What's your favorite bass synth, FX chain, tricks?

[crimsonwarlock]

Asking to get some new (or old) production tips on bass-synth sounds. Not looking for tutorials on how to make 'that' particular bass sound, but rather which synths (or even presets), FX-chains and other tricks people use or favor for their bass tracks. Also, genre doesn't matter, there's always something to learn from.

So is there a specific synth (or synths) you like best for bass, do you like a specific compressor on bass tracks, are you using some unusual FX, etc.

[TritoneAddiction]

Disperser
FRG-4RE compressor
kHs Distortion

These 3 tend to show up A LOT in my effect chain, both on bass and on other stuff.

While I have my go-to effects, I don't really have any go-to synths. I always try to change things up or use things I haven't used in a while.

[crimsonwarlock]

Disperser

The one effect in the shop that I don't seem to 'get'. What does this do on bass? I see it mentioned a lot for kick drums as well, but it doesn't seem that special/useful to me.

[TritoneAddiction]

Disperser

The one effect in the shop that I don't seem to 'get'. What does this do on bass? I see it mentioned a lot for kick drums as well, but it doesn't seem that special/useful to me.

Yeah some people hate it. But for me it's become one of my most essential tools. I'd say I almost rely on it as much as I do on compressors or EQs.
The trick is to use it very lightly. Otherwise it goes Boing or all lasery. But just a tad and a lot of transient heavy sound can really pop out in the mix. You can't replace what it does with a compressor or transient shaper.

Since words are kind of useless when it comes to describing sounds I rendered a part from one of my recent tracks. One example where all the Dispersers are off and one where they are on like they are in the real version. It's used on the kick, snare, bass, blip bloppy sound, hihats. But it's on the kick you'll really hear it the most in this track. Without it it all sounds flat, no bounce. On the blipp bloppy sound, you can hear more of a D (thud) sounding transient, rather than a K (sharp) sounding transient. I know the effect can be hard to hear for some people. Over the years I've really learned to hear it.
Sometimes you "feel" the effect more than you hear it.





Here's another example from an old song, where the effect should be even more prominent. Here's it's kind of lasery and boingy. Listen to the bass and drums.

[crimsonwarlock]

Since words are kind of useless when it comes to describing sounds I rendered a part from one of my recent tracks.

Thanks for posting the examples. I hear the effect best in the second track. It comes across to me a bit like a slight chorus effect.

[joeyluck]

+1 for Disperser. There is nothing else like it.

[Billy+]

+1 for Disperser. There is nothing else like it.

It's a really fun device and just about the only device I would not recommend just twisting the controls to maximum (use with caution) a little goes a looooooooong way.

[crimsonwarlock]

I might even go for the evaluation period to see what Disperser does, might risk wanting it after that

But don't tell me this is all you guys are using on synth bass.

[Billy+]

At the moment I still can't leave Monotone alone,

bit of drive on the filter with some chorus and retrig enabled
On occasion some saturation using the free softube RE
Then sonic bits Pump RE to trim the odd front and back......

[Mataya]

Viking for Bass for me.
For some reason I also often fire up this little guy. So great for synth basses with "character".
https://www.reasonstudios.com/shop/rack ... ion-synth/

M

[crimsonwarlock]

At the moment I still can't leave Monotone alone,

bit of drive on the filter with some chorus and retrig enabled
On occasion some saturation using the free softube RE
Then sonic bits Pump RE to trim the odd front and back......

That's close to my current approach, but I use Polysix instead of Monotone (it's a synthwave thing ). I'm now experimenting with several saturation options that I picked up during resent sales, like Fat50 and Faturator. Both very nice and controllable.

I just stumbled upon a great bass mix trick: splitting the bass sound and sidechain (like with Pump) the upper and lower part separately. Now going to determine where to put other effects, like saturation, before the split or again separated on the parts.

[Mataya]

For fx's, if you don't try distortion on a bass synth, you're missing a lot of fun. As far as compression goes, I always tend to use "slower" compressors like La2a, or any opto compressor. Guess I want to leave transients alone in most cases and bring that sustain from notes. I don't know.

M

[crimsonwarlock]

Viking for Bass for me.
For some reason I also often fire up this little guy. So great for synth basses with "character".
https://www.reasonstudios.com/shop/rack ... ion-synth/

I'm lusting after Viking 2 (getting this soon) but I do have The Legend. Also Iridium, but haven't tried that for bass. Kraft is also great for bass, I bought that one because of the thundering bassline in their demo-track.

For fx's, if you don't try distortion on a bass synth, you're missing a lot of fun. As far as compression goes, I always tend to use "slower" compressors like La2a, or any opto compressor. Guess I want to leave transients alone in most cases and bring that sustain from notes. I don't know.

Great tips. I don't have RE2A, but there are other 'slow' comps, of course. Distortion, in many forms, is my goto for such things. I even did a three-band distortion combinator recently that works nice on bass:

viewtopic.php?f=69&t=7525742

[mimidancer]

Asking to get some new (or old) production tips on bass-synth sounds. Not looking for tutorials on how to make 'that' particular bass sound, but rather which synths (or even presets), FX-chains and other tricks people use or favor for their bass tracks. Also, genre doesn't matter, there's always something to learn from.

So is there a specific synth (or synths) you like best for bass, do you like a specific compressor on bass tracks, are you using some unusual FX, etc.

I like the model d in hardware, as for vst I use the mini V. I know same thing. But something that is even better is blending a live bass sound with the moog-ish stuff. I like to have the synth hit on accent points and move around on bass. But the most important part of playing great bass tracks is knowing when not to play. Bass should push or pull you around. not be a wall of mud. with great power comes great responsibility.

[Tiny Montgomery]

At the moment I still can't leave Monotone alone,

bit of drive on the filter with some chorus and retrig enabled
On occasion some saturation using the free softube RE
Then sonic bits Pump RE to trim the odd front and back......

That's close to my current approach, but I use Polysix instead of Monotone (it's a synthwave thing ). I'm now experimenting with several saturation options that I picked up during resent sales, like Fat50 and Faturator. Both very nice and controllable.

I just stumbled upon a great bass mix trick: splitting the bass sound and sidechain (like with Pump) the upper and lower part separately. Now going to determine where to put other effects, like saturation, before the split or again separated on the parts.

Don't overlook Scream tape saturation, I use it a lot on bass and kicks. One of the greatest things about the RRP is being able use Scream everywhere. I have RC20 and other stuff but a little touch of Scream goes a long way. I think the preset I reach for as a start is called tape 440.

[Tiny Montgomery]

Asking to get some new (or old) production tips on bass-synth sounds. Not looking for tutorials on how to make 'that' particular bass sound, but rather which synths (or even presets), FX-chains and other tricks people use or favor for their bass tracks. Also, genre doesn't matter, there's always something to learn from.

So is there a specific synth (or synths) you like best for bass, do you like a specific compressor on bass tracks, are you using some unusual FX, etc.

But something that is even better is blending a live bass sound with the moog-ish stuff. I like to have the synth hit on accent points and move around on bass.

Yes, mixing live bass with synth can yield great results. Not only thickens things up but you can use the bass guitar part to pop out on smaller speakers that can't deal with the lower frequencies.

[Billy+]

At the moment I still can't leave Monotone alone,

bit of drive on the filter with some chorus and retrig enabled
On occasion some saturation using the free softube RE
Then sonic bits Pump RE to trim the odd front and back......

That's close to my current approach, but I use Polysix instead of Monotone (it's a synthwave thing ). I'm now experimenting with several saturation options that I picked up during resent sales, like Fat50 and Faturator. Both very nice and controllable.

I just stumbled upon a great bass mix trick: splitting the bass sound and sidechain (like with Pump) the upper and lower part separately. Now going to determine where to put other effects, like saturation, before the split or again separated on the parts.

I never did buy the korg RE's but I was hoping that they would do the M1 as a RE........

[selig]

Legend is killer for the classic Moog bass type sounds. FX chain varies depending on approach. For pop it's more about a solid low end, equal to a P-Bass with flat wounds. This for me means a single oscillator (saw) and a darker sound with around a 20-30 second decay down to silence. Then to complement I use the FX I'd use on electric bass playing a similar role: Pultec low boost/color and La2A for leveling the decay a bit.
For bigger sounds it's almost always a saw with a sub square (the original 'super saw' but for different reasons). Currently loving my MiniBrute 2s in this configuration, and also almost always dialing up the Brute effect (feedback similar to how MiniMoog users used to do with the external input) - plus the filters don't thin out when adding resonance, which is a big plus for me. The Brute effect pretty much completes the picture with this patch so no need for further processing on a typical mix.
For more aggressive tones there is a wide range of approaches I draw from, always including saturation and only including dynamics if there are enough dynamics in the original to justify. For example, a simple static bass tone with no decay won't benefit much from further compression because it's already static. But you start modifying wavetables and using CV to affect distortion over time, and I almost always want to add some hard limiting or even clipping to tame the dynamics. The bonus is in bringing up all the interesting low level stuff that would otherwise be lost!

I also always add some soft/controlled saturation (and different frequencies) to most any bass tone to address keeping the bass from disappearing on smaller speakers. This is probably the one thing closest to a 'rule' I have about bass, since I love super low bass or super wide bass, or panning bass or other things we're told not to do…