Classic Goa Trance basses/leads/FX recreated in modern software

[Padmapani]

Just now, astralprojection said:

The 303 isn't suitable for a psy bassline, I don't think it goes deep enough. But in the 90's, acid trance had it as the bassline too, iirc same as alot of the acid techno. 

i would agree (for modern psy basslines at least), but i remember an old video by cosmosis saying that he sometimes uses abl2 for basslines. so it seems it is possible (or was possible for 00s fullon).

[recursion loop]

2 minutes ago, astralprojection said:

Saturation is probably your best bet in beefing up the 303, after you high-pass it 

Before

Satruation after hipass may add the unwanted low freq content back.

Also try more gentle hipass slope (e.g. 12 dB/oct instead of 24) and higher cut

[Multi-Media]

Cosmosis used the "Bass Station 2" which is a hardware device IIRC

I really do not know which style my tracks are really - I make what I like - guess it is not even 90% psytrance. My trial in the "commercial trance" genre which I had sent to @astralprojection is not anymore one of my fave tracks - he just identified also that it is not that cool.

This new one started could go to EBM if such vocals were added (with steady 4/4 beat which original EBM did not use too often - more "modern EBM" I mean, which is oth more often than not is not "EBM" anymore LOL This sentence is confusing

Yes, EBM used 303ish stuff too, see live performances by Front 242 very prominent there.
The main problem is that music needs to sort in to genres at last anyway, as soon one wants to "release" it..

I do not like the ABL2 as a MAIN bass synth so far...I often use the ES2 (quite old and not CPU hungry at all) for this task it seems good at Juno like basses

[astralprojection]

17 minutes ago, Multi-Media said:

. My trial in the "commercial trance" genre which I had sent to @astralprojection is not anymore one of my fave tracks - he just identified also that it is not that cool.

 

I only said that I thought it was too much sidechaining.

[astralprojection]

32 minutes ago, recursion loop said:

Before

Satruation after hipass may add the unwanted low freq content back.

Also try more gentle hipass slope (e.g. 12 dB/oct instead of 24) and higher cut

I'd still use the hp first, then whatever the saturation might bring back would be pleasant and also its up to you what you do with the saturation. But I wouldn't say one way is right another is wrong. I would also like to hp before the compressor and not after

I'm not saying you're wrong or I'm right but it's probably fine both ways depending on what you plan to do with it. 

[Multi-Media]

1 hour ago, astralprojection said:

I only said that I thought it was too much sidechaining.

Yup and you were right.. I rather stay in what I am better in = darker, noisier, industrialized sounds. 
Edit, OT

[astralprojection]

Well. Don't take it so literal and harsh, it's just one guys opinion ^^

Do whatever you like to do mate! 

[Multi-Media]

34 minutes ago, astralprojection said:

Well. Don't take it so literal and harsh, it's just one guys opinion ^^

Do whatever you like to do mate! 

I made a mix without much sidechain, do you want to take a listen? 
Edit, uploading as private to SC now, will send you the link - if you have time...
Nope I am not going to spam my music in this thread haha

[astralprojection]

Yeah, send it in a pm 

[Multi-Media]

4 hours ago, recursion loop said:

Before

Satruation after hipass may add the unwanted low freq content back.

Also try more gentle hipass slope (e.g. 12 dB/oct instead of 24) and higher cut

There may be saturation devices with which to select a certain frequency range to saturate - I have only ones that saturate everything. 
The same is true for Exciters (which I guess are some kind of saturation too?) 
Btw. I sometimes just use the "channel strip" low or high cuts as it is very fast to use.. I guess this may be a bit harsh to CUT instead of filtering? Opinions?
 

[recursion loop]

3 hours ago, astralprojection said:

I'd still use the hp first, then whatever the saturation might bring back would be pleasant and also its up to you what you do with the saturation. But I wouldn't say one way is right another is wrong. I would also like to hp before the compressor and not after

I'm not saying you're wrong or I'm right but it's probably fine both ways depending on what you plan to do with it. 

Using HP first can make sense too, sometimes you don't want to overload the saturator with the bass frequencies, especially if it's not frequency selective. But then you may want to check at the end of the signal chain if your processing doesn't add to much lows and maybe use another HP.

 

I used to have a persistent problem of lower midrange muddiness in my mixes, it turned out this was largely due to that I was using a HP first in the chain

[recursion loop]

1 hour ago, Multi-Media said:

I guess this may be a bit harsh to CUT instead of filtering? Opinions?

What do you mean? It's the same thing.

[Multi-Media]

15 minutes ago, recursion loop said:

What do you mean? It's the same thing.

Never mind, I found an answer here:

https://www.logicprohelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=26603

I always thought that a CUT in Logic is "harsher" sounding... here an answer from above thread:
"You shouldn't EQ just so there's "less chance" of things muddying the mix. EQ filters shift the signal phase and add artifacts, even to the audio band you're not directly affecting with the EQ. The steeper the slopes and bigger the cuts or gains and the worse it gets. You get a few of these stacked up in the mix and it starts to become very audible." (by "Fader8")

[astralprojection]

34 minutes ago, recursion loop said:

Using HP first can make sense to, sometimes you don't want to overload the saturator with the bass frequencies, especially if it's not frequency selective. But then you may want to check at the end of the signal chain if your processing doesn't add to much lows and maybe use another HP.

 

I used to have a persistent problem of lower midrange muddiness in my mixes, it turned out this was largely due to that I was using a HP first in the chain

Yes, those are very valid points. Perhaps an additional hp afterwards would be a great idea in those cases. 

[Padmapani]

3 hours ago, recursion loop said:

Before

before and after

phoscyon -> distortion -> eq -> saturation ( -> another eq only if necessary).
but i think i've already outed myself as liking to make things unnecessarily complicated by eqing different bass notes in pretty much all circumstances

 

3 hours ago, Multi-Media said:

Cosmosis used the "Bass Station 2" which is a hardware device IIRC

I often use the ES2

not exclusive as far as i know. and he made the switch to mostly software comparatively soon i believe.

another logic user :). for classic psy basslines you should try es1.

[astralprojection]

1 hour ago, Multi-Media said:

Never mind, I found an answer here:

https://www.logicprohelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=26603

I always thought that a CUT in Logic is "harsher" sounding... here an answer from above thread:
"You shouldn't EQ just so there's "less chance" of things muddying the mix. EQ filters shift the signal phase and add artifacts, even to the audio band you're not directly affecting with the EQ. The steeper the slopes and bigger the cuts or gains and the worse it gets. You get a few of these stacked up in the mix and it starts to become very audible." (by "Fader8")

correct, but logic has a linear phase eq aswell, which would be the recommended option for filtering basslines; since linear phase gives you much more definition in the lows, and doesnt cause a phase shift (instead it adds latency and some pre-ringing in the first few ms.).

[Multi-Media]

55 minutes ago, Padmapani said:

another logic user :). for classic psy basslines you should try es1.

Psst... don´t tell that you can make decent basses with such an old "built in cheap softsynth"....let it be our Logic secret ... I use both 1+2 in fact cause I found they do the job good enough so I do not need any "bigger" VST for it..(or expensive analogue gear YES it will be better but is it worth the cost)

Btw. I found this here which includes a "linear phase EQ" too and they say it is free and can be used in other DAWs:

https://www.reaper.fm/reaplugs/

And this, cost 29,-

https://photosounder.com/splineeq/

Btw. What is the name of the Logic build in linear EQ?

[astralprojection]

theres a great video from dan worall; where he goes toe to toe with Pro-Q vs ReaEQ. TLDR; Pro-Q wins, but only slightly. 

However I dont think you can go much better than your daws native lin phase eq. no sense in buying anything else, imo. Fabfilter is the king, if you really want the best, but its really only workflow improvements, and slightly better filters (can go up to 96db and even brickwall should you so desire) but theres no difference in sound quality.

[Padmapani]

1 hour ago, Multi-Media said:

Psst... don´t tell that you can make decent basses with such an old "built in cheap softsynth"....let it be our Logic secret ... I use both 1+2 in fact cause I found they do the job good enough so I do not need any "bigger" VST for it..(or expensive analogue gear YES it will be better but is it worth the cost)

Btw. I found this here which includes a "linear phase EQ" too and they say it is free and can be used in other DAWs:

https://www.reaper.fm/reaplugs/

And this, cost 29,-

https://photosounder.com/splineeq/

Btw. What is the name of the Logic build in linear EQ?

tbh i normally use third party plugs for my basslines.  with es-1 it's easy to get it sounding good, but not quite as good as i'd like. i want to look further into alchemy. so far i've gotten something decent but nothing to rival hive or zebra yet.

 

linear phase eq.

it's under eq right below the channel eq. you don't need any third party eqs when you have logic. channel eq is perfect for normal eq-ing, linear phase eq for linear phase obviously and the vintage eq collection has you covered when you need colour and saturation.

[Multi-Media]

@Padmapani 
Guess these ES1/ES2 basses are good enough for me, I process them of course a bit... also my system is not the newest so I am glad to have the low CPU/RAM consumption of these built-in Synths. Well I just realized that my music might be too far away from true Psytrance anyway, so I better post not here in the thread anymore   

[astralprojection]

. 

[astralprojection]

No I posted a video comparing the h3000 vs the newer software version. But then I had second thoughts cause the video itself was kinda cringy and the poster used his "singing" if you could call it that, as the sound source for comparison 

 

 

No i haven't tried that plugin you posted

 

[astralprojection]

apparently thats exactly what they did with their new h3000 plugin

https://www.eventideaudio.com/products/effects/pitch-delay-modulation-filtering/h3000-factory

but it lacks everything (imho) that made the original so good. now it sounds just like any stock plugin id say. no character, sound profile, or anything like that. it has no "mojo". in my opinion at least=) 

[astralprojection]

its not great, i think you can do better with logics native stuff =) 

but it was very interesting to hear all those drastic differences, from the same manufacturer, with the same name-  and 20 something years later. but still sounds worse than the orignial.

 

[astralprojection]

I think it just boils down to the time that music was created. Alot of people didn't have huge desks with tons of channels, so they were forced to have many of their layers in mono, and save the precious stereo channels for only a few things. 

And mono is perfect phase correlation while the sides always have some slight cancellations and differences. 

That's my guess at least, to why the older 90s stuff are so phase coherent.