And my life is now complete. Thanks man, I managed to get some really nice bass with that very precise tutorial.
To celebrate I’ll share this link to magic fantastic TB-303 music.
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Cool, glad it worked out for you 
TM-404 is fantastic!
Sounds great, thanks. I’m new to the A4 and i’m super impressed how good/deep a bass tone I can get from just 1 Osc dialled in as above. 
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Totally!
this is a good point - probably the first thing you should think of rather than the instrument in question (whatever it is)… proper bass sounds can be teased out of anything if your engineering chops are good enough
it also depends on if you are mixing for a live situation or for recording … live is generally easier somewhat because you have volume and dynamics on your side (putting aside issues of the sound system and the space itself)… but in both situations the most key thing ive discovered in getting deep powerful bass, is to give it its own channel or bus in the mixer - this requires analog summing of some sort, a mixer or whatever
in the A4 thats a problem because there is only 1 stereo output for all 4 sounds - so the only thing you can do to fix that is to plan all sounds around the bass, meaning you crank the bass up fairly loud and turn all the other sounds down quite a bit lower, so the bass is super prominent - then mix everything together from there
bass sounds produce the most “energy” in terms of human perception of raw sonics, they take up the most space in a mix and displace everything else to a certain degree because they are the frequencies which are felt most physically - so if bass is important to your music, you should give it the attention it needs, which is good separation and isolation in the overall mix - otherwise you run the risk of drowning it out because everything else has to be turned up louder than it needs to be in order to hear whats going on
ideally i give the bass its own bus, the drums their own bus, then one for leads and one for pads/fx… analog summing is no joke, its pretty essential in my book - but even if you are mixing everything in software or one device you can approximate this to some degree
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i also found that leaving filter1 open was better for making deep bass. my approach is similar:
- triangle wave in the 50-100Hz range
- filter1 cutoff open
- filter2 set to LP2 or BP, cutoff roughly tuned to the fundamental of the note, resonance in the 30-50 range
at this point you should have something pretty close to a sine wave. if you need even fewer harmonics just bring the filter1 cutoff down. if you’re like me and want more harmonics, you can: - use the overdrive on the filter
- use vibrato, PWM
- add reverb (you need to make sure you have some sort of attack for this to do much good)
and of course, you can use envelopes and LFOs to add motion to any parameter. hth
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^
That makes a great deep bass!
Thanks.
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Bumping this thread because there are some great patches in these replies. Wow! Love Secretmusic’s mono tribe-ish bass, especially.
Yep !
I’s like painting. How a color is being perseved has alot to do with the color next to it.
It also happened to me many times that Iwas playing on octave ( or even 2 ) to low when creating a sound and not getting enough punch. Then playing an octave higher and … BINGO !
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Depending on whether you are happy to lose a track - I can get some tasty deep basses using the filters in serial (also gain an osc/suboscs too). I use a keyfollowing peak filter in the first filter to boost the bass freq up, then an ĺp2 on the second (or both lps). Knocks hard enough that my launchpad is vibrating its way across my desk at least XD
Get a Minitaur.
Does anyone know whether the DSI pro 2 does good bass straight out of the box, or do you have to fiddle and tinker like on the A4 to get some decent bass out of it?
You could aswell advice us to get a sample-pack and an cheap sampler - or to get a Harley and sample it - Buth ai ! then you’ll have to fiddle again.
My advice - don’t get a synth if you don’t wanne put in some effort - there are other solutions if you find no joy in fiddeling. There’s like a thousand Workstation - type keyboards - with like a 100.000 presets - they’ll almost do everything for you just pushing on key !
Personally this "out of the box " - stuff dousn’t interest me at all.
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I used to share that perspective. But I learned that the A4 can get into some great bass territory with proper programming. Most of the patches mentioned here get it right into the pocket. The free “Bass Vol. 1” patches pack from Elektron’s downloads page also has a few solid patches for deep bass.
I think the strength of the Minitaur with the A4 is more in having a dedicated bass voice off the A4’s CV channel, with a dedicated output just for bass.
And even the A4 can do basses the Minitaur cannot due to extra waveform availabilities. Triangle waves are particularly my favorite for deep bass.
You could aswell advice us to get a sample-pack and an cheap sampler - or to get a Harley and sample it - Buth ai ! then you’ll have to fiddle again.
My advice - don’t get a synth if you don’t wanne put in some effort - there are other solutions if you find no joy in fiddeling. There’s like a thousand Workstation - type keyboards - with like a 100.000 presets - they’ll almost do everything for you just pushing on key !
Personally this "out of the box " - stuff dousn’t interest me at all.
[/quote]
I am confused. Have I said something to offend you?
I was commenting that the Minitaur kicks ass for bass (and it should do, it’s a bass synth) and that the A4 requires work.
I thought I actually enjoyed programming synths, especially the A4, but apparently not from what you have said.
Oh well, best sell the A4 and have an existential crisis as some guy called vos on the interwebs knows me better than I know myself.
You could aswell advice us to get a sample-pack and an cheap sampler - or to get a Harley and sample it - Buth ai ! then you’ll have to fiddle again.
My advice - don’t get a synth if you don’t wanne put in some effort - there are other solutions if you find no joy in fiddeling. There’s like a thousand Workstation - type keyboards - with like a 100.000 presets - they’ll almost do everything for you just pushing on key !
Personally this "out of the box " - stuff dousn’t interest me at all.
[/quote]
I am confused. Have I said something to offend you?
I was commenting that the Minitaur kicks ass for bass (and it should do, it’s a bass synth) and that the A4 requires work.
I thought I actually enjoyed programming synths, especially the A4, but apparently not from what you have said.
Oh well, best sell the A4 and have an existential crisis as some guy called vos on the interwebs knows me better than I know myself.[/quote]
Sorry- I reacted a little bit harsh but, did you read the question?
Did you give any tips concerning the question ?
To me you just proposed a Minitaur and proceded to ask your own interest concerning the Por 2.
Maybe now you understand my reaction.
I gave you the same kind of advise - and how do you feel ?- reading your reaction makes that clear no ?
I used to share that perspective. But I learned that the A4 can get into some great bass territory with proper programming. Most of the patches mentioned here get it right into the pocket. The free “Bass Vol. 1” patches pack from Elektron’s downloads page also has a few solid patches for deep bass.
I think the strength of the Minitaur with the A4 is more in having a dedicated bass voice off the A4’s CV channel, with a dedicated output just for bass.
And even the A4 can do basses the Minitaur cannot due to extra waveform availabilities. Triangle waves are particularly my favorite for deep bass.
[/quote]
you aren’t going to get moog minitaur sound from the A4, nor will you get A4 sound from the moog minitaur…it all really depends what you are after…one of the best tips for bass out of the A4 is to use a high pass on filter 2 with resonance and tune in the lower registers…you should be able to rumble your walls no problem with that…but again, it’s no minitaur…I personally wouldn’t give my minitaur up…then again, I can never get enough though so freeing my A4 up by using a minitaur for bass only is just a another win for me…for what it’s worth I still do plenty of bass heavy patches on my A4
thanks everyone for sharing ideas how to get a proper bass sound out of the A4! For myself I find it difficult to get a real deep and warm bass out of the A4 that fits my taste for especially dub techno. But F2 with peak filter and 10-15 resonance can do good bass for special notes.
As someone said here before, it´s also about the mixing, eqing and compressing. I do a lot of processing. So record a loop from the bass and add some compression with LA2A od 1176 style compressors. Also Pultec EQ and tape processing (eg with Uhe Satin) can do wonders due the adding of harmonic distortion.
Someone mention to add a bit of reverb to the bass, which I think is not the best idea … but a creative choice imho. If you try, better split bass into 2 frequency bands and send only above 200hz to reverb or just simply do lowcut on reverb. At the mastering stage everything under 300/200 hz will be converted into mono because the bass sounds more tight and stereo signals in bass frequencies can´t be cutted to vinyl.
But at the end it´s your artistically choice.
I don’t know if this could be called a ‘deep bass’ per se, but it’s what I used for the Pocket Calculator cover in my sig. Think I was reasonably close to what Kraftwerk did (pretty sure they used a Minimoog; I dialed in something close in Arturia’s Mini V and mimicked that)
Osc 1: TUN -12, LEV 100, Square Wave, PW+27
Osc 2 off
Filter 1: FRQ 53, RES 25, TRK 0, DEP +33
Filter 2: unused
Amp: ADSR 0/38/127/8, shape 10; reverb at 33
Filter Env: ADSR 0/44/0/17, shape 6
1 Like
Using a few of the tips in this thread, I’ve been able to program some of my favorite bass patches ever with A4.
It’s not as immediate as a Minitaur, but the time invested is definitely worth it.
Bass line in this track is an example:
Awesome track! Deep bass indeed.