“Can you review my bassline?”
First of all, thank you for your awesome and very helpful blog, and also for your music – love your latest album!
I’ve just read your most recent post about making kick and bass work well together. I’m producing some psytrance for a couple of years, but still my kbbb is very far from perfect. Can I ask you to briefly review my latest attempt? (it’s a short 1 minute snippet, some synths and percussion added for context). Just like the guy from your post, I feel the kick and bass refuse to work well together for some reason. Also I would greatly appreciate if you say something about the bassline itself (the frequency balance, the groove and stuff).
I’ve also read your posts about how you were involved into Russian psytrance scene. I’m from Russia and remember Psyplanet ;)
Arseny
Thanks for your words, Arseny!
This bassline is fine. However, If you want to match your bassline to the current Psytrance sub-standards, you need to clear the mud and tweak up the filters. Clarity (or should I say, the lack of it) is the main issue here.
I suggest using a reference, it really helps a lot. It’s especially true if you working on headphones which I personally not recommend doing. Here are few tracks by other producers, also in Cm key. Compare these basslines with yours:
Do you hear these crispy, sharp, punchy basses? That is what you should aim for.
Earlier I’ve written about pretty much everything that could be said about the basslines, so rather than repeat myself I’ll put for you these four useful links here:
- Psytrance bassline synthesis
Filter envelopes, resampling, MIDI-notes - Psytrance bassline equalisation
Boosting harmonics, clearing the mud - How to make a punchy bassline
Phase, layering, processing - How to fit kick and bass together
Read about the volume balance in particular
By following these tips you should be able to make a nice punchy bassline. But if none of this helps, let me know what exactly do you struggling with the most in the comments below and we’ll try to fix it together.
