Psy Basslines with u-he Zebra 2

[onkelbibber]

Hey folks,

 

i purchased zebra 2 almost a year ago and I'm very pleased so far. My results are getting better and better.

 

So: I'm very interested in the experience of other psytrance producers with this synth (especially for basslines) and also would love to hear! their results.

 

anyone?

greets

 

 

[recursion loop]

How do you process the Zebra basses?

 

Tbh, I have this synth but I stopped using it a while back, it is really flexible but there is something about its sound what I just don't like. I'm keeping my copy just for the case Zebra 3 will have better sound.

 

My basslines are Sylenth and Spire.

 

Well, if you asking for Zebra use examples, the acid line starting from 1:53, the squelches at 2:21 and the glide lead starting from 6:41 are Zebra

 

[onkelbibber]

I use one osc with a saw wave. I'm still trying to find the best one and sometimes also a different phase did the trick. Of course no further fx in the osc itself, no width and so on.

 

the osc is set to retrigger and env1 i assigned (standard) [-> attack 0, delay varies/not too short/filter does this part, sustain 0, release 8-10 (140bpm)]

 

then just one vcf1 with env2 assigned [-> attack 0, delay around 26-27, sustain 0, release 8-10 (140bpm)]

 

vcf1 filter type varies, no resonance, no drive or whatever.

 

got to find the sweet spot with these parameters: vcf1 cutoff, the amount of env2 effecting the cutoff and env2 delay.

 

Even having this well set it just doesn't sound that good. further processing is necessary. often just adding a multiband dynamics in ableton without any compression going on giv es the bass a big boost in richness und clarity....
add a lowcut, multiband distortion and compression, eqing and so on is a long process to get it right...do copies, try another fx chain, compare the copies...

 

result

[Padmapani]

zebra is a great synth imho, but psy bass isn't one of its strengths. most of the bass patches i made with zebra sound somehow dirty or "flabby" to my ears...

typically i'll do bass sounds with ace, but bazille is also quite nice (though i've only used the beta in one of my tracks up to now). that said, i used zebra for bass in my last two tracks. once i used the LP TN6SVF (this one and the LP MSxxx filters sound way better than the older ones you can choose in VCF) and the other time i used the (new 2.5) XMF. the filter of XMF sounds cleaner and more "modern" than the others. besides, the analogue overload you get with the xmf adds lots of fatness to the sound — i also use it for other bass sounds in zebrify.

 

 

____

 

your result sounds really nice. very warm and fat bass here.

[onkelbibber]

nice acid line recursion loop

well I'm still not totally satisfied with my basslines. they could be more present in the whole mix and i'm missing the definition in the low end.
Hard to get that right without having too much staccato in the bassline. you know like loosing that nice rolling that keeps it all together; like every bass note is too much for it's own.

 

I will try the other filter types and the xmf on my next bassline, thanks

staccato

[recursion loop]

well I'm still not totally satisfied with my basslines. 

Nobody ever is

 

I usually prorgram a steady 16th pattern (each note ends right where the nex one begins) and then the envelopes come into play. The psy bass is very sensitive to envelopes, +/-1% percent of decay or filer envelope amount can make a world of difference. Basically you need a synth with steady fast envelopes, dead-accurate retrigger and  fat, meaty sound, I always felt that Zebra is a bit too thin and inconsistent for this. So far I was getting the best results with Sylenth.

 

Padmapani, I guess you make different kind of bass, not the typical "machinegun" style? You seem to be a fan of U-He synths. I love Diva and Bazille, though I still haven't bought the latter. I really like the sound but I can't figure out how it should be programmed and I usually don't rely much on presets. The others never clicked with me. Hive was the biggest disappointment - they tryed to copy Sylenth but Sylenth sounds much better to me.  

[recursion loop]

Trying to find my way around Spire

 

Is that acceptable for bass?

 

https://soundcloud.com/recursion-loop/andromeda-nebula

 

Edit. ended up replacing Spire with Sylenth lol

Edited November 30, 2016 by recursion loop

[onkelbibber]

 

 

Is that acceptable for bass?

 

https://soundcloud.com/recursion-loop/andromeda-nebula

 

 

i like it. maybe a little bit more mides to get it more presence but fits good to the track.

[Imba]

I cant say for Zebra but I found Sylenth1 the easiest and i used it in my last 10 or so... I think you should try it... here is something from my experience and how i do basses As for U-He i heard Diva is superb, you should try that one too!

 

 

Making good envelope and both phases (saw + sine for sub), detuning and adding stereo if needed (remember to put bellow 100 hz in mono!!) then i start with after processing in the mixer:

- Fabfilter Saturn to add saturation, make attack/click up... sometimes i add up to 10dB of high freqs depends of sound i want to achive... someone use Quadrafuzz like Talpa but both are great... or you can just use high boost/high shelfing but with Saturn i feel like i can do it more precisely

- Oxford Dynamics compresor - Using expander and compressor to cut the peaks...

- Fabfilter Pro-Q - cuting low end with 12-24 dB at 30-35Hz... again depends of the sound and how it fits with rest of the track

- LFO tool - sidechaining every 1/16th of the bass so there are no notes overlaping... few ms break between notes which you cant really clearly hear, but bass will be much more rolling that way
 

NOTE: after and fine processing i do once track is done, channels and group well balanced... 

This is based on my taste and some advices from very skilled and respected artists. Its up to you

 

But to have good bass you have to have good kick, that fits with bass or opposite. Remember: less is more! Cutting sometimes is better than boosting

 

 

As i do Goa trance i love to soften/put down mids so i can have melodies dominant in mid range without interupting too much with bassline, same way i put down high on melodies and i put up highs on bass so its still cutting trough and sound rolling.

 

 

Many people want to make super good bass from begging of track and want them to sound so phat and rolling with just kick-bass loop. First of all make a 'solid' bass, make track, mix properly and then at last going trough mix 'fix' the bass and thats what you should aim to. To sound top with everything else, not just soloed

 

 

To have idea how those Sylenth1 basses sound like, check samples in here - all made with Sylenth1:

https://www.suntriprecords.com/release/cat/SUNCD44/

[Padmapani]

Padmapani, I guess you make different kind of bass, not the typical "machinegun" style? You seem to be a fan of U-He synths. I love Diva and Bazille, though I still haven't bought the latter. I really like the sound but I can't figure out how it should be programmed and I usually don't rely much on presets. The others never clicked with me. Hive was the biggest disappointment - they tryed to copy Sylenth but Sylenth sounds much better to me.  

it's not too different. i usually make a slightly goa-influenced machinegun bass with some uhbik-f on top (to widen/fatten the bass and soften it a little).

yeah, u-he makes great sounding stuff almost all of the time. i haven't bought bazille either (i wouldn't use or want to learn all the fm/... stuff either), but i've found beatzille on the net. that's a slimmed down version that lacks some of the more exotic functions but sounds equally good with some simple settings and has no copy protection

hive didn't catch my attention either. i've played around with the public beta but haven't really found any use for it (just like sylenth). pretty much all of the things i can do in hive, i can do better and more easily in zebra. on the other hand psy basses turned out better, though i still prefer the results i can get with ace or bazille.

[recursion loop]

Still returning to Sylenth in 100% cases. There is something about its envelopes and filter saturation that just sounds right for the machinegun basses. In my latest track (the one I've posted here) I only did some equalisation and a bit of transient shaping after the synth output. Before that there were several painful and unsuccessful attempts to make Spire fit.  I prefer Spire to Sylenth for most other sounds, but it has a bit weird envelopes which makes it good for plucks and stabs but not so good for psybass, especially if you have constantly changing notes..

[jivamukti]

Tbh, I have this synth but I stopped using it a while back, it is really flexible but there is something about its sound what I just don't like.

I think Zebra is quite overrated. With resonance some of the modes in the old filter module have an unpleasant, quite digital roughness to them. I also don't like how the XMF filters already start to self-oscillate around 12 o'clock. The FM also sounds meh for goa/psy, especially compared to Virus or Nord and for all the synth's modularity and flexibility you are limited a small number of waves with FM.

 

zebra is a great synth imho, but psy bass isn't one of its strengths. most of the bass patches i made with zebra sound somehow dirty or "flabby" to my ears...

Flabby is a very fitting description of psy bass out of Zebra. The filters and envelopes just aren't up to snuff.

 

If you insist on using an u-he synth for bass, Hive is fantastic, up there with Sylenth1 IMO. Real quick to set up and equally phat, round and snappy.

 

Still returning to Sylenth in 100% cases. There is something about its envelopes and filter saturation that just sounds right for the machinegun basses.

The envelopes (most important for the filter obviously) have just the right concavity in decay and are really fast. The filter is fat and round in the low frequencies. There's your magikal kbbb recipe.

[recursion loop]

I think Zebra is quite overrated. 

Finally somebody dared to say that   (ouch, that's not KVR lol)

 

I do think so as well.

The FM also sounds meh for goa/psy, especially compared to Virus or Nord 

For some reason this relatively simple sound is hard to get right in sofware (if understand it right what sound you mean - that ripping melatic sound made by FM between two saw waves, or square and saw, one being two octaves lower than another). Discovery does passable emulation of this sound but if I'm not mistaken, it doesn't allow assigning FM amount to velocity which makes programming sequences pretty painful. Also it can be approximated by very fast LFO/pitch modulation in Spire, but it should be programmed very carefully cause Spire is prone to bad sounding artefacts in this scenario.

 

And after all Virus FM sounds badass, these other options sound like "well, OK"

[antic604]

I'm stopping reading this thread right now, because I started to worry about how my bassline sounds without even properly starting a tune...

[recursion loop]

I'm stopping reading this thread right now, because I started to worry about how my bassline sounds without even properly starting a tune...

I used to think that I have to find a working recipe for psybass once and then I will be able to use it with some variations in all tracks.

 

How wrong I was. Basically what Imba said, the bass should work in the context of the track which is different each time.

 

Still, the bass is what currently gives me the worst PITA.

[Padmapani]

I used to think that I have to find a working recipe for psybass once and then I will be able to use it with some variations in all tracks.

it does work more or less for me. of course for for all tracks, but most of mine have a tweaked variation of the same bass patch.

of course sometimes i'll hear a bassline in some sort of track (the last time it was some proggy by sonic species) and try to copy it. then i'll have to spend days to make it work in a goa context (with the result sounding nothing like sonic species at all)

[onkelbibber]

I also do have pretty much the same start for a bassline. Some parameters change of course and the further eq/compression/saturation varies.

[recursion loop]

Guys, do you resample your basslines? No matter which synth.

[Padmapani]

no. the way i usually work, pretty much everything (the only exceptions that occur regularly are reversed sounds) stays in midi until the very end.

if the bass patch sounds good as it is then it's fine, but if it doesn't, the problem should most likely be fixed by tweaking the synth. so i've never seen any reason to resample. besides, even though i'm mostly using machine gun bass patterns i'd rather give a more organic feel to the bassline by allowing for little variations over time...

[recursion loop]

no. the way i usually work, pretty much everything (the only exceptions that occur regularly are reversed sounds) stays in midi until the very end.

Me too, actually. I freeze most other things but the bass always stays in midi cause there always may be a need to tweak envelope, or filter or something else as more synths are added to the track. I know many people (PsiloCybian e.g.) bounce a single note and put it into a sampler so I wonder if I'm missing something , but to me Sylenth's retrigger sounds accurate enough.

[Padmapani]

another apparent advantage of resampling is that you can eq just one note perfectly and then transpose that up or down to play your bass pattern, but i've never felt the need to do such a thing either. imho the time you could spend on getting your bassline sounding perfect is better used for making interesting melodies and improving the flow of the track.

[Imba]

NANO/Tristan styled bass with Sylenth1:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/8584144/Imba%20-%20Psy%2003.mp3

 

 

If someone want i can upload a preset file i made

[antic604]

I can think of at least three reasons for bouncing (anything, not just bass):

- your computer is too slow to handle all VSTs,

- you want to do some stuff with your sound that's impossible with MIDI,

- you want to prevent yourself from further tweaking something that works already (as in "art is never finished, merely abandoned"),

 

All 3 valid reasons, I'd think

 

 

 

EDIT: by the way, Bitwig Studio allows to have mixed Midi and Audio clips on the same track, which I guess is the best of both worlds:

 

https://youtu.be/p0cEybK76Gk?t=4m57s

[recursion loop]

NANO/Tristan styled bass with Sylenth1:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/8584144/Imba%20-%20Psy%2003.mp3

 

 

If someone want i can upload a preset file i made

This sounds very good, not only the bass, but the other things too. What synths did you use here?

 

Yes, share the bass plz

 

@Antic. I't a common techique to make the machine gun bass even more machine gun - you bounce a single 16-th note with all the processing and put it into a sampler, then write the bass patterns in the sampler track. As Padmapani said, it also makes sence if you do precise equing of your bass (actually this is pretty applicable to me, I do equalisation based on the root note harmonics, and note changes happen in my basslines very often, so I think I'll try resampling in my next tracks).

[antic604]

@Antic. I't a common techique to make the machine gun bass even more machine gun - you bounce a single 16-th note with all the processing and put it into a sampler, then write the bass patterns in the sampler track. As Padmapani said, it also makes sence if you do precise equing of your bass (actually this is pretty applicable to me, I do equalisation based on the root note harmonics, and note changes happen in my basslines very often, so I think I'll try resampling in my next tracks).

 

You don't need to convince me - that's how trackers traditionally work