Nother new song

https://soundcloud.com/s-wrong/tid-for-tyn

I’m actually struggling somewhat with the bassline that comes in at about 1:00 on this track. It’s hard to make it prominent enough without it clashing in the lower frequencies with the kick drum. This is the second upload of the same track.

I like the track. Sort-of big-room, packs a punch!

I’m actually struggling somewhat with the bassline that comes in at about 1:00 on this track. It’s hard to make it prominent enough without it clashing in the lower frequencies with the kick drum. This is the second upload of the same track.

I hear what you mean. My instinct tells me you could layer it with the ‘fully developed’ bassline that comes in later in the track.
Make it less prominent of course, but enough that it is recognizable when (re-)introduced after the break.

I dunno, are they even playing the same notes? They should, or it would become quite messy, and that doesn’t really fit this style of music.

My instinct tells me you could layer it with the ‘fully developed’ bassline that comes in later in the track.

I’m not sure what you mean by fully developed bass line. The main bass line comes in at c. one minute, and re-enters again at about 2:28, after the break, with an acid line on top. The acid riff is high-mid and does not represent a problem, mix-wise, at least not as far as the deeper bass is concerned.

The main bass line follows the chords of the song and goes f, f, c#, f, whereas the acid line is f all the way.

The main bass line follows the chords of the song and goes f, f, c#, f, whereas the acid line is f all the way.

Yes, I meant with the acid part playing in unison. So not in F the first time around, but following the bass.

have you thought about creating/adding more harmonics to that bass in one or another manner? I listened to your tune, and the deep bass seems very deep and pure to me, almost decapitated, sometimes there seems to be hits with the top end of the distorted distorted sub, or a layer in sync with the sub, but not in the punchy and connected lower mid range. Problems might also arise when played back on equipment that won’t deliver deep bass where pure sine subs would simply disappear, though I haven’t listened to your tune through a highpass filter to be able to really tell. There are ways to add and emphasize lower mid harmonics to subbasses in controlled manner that don’t change the percieved timbre too much, but at the same time make it kick out more in the middle (or sides…) while your pure (as I guess) sub seems to be sitting beneath and below the whole mix. placing the harmonics in an other frequency range or stereo field as the elements clashing with it will obviously also help, and also hint the listener to localize the real sub in a more prominent place. This, and ducking relevant elements with the bass hits to give them more punch.

Other than that the tune is not wrong, but rather dope. Even with decapitated subbass, it feels like there’s an ubercool totally headless sandworm driving through the guts of the track, I somehow just liked it a lot.

Thanks. The bass line actually consists of three layers: 1 an (almost) pure sine wave, which is a Zebra2 preset called HS Hoom. 2. In a different track I’ve put a synth with everything but the midrange eq’d away, playing the same notes as the bass line. Turning this up a bit has already helped as I’m typing this. 3. A send track with a bith of flanger, distortion, etc. I’ve eq’d and filtered all the low freqs out of this send track. The source is the bass line in 1.

I tried a few things, like adding more midrange to the synth patch itself and I ended up making it worse. I might return to it with fresh ears, but I’m inclined to let it stay the way it is. Not the cleanest mix in the world, but not too bad for a song that I essentially made in one day.

I see, and the problem in the original mix is the higher bass notes have that added definition strongly present, while with the real low ones it faints out in relation to them. Maybe it has to do with harmonics of the sounds or generated by distortions becoming weaker with raising frequency from the fundamental on, but the eq windows being stationary formants always giving the same frequencies, thus the lower the note the weaker the harmonics come through, but the higher notes get the full boost. I’m also currently in research of ways for taming boosted subbasses, they are the real posh bitches. Other people just throw craves waxxxbass on it, and then again two times, and then stfu.

I should add that there’s a signal follower on the kick which ducks the sub bass whenever a kick plays. I’m not sure that helps at all, actually.

Maybe I should just filter out the lowest freqs from the bass line and leave it in the low-mid-range. Then the kicks will take care of the deepest bass. I dunno. My speakers suck, too.

Dig it!

Thanks, TheBellows. I went ahead and bought Maxxbass (and a couple of other Waves plugins that were on sale), but I ended up only making minor changes to the tune and re-uploading it. I’m starting to think buying Maxxbass was a mistake.