So on the subject of dnb, particularly the neurofunk variety, I've been investigating a bunch of different tuts lately. I realized that I never ACTUALLY SEE other composers arranging thier bass section quite the way I do.
Now maybe its because tutorials never seem to focus on making an actual song so much as making a sound or patch. But I've always taken it sort of for granted that its best to have at least one bass track devoted entirely to sub frequencies. Pretty much everything it adds to the song is below 500hz (i hard-cut everything beneath 20hz). It just sits there and plugs the root notes. Its my sub track.
I never resample it, because i don't really add effects to it; it doesn't really have enough mid or treble to have any expressive timbre to speak of. When i eventually stumbled on the advice that lower frequencies in your song should be mono i thought, nbd, i'll just mix my sub track center. Made it easy.
What does change in my music is the "bass lead track." this is an entirely different track with a low rolloff; mostly everything this one adds to the song is above 500hz. The bass lead track is like the mouth of my bass lines, where the sub track is like the throat. The notes it plays follow the sub track notes exactly, but the track gets effected, modulated, filtered, detuned, and otherwise automated. Sometimes it gets resampled and screwed with some more. Its usually more stereo too.
Been doing it in this "bilateral" way for so long i never though to question it. But, is this procedure typical? Or do neuro/dnb producers typically just have one "bass" track that essentially handles the whole harmonic range? Sub and treble frequencies all at once? It seems like it might sound more cohesive that way, and save some work, though possibly at the expense of quality... Idk
Submitted March 01, 2017 at 03:42AM by fluffpile https://www.reddit.com/r/edmproduction/comments/5wtu52/bass_layering_thoughts/?utm_source=ifttt
Javier Rodriguez
Tuesday, February 28, 2017