some level of expression missing. If I use them I'll usually lay them out in a program with auto-chromatic tuning.

It's tough to get decent portamento or a bend or a wiggle or whatever it is that hook needs; And since bass is so fundamental and stripped down (ie:1 monophonic note at a time) it's those subtle modes of expression that make such a huge difference.

I've got a few different good basslines that I've sampled and i just find whichever one fits the beat that im currently working on and then 12 level it and just keep turning the pitch until it sounds right. then i use the filters the 500

it usually doesnt take me over a couple of minutes to find the right pitch for the bassline. just use your ears i guess

hmm alot of people dont use the 16 levels method but i fuggin love it.

i have a bunch of random bass notes saved into a folder on a cf card and when im lookin for a bass sound to use i jus go through them to see which one sounds best for the track. of course its not gonna be in the right key but im jus lookin for a particular sound

the tricky part is filtering cuz i dont always want it to be a sub-bass type sounds so i want it to be over 20 but when i sample bass from records its usually really low on the record so i normalize it which it turn brings out all the surface noise but bringin the filter down to about 50 usually kills that while still keepin the natural tone of the bass sample

from there 16 levels and bang the pads til i hear somethin that makes sense

i actually find it more rewarding to play basslines by 16 levels because its more difficult to get exactly the way you want it

just keep in mind that it is still just pitch and tone. if you use the same theories that you use to play basslines on a keyboard or an actual bass, most of the time it works out just the same

its still music