Bass lines

[Kei Kurono]

How do you approach them when making a sample heavy beat ? I find it kinda hard to lay down bass lines when I use more samples in a beat. any tips ? I use a 555 btw

[preqwal]

I find it quite hard sometimes to add bass, although I really want too!

If the main sample already is bass heavy, I'll just leave it and maybe add some melody instead.

[yo-yo crunch]

yeah like pre said, i'll usually just turn up the bass in the sample and call it a day.
or only use one or two bass notes and keep it really simple just as an accent

[Kei Kurono]

That's kinda how I do it too. I just wanted to see if anybody had other methods. Thanks guys

[springwater]

One night I chopped the shit out of an album that had a full track of improvisationial bass and filtered it like a Mofo. Chopped up like 40 bass notes and had 3 banks of random filtered bass hits.

[Kei Kurono]

hahah crazy

[Heat Vision]

the more complex the pattern of the high end the simpler my bassline tends to be. and vice versa ie. if my high ends simple it kind of gives me the inspiration to be a little more complex with the low end.

sometimes its not even a line but more like a bass stab that plays once every 2 bars or something.

i get bass sounds from a korg monotron, samples, or MSX15hum + MSX21pitch for cool lil synth bass notes.


i sometimes find it fun to just let the kick drum take care of the low end aspect of the track.

[blavatsky]

This is counter intuitive in a way, but when you mix sometimes you can kill almost ALL the bass in the samples except for the bassline and bass drum. You'd be suprised how much room that clears up for the low end. Isolator or EQ are your friends.

If you mix on a DAW , cut some mud at 250hz, 400hz, and below 50hz drop it off pretty sharp.

Oh, one other cool compressor trick, lets say you have a sequence playing and you play a live synth bassline on top (or some audio in bass) with comp on everything.
If you tweak the volume/release/sustain you can get that pumping effect where the samples drop out a little when the bass is loud and comes back loud inbetween.

[Ace138]

X2 on what Heat Vision said. Also sometimes if I'm using the kick drum as bass, I'll layer a sub hit over the kick drum. I love doing this on the SP303. It is so gritty

[tape smoke]

you can filter your sample so its only bass then add some hard core distortion, then layer it with your song, and tthen its like your in metallica

[Kei Kurono]

Cool thanks for the tips fellas !

[LAZER BEAR]

ive been playin bass guitar since i was 12 so im a huge bass lover, although i use synth most of the time and rarely bust out the actual bass guitar these days, but i almost always put basslines on my stuff, i do it one of two ways, ill chop my samples and jam out over the chops on my analog synth until i find a good bass line, if its fairly simple ill just sample one shot bass notes, but if it is a more complex line with trills or slides or somethin then ill just sample the whole bass line.