5 Ways to Produce BETTER Basslines! (I use these in every track!)

hey everybody my name is dowden and in this video we're going to be looking at five ways that we can elevate your bass lines this will help your bass line sound a little bit more professional a little bit more exciting and a little bit more interesting this video focuses more on staccato bass lines but you can use the techniques in the video for more sustained bass lines as well before we dive into it i just want to say a special shout out to my patrons you helped me hit my first goal which allowed me to slightly upgrade the lighting in the studio which is going to allow me to bring higher quality videos to my channel so thank you so much for that if you're new to the channel make sure to subscribe and let's dive into it okay so we're gonna dive in and i have here this project with four different loops i have this minimal loop techie prog house and check now and i put four different loops in to give a different sense of the uh the way that these baseline tricks will work in each of the different genres because uh you know everybody writes differently and i just wanted to give a showcase of a few different sounds so i have this sub here it's a stock wave table [Music] and i could use this just as the sub as is it's clean it's a sine wave but i want something with a bit more character i want something with a bit more harmonic content and it'll be easier and more interesting for the video so i'm going to change this into a sawtooth wave and gonna turn it into a pluck and change this to 24 filter slope and i'm going to bring the sustain down the release down as well what's important about these bass lines is that if we have too much release on the baseline it'll sound a little bit less choppy when we're doing a staccato baseline like this but if you're not careful the baselines can kind of bleed into each other and bleed into the kick the release is too long like this [Music] they fill up that low end but they're repeating over themselves and that can cause issues in your mix so just be careful uh you definitely still can do that just make sure that you're choosing your release times carefully and your side chain compressing when necessary so we have that pluck we're going to bring the frequency down on the filter and then we're going to change envelope 2. and with envelope 2 i'm going to bring the sustain down all the way just like we did with the the uh with the amplitude envelope bring the release down and okay i'll i'll leave at 600 for now and this is the important part we're going to go into the matrix and turn up the amount of envelope 2 so this envelope we just adjusted we're going to turn that up on the filter frequency one but you'll see here it says envelope decay you don't have the filter you just click anywhere that you want to adjust so if i click on resonance here it'll change it to resonance if i change frequency it'll change it to filter one frequency and then i just turn up the amount so we're just introducing the envelope to uh we're controlling the filter frequency here with envelope 2 by increasing the amount on the matrix here and i'm going to grab an eq and we're just going to throw it on there just to see what it looks like so we have this nice low end here and we have all these harmonics but we still don't have that really low sub so i'm going to turn on the sub in here and there we go now we have this low sub frequency here it's down an octave i'm going to crank up the volume of this now that we've made our base patch let's dive into the techniques the first few tips are going to be a little bit easier and more beginner style where the later tips are going to be a little bit more complex a little bit more intricate so depends where you are on your production skill level but hopefully they all will appeal to you in some way so the first technique is using octaves appropriately there's a couple different things that we're going to talk about here i'm going to try and keep it quick but essentially using octaves in your bass line can just spice things up really easily so we have right here we have our loop it's really basic but what if we took this note here and change the octave of it especially with a sawtooth base with a lot of harmonic content you're going to hear quite a difference in the sound so now it's a little bit groovier we've we've added a bit of not necessarily intensity but we've added a bit of variation in interest to the sound try it on the higher octave very very simple and it adds value and the next thing that we could actually do is try it on one more here so we'll bring this one let's duplicate that and bring it down an octave there we go it's super super simple but it's elevated that just a little bit the second part of the octaves that i'm going to talk about is actually going to bring us into our second technique so number two is going to be layering the bass lines and again there's a couple ways that we can do this and a couple ways that we're gonna go about this we have our pattern here and the first thing that we could do is add a second oscillator as a second layer so we can go ahead and turn that on and let's add maybe a square wave we'll turn down the volume a little bit and let's hear how it sounds super super basic but then we can actually go up an octave so the baseline sounds a little bit more rich a little bit more uh interesting but i'm just going to take that off and i'm going to actually duplicate this entire sound and now we have a bit more control over it and we can change the octave in the piano roll so let's go up an octave and then with our second layer that's when we can control the higher and lower octaves as well cool so i'm going to get rid of that that second layer because i find it a little bit too uh high-end for me for what i'm trying to achieve in these type of tracks but the lesson is there the ideas are there so we have the layering of the octaves we have the layering of the actual sounds and we have layering of the oscillators just grabbing different oscillators and throwing them in there and just adding a little bit more depth to that baseline pretty simple stuff but often overlooked so our third technique is going to be adding delay and dare i say it a little bit of reverb onto our baseline i know i know no reverb on bass lines a lot of people pretty much everybody when you're learning or even more advanced producers will tell you never ever put reverb on your baseline but there is a couple reasons or ways and techniques that you can do this honestly you have to be very careful with this but i will show you how you can add just a little little spring spring on top of your bass lines and it can add a lot of depth and value especially for more melodic genres so i'm going to duplicate the channel i'm going to add all the effects to that second channel so that we make sure that we have a totally dry signal and then a wet signal on top of that and this just ensures that you have that dry signal coming through the most that it can without being affected by those wet uh signals sort of like a ascend and return situation so i'm going to go in here i'm going to group this by pressing command or control g and it's going to put it into an instrument rack i open up my chains wave table here i'm going to rename this to dry and i'm going to duplicate that and rename this one to moist now i'm going to rename it to wet and then i'm going to grab a delay oh grab the wrong one delay and reverb a rover and what i'm going to do is i'm going to also duplicate an eq onto that second channel there so that'll come in handy a little bit later but i'm going to with the wet signal i'm going to add a delay first and then the reverb let's turn the reverb off and with the delay this is very important i don't want to add delay to the low end i really don't it's going to really muddy things up really quickly i can show you what it sounds like it's going to sound pretty awful it's just it's destroying the mix it's clipping it's just adding way too much weight but i want only the wet signal to come through i don't want the uh the bass to be duplicated here and having both signals coming through with the dry i want just the wet so i'm going to turn the delay all the way up to 100 wet and now all that's coming through is the delayed signal but we're still going to have that low end so i'm going to actually filter out by reducing this here and any you can see that it's going up right around here is a little higher and you can see here i'm still getting a little bit of low end that's pretty cool almost trancey old school but i don't want that low end in this signal i want to take that out so that's pretty cool now we're going to add the reverb so reverb is added and i'm going to put this low cut i don't want the low end bring that up quite a bit and the thing and the reason you don't want to use reverb on your bass sounds is because it can make it into and it probably will make it into a stereo signal and when you condense a stereo signal into mono it can cause phase cancellation especially in the low end so what i'm going to do is remove any side information with the mid-side eq inside of ableton so i'm going to have the reverb i'm going to put it just a touch of reverb very very slight you have to be very careful with this i i will reiterate and i'm going to go in from stereo here to mid side and this is only affecting the wet signal because i have it in the wet channel and when i go to this now i have the mid here it's blue and the side is this orangish yellow that ableton likes to confuse me with the color palette of and i'm going to make sure that i remove the side information by dragging this filter i'm going to multiply it by 4 and bringing that sucker right up i don't really want any stereo information here maybe a tiny tiny bit in the high end the mid has most if not all the side i can't even really see any side information here if i back this off a bit you'll see that something's getting through i really have to boost that which is a good thing because i don't want that stereo information inside my channel because i it's a base so i'm going to just grab this and get just getting rid of all of it just to really make sure and if i put a utility on here and change it to mono we should not hear any difference even when i'm pushing that width to 400 which multiplies increases the actual stereo image it makes it sound much much louder or it amplifies the stereo image so we would be hearing if there was a stereo image we'd be hearing it much louder and there's no change which means we have no stereo signal coming through this channel even with the delay and reverb on it and therefore we're not going to down mix to mono and have phase cancellation which is the really the main reason why you don't put reverb on base aside from muddiness which is another thing that you have to be careful of when adding reverb to your base but when you do add reverb to your base it can help the the sound sound a little bit fuller a little bit more blended and less choppy and it's really good for uh you know like respaces and bass lines that are melodic and have a lot of weight to them and sometimes you can't even add a little touch of stereo image stereo width to it if you're very careful the last thing i'm going to show you is actually another more advanced technique where i'm going to take the wet signal and drop it into its own track here and i'm going to duplicate the sub pattern and on this channel i'm actually going to sidechain compress from the original so i'm going to grab a compressor throw that on the end of the channel side chain from and i'm going to do the base and i'm just going to really really compress that so now when the original base hits it's going to turn down the volume or compress the volume using the sidechain compression so now we have that base really really punching through and we're not having really any frequencies from the secondary bass interfering with it that's just going to allow us to create a bit more room in the mix for the sub to come through without being affected by the delay or the reverb of the wet channel [Music] number four is going to be using lfos or low frequency oscillators essentially lfos are just really slow moving oscillators that allow you to control parameters with them and if you add just a little touch of an lfo to certain parameters on your baselines you can make them a bit more interesting a little bit more humanized and a little bit more a little ear candy little little snick snack for the uh for the eardrums so i'm going to uh open up the patch again grab i'm just going to grab the dry channel and i'm going to go back into the matrix here and different since we'll have this in various ways but essentially just look for the lfo and you're going to put the lfo to control a parameter inside whatever vst or hardware you have okay so i'm going to turn the rate down a little bit so it's a little bit slower and then i'm going to turn this re-trigger off so the read trigger is every time the note hits it's going to essentially restart that lfo uh and it's if with it on we're not going to hear it as much because the sound is so quick so i'm going to um turn the retrigger off and lfo1 the amount is fine for now let's go into the matrix and i'm going to turn up the lfo one and we'll put it on the pitch so you can really hear what's going on it's going to go all the way up and it's going to go up 48 semitones [Music] i can speed it up a little bit and then it's gonna go back down so you obviously hear what's happening it's following the path of this lfo so if i were to slow that down uh two up there maybe and put that on something that's not so disastrous like the pitch put that on the filter one frequency just a little bit [Music] and you can actually watch here this little orange yellow whatever color that is bar that's what the lfo is doing but on uh you know up and down but it's showing you the matrix left and right but you can hear how it's you know it's springing up and down that cutoff and we can go a little bit less and if you want to get really crazy maybe do a second lfo where uh you know the second lfo is controlling lfo one's speed or rate oops and we'll turn that retrigger off as well and we'll turn this down it's very subtle but it's adding just a little bit of extra flavor to that baseline it's making it a little bit more intricate to the listener because it's just slightly changing and if you wanted to add you know multiple lfos there's actually an lfo tool that you can get with max for live and you can drag and drop that in and map it as well so really quickly click on that map and let's map that to the resonance and you can see it's actually changing in real time which is super cool and then turn down the depth turn down the rate a little bit and let's turn this 100 down there we go and let's turn the depth down a little bit and the rate down a little bit cool so we have three things that are actually adjusting this bass sound and that's going to make your bass sound more interesting and more uh unique as it's playing through the track you'll get a little bit less repetitive because it's going to be a little bit random now let's try it with the different loops here i'll put our wet back on you want to make it like really acidy sounding you can really crank that resonance up right and it's just adding that extra value to the sound it's making it more interesting the last technique that i have for you number five is using other sounds as bass sounds or layering them using the tip number two as a layer to your bass sound and you can do this with tons of different things you can do this with obviously other synths uh or you can do this with percussive elements like your toms uh you can do this with you know bongos and congas and different uh instruments that have a decent amount of low end to bring the base frequencies or you can use just some high end to kind of complement the top end of the base and kind of help it shine through the mix so let's go ahead and try an example so i'm gonna grab uh let's grab a tom here let's grab a tom here and you most of the time you want to be grabbing a tom that has a pretty strong uh tone to it that's very um a very a very clean sounding tom if you have a distorted sounding tom or a distorted sounding low end of that sound it can be a little bit off key or out of tune and it can be hard to manage so this is a little distorted a little distorted in the high end that one's pretty clean but i'm looking for something a bit cleaner perfect these are both pretty good i'm gonna grab this one and i'm going to just duplicate this midi information and i'm going to grab drum rack drag and drop that on and then i'm going to grab that tom again it was 91 and drag it in there we're looking at grab all this rename this to tom change this to boop boop oh my goodness there we go color coordinate that and now we have this layer [Music] it doesn't sound great but what we can do is first i'll turn off the wet so we're not dealing with the delay i'm going to find the key of this i'm going to get rid of that lfo because i don't need that i'm going to get rid of the utility because i don't need that and i'll keep the eq i'm going to use the tuner first sometimes the tuner doesn't work drag and drop that on you see it's kind of all over the place between e and f so i'm going to just solo it and look at the eq and it looks to me like it's at e because i see that it's peaking really strong there but my track is in c so i'm going to actually go into the controls here i'm going to bring this transposition down through e so i'm going to bring this down d sharp d c sharp c and sometimes when you down pitch them like this they aren't exactly 100 accurate you have to go in and change it a little bit more you can see that it's kind of hitting around here i'm going to bring it down a little bit more maybe up a little more [Music] looks pretty good to me so i've brought it down five semitones and then went up almost another half semitone back up and let's listen to that uh let's go down a full octave as well we'll just go grab that and go down another hole 12 semitones now we have this really interesting sounding bass [Music] this really high ringing up here that i'm going to get rid of that's a pretty powerful sounding bass let's hear it with the different uh sounds here different loops down quite a bit so much energy behind it very aggressive sounding and even though it's such a clean sounding bass it has so much punch and power to it so i'm going to go back up this octave i'm gonna go up even uh i can even go one more octave here how it sounds right and then you can actually just add that to your bass line maybe we just want to use the very very top end of this sound it doesn't even have to be uh you know very very much to add to the base just maybe just want this top this just listen this by itself right we can add that as well [Music] and maybe we don't want that high end so much of this base we want it to be more of a sine wave with this top end right it's adding that extra layer of uh you know the layer on top of that that's going to change it from just being a simple baseline to something that's a bit more interesting this can be super subtle as well right just something to help punch to the baseline punch the bass help just something to help the bass line punch through let's go back so let's use everything we've learned to listen to this final base loop uh we'll bring this down an octave we have two layers here with the delay the lfos are working we have the octaves the layers the lfo the delay and now we have this other percussive element that is being used as sort of a layer to that baseline and let's grab all these together and i'm going to uh you know just base i'm going to compress them a little bit together and let's listen to all the different loops now [Music] and there you go those are five techniques that you can use to elevate your baselines i really hope you learned something and i hope you enjoyed the video if you did make sure to give me a thumbs up by clicking that like button and subscribe to the channel for more content like this one also check the description for some free checklists sample pack and some other goodies as well oh and if you're wondering why i have this a little cut on my forehead walked into a pool the other day subscribe

Channel: Dowden Production Academy

Views: 4,951

Keywords: Fl studio, Ableton, Live, 10, Tutorial, Tips, Two, Minute, Tutorials, Producer, Production, Music, Produce, Compression, Techniques, EQ, Equalizer, DAW, DJ, House Music, Progressive House, Deep House, Learn, Dowden, Academy, Reverb, Plugin, VST, Bit Rate, Delay, Effect, saturation, compressor, eqaulizer, eq, equalization, drums, snare, clap, hat, hats, hihat, dance, groove

Id: o77LtrULzWY

Length: 24min 59sec (1499 seconds)

Published: Mon May 10 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/Randy-DaFam-Marsh]

Pro tip #420 sosig

[u/wavvepilot]

Love the Tom tip!

[u/thugnificent856]

Next you’re gonna tell me to put reverb on my snare