grime b-lines

i wish there were more heavy basslines in grime. there seemed to be more in 2002/2003. but there isnt much bass-action apart from stabs in most hip-hop and dancehall it seems these days so thats probably why.

ah sorry! i just saw 'b-lines' and immediately saw an opportunity to say i wish there were more heavy b-lines... as far as how they make them, id like to know too.

dHarry said:

Anyone know on a muso-technical level how grime/dubstep/drum and bass producers make all those mutant wormhole inside-out writhing wobble-U b-lines?
Apologies to the Mods if this is in the wrong place.

Click to expand...

layering: take some interesting sounding b-line (i.e. lots of high-frequencies), but w/o too
many very low frequencies, don't make it too loud. at the same time add a pure sine-wave
playing the same notes as the interesting b-line, but tranposed down. the sine bass gives the
acoustic energy, but because it doesnt have harmonics it doesn't interfer with anything in the
mid and high freq. level. hence you can make it really loud (only tricky bit is with the
bass drum, turn the bass drum down when the sine bass is on or don't have the bass kicking
at that time, otherwise drum and sine will interfere). the acoustic effect is that it sounds like
the interesting bass has lots of energy when in fact it doesn't.

another very popular technique is to have two basslines playing in parallel, with the same
sound, but ever so slightly out of tune with each other. works particularly well when the
main bass frequency is triangular. i think alex reese, pulp fiction, was the first track to do
this really well.

you should check out the macabre unit stuff if you haven't yet, they are the masters of b-line led grime imo.

I use an FM synth for the original sound to get lots of mid range harmonics. Then put it through a cheap overdrive effect (good ones sound too valve-y) and a chorus pedal (which is roughly the same as having two slightly detuned basslines running together) then through a bit crusher if i want it really nasty. Then as said mix in sinewaves or parts of the original pre-overdrive sound and lots of EQ.

Thats the jungle hoover bassline - the modulated basslines in UKG are more about animating the filters and envelopes on synths to articulate the notes. The grime stuff i've heard kind of mixes & matches from these techniques.

isn't it something to do with 'square-waves'? what ever they are?!

if you look around the net, you can find hundreds of articles about how to make "jungle basslines" (usually by this people mean late nineties tech step style b-lines), which pretty much applies still.

borderpolice said:

another very popular technique is to have two basslines playing in parallel, with the same
sound, but ever so slightly out of tune with each other. works particularly well when the
main bass frequency is triangular. i think alex reese, pulp fiction, was the first track to do
this really well.

Click to expand...

Can do a nice variant oon that by detuning one sine against another. Two sine waves at 60Hz or woteva, playing the same note, tune them apart a bit and you'll get the effect of one going in and out of cycle with the other. Quick example (mp3).

Re the OP, if you're after the science your best bet might be the DOA production forum The Grid. Theres a bunch of great tutorials there for making gnarly bass sounds. Just do a search for "bass tutorial" or something like that...

http://www.dogsonacid.com/forumdisplay.php?forumid=4