Message 8/22
Date: 04-Jan-03 @ 09:52 PM -
RE: by jove i've got it!
Oohh, oohh, oohh. Yet another trick that I have found for getting nice synth bass sounds. this trick will get you a really nice kind of soft click at the start of your bass that makes it quite punchy (yes, I know I have explained a way of doing this in the above post, but this is better). I have heard the sound that this trick produces in many prog and trance tracks. Give it a try. Your ears will love you for it.
Set up your bass sound as you like. Then set an LFO to a square wave at a fairly slow rate. Next, set up the LFO to trigger on each note and to modulate the filters on your bass. Positive modulation amounts are what we're after here, so that we can get a higher range comming through at the start of each note. Now edit the timing of the LFO so that the square wave drops (enters the negative part of the duty cycle) just after the start of the note. This is where we get our click. Go through and touch up the settings so that the click sounds nice and tight.
The problem I faced here is that, on long notes, you can hear the square wave modulate the filter further along the note. What I did to stop this is set up another LFO to a falling sawtooth (sloping down to the right) set it to trigger with every note and to modulate the speed of the square wave LFO with negative values, so that the square wave oscilations decrease. Now you can get the square wave to slow down after the click to the point that it practically stops oscilating. It works for a couple of seconds. If you need any longer than that, then sampling is easy enough.
Sorry about the rant, but I was quite chuffed when I found this little trick.
Regards.
Steve.