Think you know a bassline?

This one is for all those people who make "dirty basslines". It is for all the people who make Aggrotech/EBM with near-identical basslines.

SEXY UP YOUR FUCKING BASSLINES!



You are not going to give your song any heart if you have a bassline which repeats the same on-beat root notes in the chord progression.


There is no point even making a bassline if it doesn't somehow stand out from the chord progression rhymically or harmonically.

If you want to learn how to make your bass sound amazing listen to James Brown. The basslines in his songs were so funky and they sit in his songs without being on the 4/4 beat.

James Brown - Papa's got a brand new bag

Also, listen to 80's music. They had the most fantastic basslines!

Duran Duran - Last Chance on the stairway is a brilliant example!


Start making your basslines more interesting. It can really make a song so much more interesting than your average and uninteresting basslines. This is not to say that you can't make your basslines "heavy" and that you can't fuck up your bassline. Just make sure it starts as something interesting before you do.

Fear and self-loathing

So tonight I hit a massive brick wall. I just realised I hadn't fired up Ableton in over two weeks. Well that's a lie I did use it to make a dj mix while my decks are out of action but that's not the point. The point is that I hadn't worked on a song for over two weeks. Now as someone who is CONSTANTLY writing songs this was rather alarming.

So I fired up my softsynths and plugins and set to work on some tunes. Then I realised the problem. THEY SUCK! And when I say they suck I mean THEY FUCKING SUCK! It was painful to listen to. I mean how could I come out with such crap. I felt like throwing my computer through the window and taking up investment banking.

Thankfully I didn't. What I did do however was finally settle on a song I thought had a modicum of life left in it and decided to go at the fucker with my audio scalpels until something happened. I wasn't even aiming for that something to be good at this point; just aiming for something that was different.

After nothing much came of it I decided to revisit the Angelspit Blipverts. I won't explain who Angelspit are - use google - but their Blipverts are something I don't think I've ever seen a band do.

The Blipverts are basically videos showing you how to do "something cool" or giving advice. But these videos are much more than "work hard" or "be original" or crappy videos that "(too-big-for-their-boots)s00perstarz" sometimes put out. These videos are inspirational videos with practical advice. Now Angelspit are synth geeks and so use a fuckton™ or modular synths. A lot of people wanting to get into modulars have no idea where to start and some of these Blipverts are dedicated to fucking up sound with modulars. The rest are interviews and inspirational advice for bands such as "A band is a democracy ruled by a dictator - Let each person have total control over one aspect of the band and let them rule it ruthlessly." and other cool stuff.

Suffice to say that the Blipverts along with this inspired me beyond belief and I got straight down to creating some new sounds.

First I realised that my track needed more "punch" and that to do this I had to mess around with the drums and bassline.

The song had two drumlines doing the same thing but one was glitched so it stuttered in the background. This was really playing havoc with the "sound-space". Instead of just removing it I muted it and used it as a gate on the non-glitched drums. It sounded awesome. I then added saturation (in the form of waveshaping) and some extra fuzz to give it a raw edge. Then I eq'd each drum and it now ROCKS! It has loads of really high frequencies and sounds like Satan in an industrial scrap-yard.

Then I messed-up the bassline. First I took a sub-synth plugin and divided the frequencies to add more depth to the lower end. Then I crushed the thing to death using the "CamelCrusher" plugin which is very simple yet with some tweaking can really make things "growl". I then took a duplicate of the bassline and using the same sub-synth plugin made a really cool harmonic that sits in the mid-sprectrum. Combining the two gave a really nice dichotomy between "growl" and "melody". Adding a sub-modular synth behind that really beefs things up in the bass end of things. Or rather it would if I knew how to fucking use sub-bass. I NEED to work on my sub-bass. Still, the sub-modular is there waiting to be tweaked into perfection.

This track has a long way to go and now due to the major tweaking (for the better) everything sounds out of place/wrong/not mixed/shit but dammed if that's going to stop me. It is now 4a.m. and I have lectures tomorrow so unfortunately I have to retire to bed but I am going to get my shit together and have this track rocking very soon!

I am slowly beginning to realise the extent of my madness. It involves Attention Deficit Disorder, caffeine, a career in music, and many, many, many, late nights.

Yours,

NovoSeven