In Bass Music Production, making sure all the elements in your song are loud and present in the mix is essential for creating a professional, industry-standard track. This goal is to achieve loudness while still maintaining the clarity of the mix so it can translate well across any sound system.
For example, if the sound system is a laptop or phone speaker it won’t be able to produce the same frequency range as a larger setup, meaning lower frequencies in your track can be lost. In order to get our sub bass to be heard across different sound systems, we will need to add higher harmonics to the sub.
In this tutorial I have used Ableton’s Operator to create a sine wave at the note C1, however, you can use any synth as long as it has a sine oscillator. Using a low note to create the sub is recommended but I have used C as this means when I resample the sub, it will mean the sample is corresponding to the samplers pitch without having to transpose the note
The fundamental frequency (The lowest frequency or harmonic) can be distorted or limited to add higher harmonics in the sound. The analyser below is showing our sub at the start of the process, there is no processing on the sound so it is still just the fundamental frequency.
By using a limiter or saturator on the sub and boosting the gain we will then start to add harmonics through distortion. The amount of distortion used depends on the sound you are aiming for, in this example I’m trying to create a heavy and full sub so I have used a limiter and boosted the gain by 20dB.
The processing has added extra harmonics to the sound, however we don’t want to leave all of them in. Harmonics around the 200-600 HZ range can start to clash with other elements in the track. Using an EQ to Lowpass and cut out some of the higher harmonics allows us to shape the tone of the sub.
The amount of harmonics you leave in the sub depends on the context of the track you are making, however keeping in the second harmonic is essential as it adds the presence required to hear it off smaller sound systems.
Once you are happy with the sound of your sub, resample the sub and put it into a sampler. The logic behind this step is that once the audio is bounced down, we know that the EQ will not change depending on what note is playing as it is fixed when we resampled the sound. This means that the sub will stay consistent in sound and tonality across all notes.
However this sub has no movement which may not be appropriate for some ideas. Going back to the source of the sound and using various techniques can change the output and make the end result more unique and interesting.
Putting a chorus before the limiter can add movement through frequency modulation. As the amplitude of the sound is modulated it also changes the number of harmonics being added through the limiting which can create different tones. This creates a similar effect to a sub-bass typically used in Jungle Drum & Bass, however this was achieved by playing two notes next to each other to create the modulated sound.