From dubstepforum.com by a username corpu5:
“datsik uses massive (supposedly…i dont believe him) and excision uses z3ta/albino/massive/reaktor probably layering different synths to get a stupidly fat sound. It doesnt matter what you create in the synths, it’s all about the pitch bends, crazy lfo automations and post processing afterwards. Split your bassline into 3 parts with eq’ing/filtering a sub bass/ mid bass / high bass combo. Limit/compress your sub bass, add chrous/bass exciters/bit crush/ distort/ overdrive/ phase/ formant or vocoder your mids/ highs…compress them, and resample them and do the whole thing all over again. Add effects a little bit at a time (preferably through return sends etc) so that you dont muddy up your bass. It’s all easy to say and stuff, getting it done properly is the hard bit…the likes of datsik/excision have perfected this method through hours and hours of hard work. You just gotta practise and be patient.”
Datsik’s response:
“yeah bro u nailed it! :D”
So, How do you effectively resample and split up frequencies and add different effects on each?
Would anyone else like to see a resampling tech tip?
The best way I understand it would be through Ableton’s chains.
- Take a synth and put it into rack (select it and hit Cmd+G).
- Next, hit the chains option (second button to the left with three horizontal stripes on it).
- If you right click inside the chains window, you can create as many different instances of your synth you like, and each chain can have its own line of effects, eqs, panning left or right, volume etc. This is how you can filter the eq for different basses.
- Have one low pass filtered to highlight sub basses and perhaps mono-ed, another for mid frequences (band pass) and a high pass for your top end. This is the one to are chorus effects to.
- Once you have your bassline as you like it from here, resample the line into another audio track, then repeat the process till you get the sound you want. It’s time consuming but you can get some huge results.
Wow thanks a lot for the response dude, really appreciate it. Last thing - you say resample it. What exactly does that mean/do and how can it be accomplished?
No problem - its good to be able to help (I’m the one usually asking questions!) To resample, just channel the audio from one track into another. Under the section where you fire clips off, you will see an ‘Audio From’ drop down menu on each track. Click on this in an empty audio track, and select the track you want to record the audio from. When you record arm the track you can then record the audio coming from whichever track you want. Viola, resampled audio!
From here you can then run a load more effects etc. through to mangle your audio even more. A good example of this would be running a random glitch plugin on a synth channel or a drums channel. Although you don’t have much control over your random glitches, if you resample the randomness into an audio channel you can chop and loop the best bits into something you DO like. Again, add effects, resample, wash and repeat till you’re happy.
Of course, I’m saying all this as though I could confidently get anywhere near Datsik’s sound. I couldn’t - but then again that shouldn’t stop you. I find trying to create a certain sound you like is a great way to creating a sound you would have never thought of before (mainly because I’m so bad at sound design). And you learn a hell of a lot on the way.
Have a look for “Reese Tutorial” or “resampling basses” on the dogsonacid.com forums - they’ve got some great posts on how to do it using Kontakt.