A Bass Tutorial Using Redux

Hello everyone. Here’s a 2 part bass tutorial on my blog:

http://vorpalsound.com/vs/redux-bass-part-1/

http://vorpalsound.com/vs/redux-bass-part-2/

Instead of the usual video format, this tutorial uses text & audio snapshots to walk you through the process. Redux patches & audio samples are also included to download. I have more sound design posts using Renoise, so if you like this check them out as well!

Cheers.

Wow, you really nailed that sound!

And kudos for the article too. It’s nice to quickly hear the result build up and then study it in more detail.

I love your articles, they’re really inspiring when you see and hear what can be produced from simple and sometimes mundane sounds.

Hi, cool sound. Nice trick with the grit modulation of the keytracked ringmod over a wavecycle with good harmonics. But the result is fat but a bit very straight sounding, I always keep desperately trying to have those “hard rubbing stone breaking electro static like grittle” stuff (like your ringmod trick produced) in the mid/upper end more prominent in the end result, or pronounce it even more.

You’ve written in the article you don’t know the difference between ringmod and ampmod (RM/AM). It is really very simple - if a signal goes from -1…0…1 with 0 being the dc line - then multiplying another with it will be ringmodulation, so the modulated signal will be inverted in between when the modulator is in the negative range. Amplitude modulation usually would map the negative range (-1…0) of the modulator to positive (1…0…1), and thus not invert the modulated signal. In a basic configuration it only makes a subtle difference. Unless you aim for other strange tricks that could be done with more flexible plugins in the row, but sheesh…

Another excellent post, Emre!

Thanks for laying it all out in such simple and clear to follow terms. I find I much prefer the text/sample tutorial format to video, too. Cuts straight to the point, and you don’t need to listen to some jackdaw yammer on about irrelevancies : )

Sick reese, too!

Thanks a bunch for the responses guys! Glad to hear that the text/sample format appearing to work as it isn’t something very common and I’m still trying to refine it. I’ll be doing more Redux stuff for sure, really enjoy using it. :drummer:

@OopsIFly Thanks for the explanation. I kinda got it but need to mess around a bit and see for myself!

I enjoyed this. It gave me a better insight in overall Renoise and Redux workflow and you showed of an impressive piece of sound designing. However, coming from a completely different type of DAW background, i got some questions while reading and working along your article.

  • What do you mean by duplicating the unfiltered signal, before adding another filter in Part 2? I cant figure out how except of #send first on the FX chain with the source kept. Is this the way to go?

Great stuff!

I enjoyed this. It gave me a better insight in overall Renoise and Redux workflow and you showed of an impressive piece of sound designing. However, coming from a completely different type of DAW background, i got some questions while reading and working along your article.

  • What do you mean by duplicating the unfiltered signal, before adding another filter in Part 2? I cant figure out how except of #send first on the FX chain with the source kept. Is this the way to go?

Glad it worked for you!

Yes that’s it. If you keep the source when sending to another track you will be duplicating the signal. And then when you add effects to this new copy, that’s called parallel processing (especially when used for compression, distortion etc.) Can’t load up the patch and see right now but I’ll check that part tomorrow and see if I can get it clearer.

Glad it worked for you!

Yes that’s it. If you keep the source when sending to another track you will be duplicating the signal. And then when you add effects to this new copy, that’s called parallel processing (especially when used for compression, distortion etc.) Can’t load up the patch and see right now but I’ll check that part tomorrow and see if I can get it clearer.

and this will work only if the send is before the inserts right? just to be clear i understand the signal path here. im looking forward to reading more on your blog.

and this will work only if the send is before the inserts right? just to be clear i understand the signal path here. im looking forward to reading more on your blog.

Yes. In the scenario you’ve described (adding effects after a send device), a clean signal would be sent to a new track. Alternatively you can add the effects to the send track, keep the original dry and get the same result. This way usually makes more sense to me. But the routing in Renoise can be a bit confusing really. I hope I’m not making it more so :smiley:

I’ve also updated that part of my post and added an image. Hopefully that will clear things up a bit. Thanks for letting me know.

I try to post weekly so check back often!

The parallel processing is the key to designing real “fat” sounds, somewhat. The inst.FX are the most easy way to work this out. I really hope renoise 3.1 will allow sending the inst.fx slots to dedicated tracks instead of just outputting all slots to one channel. Given in redux you can choose output channels of the plugin, this makes me eager to see how this will work out in next renoise version.

I also like to split into further ways, i.e. for a reese that’d be sub, sub harmonics with chorus, body wide, processed body mono, upper harmonics - in addition to filter pathways where filtering happens in parallel. It gives real good control over aspects of the sound, and makes some effects possible at all. But take care there’s not too much overlapping in frequencies between slots mixed together later, some effects can happen to have side-effects then shifting the sound to something strange (namely filters, eqs and such with different curves). Sometimes this comes cool, though (i.e. what I name body wide and body mono, can make a sound from allto plain stereoised into something very round by adding back a mono signal of the wide original with different charakteristics).

Also, although it needs more fx slots, I found it useful to make “spread” (where sends are chained pointing to the processing slots) and “recombine” (where sends at the end of those slots send to on mute mode) slots for parallel stuff, to get better control of the processing chains, also more control over levels/dynamics and mixing components. It can also help keeping view and track of complicated chains, though you need more slots to work with.

Good points! I kinda used to avoid splitting too much in Renoise as it always sounded weird to me but in Redux the new multiband splitter sounds fantastic. Loving it & I’ll be using it a lot more for sure.

Great tutorial.
And great form. I hate video tutorials usually (not things like “how to cut a carpet” :blush: ). They are so slow and bounding…

Cause of this tutorial i bought the Redux, first time tracker user ever. So be prepared for some noob questions. :blush:

In the second part where i drag 3 send after fx chain, then i create another 3 chains and route the send receivers to them. The sound that comes out of the other channels are without the effects. I tried to move the sends before/middle the fx chain but nothing changes. What i’m missing?

To op: great blog you got your self there. Kudos! Too bad those “blur” and other renoise plug ins aren’t available in Redux, so that i could try out some amazing

sound designing you teached in your previous blog post.

souljah, the renoise/redux routing is pretty daft…sound will just run from the left to right though a fx chain. If you put a send device in there, it will tap the stream from that point, and pass it to the beginning of the receiver chain. So to pass on effected audio, you need to place the send to the right of the effects. You can tap at any point by placing a send in there, if you choose “mute” then there will be no signal to the right of the send - it is used when you don’t want the chain output to effect the final mix. If multiple sends point to the same chain, the signal just gets mixed together, at the beginning.

Cause of this tutorial i bought the Redux, first time tracker user ever. So be prepared for some noob questions. :blush:

In the second part where i drag 3 send after fx chain, then i create another 3 chains and route the send receivers to them. The sound that comes out of the other channels are without the effects. I tried to move the sends before/middle the fx chain but nothing changes. What i’m missing?

To op: great blog you got your self there. Kudos! Too bad those “blur” and other renoise plug ins aren’t available in Redux, so that i could try out some amazing

sound designing you teached in your previous blog post.

Hey souljah, welcome aboard. Not sure if Redux will get tools at some point but I hope it does 'cause they are amazing! Until then I think you can try demo’ing Renoise and see if CDP tool works for you that way. You will probably be “converted” at some point anyway :stuck_out_tongue:

Regarding your question, OopsIFly’s post explains it nicely. And what you described sounds about right too so not sure what’s wrong in your setup. In my patch it basically works like this: You use 3 send devices, select keep source on first 2, and mute on the last one. And insert the filter devices on the new send tracks you’ve routed. Looks like this:

If you still can’t figure it out you can try checking out the last Redux patch I’ve posted in the blog post or post up yours here so that we can check out what’s wrong.

Tnx guys, today was heavy, i inspected your patch inside out. Good learning it was! I will post more questions when i’m done reading the manual, otherwise i’m gonna ask about everything :smashed:

Yeah have to demo renoise out at some point…All the best guys!

I love the sound of the bass at the end of your tutorial (2d Final). The clip just needs a beat on top to show its full potential. :wink: