Sub Bass notes & comments
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Cut everything below 80-100hz and dub the sub
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Record the music, drums and sub separately and cut the low end from the drums and music so nothing is interfering with the sub bass. Then sidechaining etc. use a filter with resonance to shake it up a bit
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just experiment with different methods. Sometimes a processed sine wave can be ideal. For other tracks try a decent quality 808 sample. Also stand in different positions in your room when listening back to what you’ve made. I find this a good way of getting an idea of whether the sub is sitting right in the mix.
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Use a square or square/triangle. Low pass it. Use an pitch envelope with fast attack and quick decay so it has more punch. Set synth to monophonic. Cut out anything below 35-40hz, and make a little resonant bump on the lowest fundamental. Use a bit of compression slow attack and fast release but make sure you listen for the best point to set them. Touch of saturation. Maybe boost low end a bit with a nice sounding eq. Then you can also fuck around with more pitch envelopes, legato, glide etc.
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IMO everything except the kick should be rolled off below 100hz. When you’re making your bass whatever saw/square etc you use, make sure you roll that off too about 80-100. Then that leaves loads of room for your sub to sit and just fill the fuck out of that range, side chain it or LFO tool it to your kick so it just lets that punch through.
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To make my subs it’s just a straight sine wave with a very quick pitch envelope to give it a punchy pang at the start of each hit. Mono it, give it a touch of distortion and that’s kind of it to be honest. Then just make sure you group it with your mid bass and get some compression on that group to gel the two together.
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Layer sine waves at different pitches/octaves… simple & effective.
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Getting the sub right can be difficult not least because it seems to vary a lot on different systems, and if you aren’t using headphones or a treated room, nodes can cancel out big chunks of the frequency range. I would say being conservative with levels is important as is picking a sub/bass that compliments the kick. Using tricks to make clashing frequencies sit together probably isn’t the most successful answer. I would check for nodes in your room by playing back some test tones, the quieter ones means cancellation is happening. If the room is ok then think about the sonics of the kick, the notes that are being used for the sub and if they really can match. If they can then careful use of levels and eq should be enough. Maybe working with the sub in audio will give you more fine control of levels. The other thing is if they are even placed well musically, if you have just thrown in sub because it needs it then maybe think more about the sub being an instrument in it’s own right.
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sample the sub of your favorite song and put that sample on loop on a separate track, dont worry if the start n finish sync up because sub is magic ear glue and it doesnt need to be clean. next put a compressor on that track and very loud, then eq so its below human hearing range.
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EQ and compression and the softest-curved distortion you can find. Sub-bass with presence is subtly distorted, you would think that it would be one of the easier sounds to nail since the end result has only 3 or 4 harmonics but balancing out the distortion and EQ takes a bit of practice.
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An 808 with the sharp attack low-passed is an old jungle trick and IMO still remains to be about the best source for subbass you can get.
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For a synth patch, start with a ramp or square, set the filter’s keyboard-follow to 1 and adjust the heavily resonated cutoff right on the first or second harmonic. Use envelopes to give this sound an attack
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the attack transient for subbass contributes greatly towards its presence, which is part of what makes the 808 such a potent subbass.
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Yeh like matey said above for a post-production trick to get a clearer sub-band - if you can be bothered to do it - do a steep filter cut at around 100, then trace whatever your bass is doing with an un-effected pure sine or low-passed saw, or pwm-square (or whatever fits) with a slight attack on each note-hit (fading in).
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After you do that, add heavily gated 808 kick-pops whenever there’s a strong kick drum. (Either tune the kick-pop noise away from whatever notes the baseline plays, or stitch-them-in with sidechaining or sliced fade-curves).
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Big systems prefer un-saturated clean sinewaves for sub bass. You’re just trying to move air as efficiently as possible there. The room and bass bin itself takes care of the acoustic properties of your sub, (usually in a badly un-even way). The less clutter and un-eveness down there the clearer it will translate through a bass bin.
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HiFi and headphones and other small speakers prefer more closed-saw or pwm-square types of rumbles as you’re dealing with much smaller drivers that barely have any travel in them anyway. Saturation or other accoustic treatments might give it the appearance of it being louder or make it more audible on small speakers, or just get it to gel with the original track.
IMO everything except the kick should be rolled off below 100hz. Number one important thing for bass is getting everything else out of the way.
Taken mostly from here - http://www.dogsonacid.com/threads/how-to-sub-bass.773395/
- Curate a sample library
If I am spinning my wheels on music writing, I’ll practice sound design and save the patches if they turn out fly as fuck. Typically I save them with names like FM Sub 01, FM Sub 02, etc. About once every six months I’ll dig through and get rid of anything that isn’t the best. I then take the best and rename the patches with unique names like “Deep Bass 9” (because lol) or “Malaria.FM” or “Whisper Sub” and so forth. Subs get ultra rhythmic when on a cross-fade loop and put it in my library.
- The key here is to build and maintain a well-structured sample library.
