So it sounds like this with my sub bass . So we've got two bass instruments . You're listening to the Inside the Mix podcast with your host , mark Matthews . Welcome to Inside the Mix , your go-to podcast for music creation and production .
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Dm me , rather , on instagram at inside the mix podcast . A lot of call to actions there , but we want to answer your questions on the podcast folks , and we're looking forward to hearing more from you . So I recently finished a mix for a new song that I'm going to be releasing .
So this is the 17th of feb that I'm recording this and this song is going to come out at some point in March . It's a follow-up to Separation and I've sent it out to a few people and I've been asked a few times now how I created the bass , what patches I used and basically the production behind the bass in this in short .
So this episode is just going to be a quick tutorial on how I created the bass for this new track . I think it's going to be called Disease or Diseased . I was toying with Bloodline as well , but I'm not entirely sure , so it might change . So when this is released , who knows what it's going to be called ? Anyway , let's dive into this one .
So , to create the bass in this track , I am essentially using two bass instruments and they both got Serum . So to create the bass in this track , I am essentially using two bass instruments and they both got serum . So this is what it sounds like .
I'm using just a basic serum patch and this is what it sounds like with just one bass instrument , with my MIDI , okay , and I'm using a patch called the Realist , and I might have done some other tweaking in here as well .
But basically , to get the bass sound I use , I generally do start off with some patches that I like , and then I tweak them to be conducive to the mix and the production . It's got to marry with the kick drum , right , so I'm creating space with various mixing techniques further down the line . So I take it from that .
Well , I'll play it again this , okay , and I'll add one more bass instrument . I don't like to layer basses . I like the bass to have room to breathe . I don't want too much going on down there in the low frequencies and the sub frequencies as well . So I'm going to add a sub bass and so it sounds like this with my sub bass .
So we've got two bass instruments , okay , so now I'll demonstrate how I did that . It's really simple . So I've muted the original sub bass and what I'm going to do is I'm just going to command and d duplicate this bass track I've already got . I've got my midi here and I'm going to drag it down . Okay , so it's just a duplicate .
So I've got bass and base . Basically , let's call this , uh , we'll call this sub base and I'll do it in lower case so I can see the difference between the original and it didn't work , so let's call it sub base again . Maybe I need to press enter this time . That might help , mind it . And we'll call it sub base too .
Right , and because I've duplicated it , I've got the same serum patch on there and you can see I'm using Neutron for EQ and I've got a kilohertz can't remember how it's pronounced side chain compression to the kick going on there as well .
Basically , all I'm going to do is I'm going to open up the serum on sub bass 2 , the duplicated one , and I'm just going to disable the first oscillator . I only want the second oscillator , so I'm going to play it on its own now . So this is the duplicated sub bass instrument track .
Okay now the reason I've duplicated this and I'm using the same patch is because I want the attack , the envelope of the sound , basically to be the same as the original bass , so that they'll marry up nicely together .
Now I may go in and tweak it a bit with the envelope , because we're going to use a sine wave in a minute and I might need to , and the cutoff as well . For the filter , the cutoff is being modulated with this particular patch . But the reason I've duplicated the original bass one is because I want again , I want the sub bass .
For all intents and purposes , I want the patch to be exactly the same , but I'm just going to change the oscillator , or rather I've disabled one oscillator . So I'm going to change oscillator B basically to a sine wave . So change oscillator B basically to a sine wave . So I'm gonna go to digital .
I tell a lie , it's not digital , it's analog and I'm looking for basic shapes and I've got a sine wave . So this is what it sounds like now . Now you can hear there's a with the envelope . It might need a bit of tweaking , but now it's sounding much more like a sub-bass . So now let's play the two together .
So let's solo both the bass and the sub bass and I realize I need to up the master on the sub bass . There we go . You can hear it now . Before , because we've taken away a lot of that frequency content and we're using a sine wave , the signal level has dropped so I forgot to increase it on the master .
But now I increased the master , the overall volume of the instrument . You can hear it . To begin with I was like , oh , there's no difference , which wouldn't be great , right ? So I'm going to play the bass without the sub-bass and this is with . Now it's a bit loud at the moment and I did have it 2 dB down in terms of overall level in the .
Well , this is the first mix . Actually it's not the final mix of this track . So that is how I generally create basses . I'll have an original patch . Whatever synth I'm using . You can do this in any synth . Really , as long as you can manipulate the oscillators and you can change the waveforms and whatnot . Can't think of a synth that you can't really do .
That I'll probably be corrected on that . And then I just duplicate that with a sub-bass instrument . I use the original patch and then just change , or rather disable , any oscillators I don't want . I only want one oscillator and then I change it to a sine wave essentially .
And I mean you could play around with the octaves if you want , drop the octaves down , mess around with that . Probably don't need to do that in this instance , but this is one way of doing it .
So others might say well , I do X , y , z , but this is just the way I do it and have been doing it of late , and in the past I probably did it differently , and in the future maybe I'll do it differently then , but this is just one way .
So what I will say is I generally I cannot think of a time recently in the last few years where I've had more than two bass instruments on a track . So let's play it in the context of the full mix . I'm actually going to drop this sub-bass that I've just created by 2dB , because that's what I did with the original and I'm just going to .
I need to unmute the rest of the song and make sure that original sub-bass is muted . So let's play this from the build into the first drop . So here we go . Well , there we go . Logic decided to have a disk overload , even though I've got a Mac Studio with an M1 processor in it and 32 gig of RAM . For whatever reason , it didn't like it .
But I'm just going to play it again from that drop one . So this is from the drop . So we're eliminating the build now . No-transcript .