Bassline tips

I've been making a lot of beats lately but i feel that they are not getting a full sound because of the lack of basslines, any tips?

P.S. im on the MPC Studio

Krook wrote:because of the lack of basslines, any tips?

Start making basslines? Sorry, captain obvious answer i know... but maybe you have to be more specific about the kind of tips you were hoping for.

should i get baslline samples and use the 16 levels or eq the original sample and remove the highs...... are they're any other alternatives?

Krook wrote:should i get baslline samples and use the 16 levels or eq the original sample and remove the highs...... are they're any other alternatives?

Alternatives all day, but that's the beauty of this stuff. The two things you mentioned are basic places to start. On the 16 levels you only can stretch one sample so far though. Filtering/EQ-ing a melody sample and leaving the low frequency content as you mentioned is the tried and true "Low End Theory" going back to the late 80's. Doing that you can also get away with lowering the filtered sample with the bass a half or full octave which sometime really thickens things up.

Then you also could use VST's and multisampled patches. With mulisampled basses you avoid the limitation of pitching one sound using the 16 levels and can have the full range of notes and expressive playing with the full range of a stringed or synth bass. Find the root key of your melody, and make bass in that key and your off.

And then there's the old but forever valid technique of just loading a sine wav and using some envelopes/filtering and modulation to get that in the mix. A lot of old school hip hop was done that way. Bomb Squad/PE were really big on a sine wav in an Akai S rack sampler. But it's great how all the old techniques still can be used even in software.

u can get bass from anywhere low pass filter a rhodes , piano, wind instrument and u'll have bass tones

alternately get a hold of this it will get u in that pete rock/kev brown, dilla ish type lane if thats the type of bass ur after


beyond that just play aroud with different patterns and progressions, muck around with note length and relase times.

and perhaps record u bass line in sections, with over dubs until u get a complete bass that sits well with the rest of ur beat

http://www.rhythmicrobot.com/page0/page ... index.html

There's really no limit to the number of ways of making a bassline.

you can filter the sample as mentioned before, and optionally crank up the resonance down low to emphasize the bass frequencies.
One unintuitive trick, to preserve the rest of the sample: You can use a highpass filter to bring out the bass, just have the cutoff set low and resonance high. So you emphasize the bass while still keeping the rest of the sample.
You can EQ.
You can play around with 16levels, as said, you can only go so far without the sample starting to sound weird with the pitchshifting.


One entertaining way for a quick bass sound, which you can then put filters or eq on: just connect a cable to the record jack and touch the tip of the other end, you'll get a ~60Hz tone because of the frequency of mains current.

i never thought of lowering the "low end theory" bass half an octave, would this still keep it in the original key?

no

damien907 wrote:i never thought of lowering the "low end theory" bass half an octave, would this still keep it in the original key?

nope.

if you're in the key of A and you go down half an octave, 4 whole steps, you'll be in the key of Eb. if you like tri-tones, you're home free.

i almost always use low end theory with low pass and band pass filter. It also depends on the sample. Some samples do not sound good low passed so then maybe single note with 16 levels.

I'm not having any problems getting bass samples or filtering ect. ect. but what I am having trouble with is making it so that my bass line doesn't turn the track into a shitty 70's softcore porn/ 90's came with the cellphone ringtone. I come up with something that I think is good, then try to add some bass and it brings everything down. Anyone got any suggestions or techniques when going into something like that or is practice the only answer?

what you are asking is a bit vague, so it would be difficult to tell you what you need to do to make things sound as you want..

sounds like you need to either get more familiar with tweaking the samples, or pick a better sample that works better with whatever you are doing

if you can, and if it works with your set up.. then invest in a program like Rob Papen's SubBoomBass, it has lots of presets that are either good as they are, or provides a good starting point for further tweaks.. play it with a keyboard or trigger it with the mpc pads

learn sum scales and make the the drums first then layer bass second

check out this beat i made today using this method, dilla style

find good bass tones

ensure there are not too many frequency's outside the bass range

cos that will muddy the mix

also leave space in the bass line sometime u dont need a bassline that takes up the whole track u might just do a few bass stabs

My bad, the samples and the chops are fine, it's the way I play them that brings the song down,

TreCipher617 wrote:learn sum scales and make the the drums first then layer bass second

check out this beat i made today using this method, dilla style

That sounds like real good advice but usually I already have exactly what I want chopped and sequenced before I even put the drums in. I've tried muting everything but the drums and adding bass, but it never sounds quiet right when I unmute.

in my opinion getting a hardware synth (or a real bass, ideally) and playing the bass lines yourself goes a long way in adding that extra 'feel' to the song. i've got an alesis micron that i use for a lot of bass lines, but even a midi controller with a good plugin can still capture the live aspect of it. although whatever your methods are, practice is the most important.