Analysis of S6E04: DC Breaks – Bass Design & Process

DC Breaks first video for Sample Genie. Meant to have these posted earlier in the month, but limited time.

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Part 1 (22:43)
– Looking at designing bass patches in Serum, sequencing a bassline in Logic, and resampling bass audio in Kontakt

00:50 – demo ideas is a 2-bar loop, created with six instances of Serum
– One track for the sub, other five for layers on top
– Sequenced in Logic

01:15 – Chris/DC Breaks likes to have a beat going to work against

02:00 – explains jump in audio, and explains how he approaches sessions as writing sessions vs. mixing sessions.

02:30 – starts creation of a new patch, starting with basic shapes (sine, square, etc.).
– OSC A -> Basic Shapes wavetable, selected a position that was a PMW square wave
○ Unison is set to 13, to create 13 voices of the OSC
○ Detune set about 11:30 position, gives width to the bass sound
○ Blend at 50
– Filter with OSC A sent to it
○ Band 24
○ Cutoff about 10:30 position
○ Res about 10:30 position
○ Drive at 12 position
○ Fat at 1 position
– FX tab -> goes here to “phatten up the bass sound”
○ Hyper/Dimension – low rate, detuned a little, mix at 11 pos., size at 9 pos.
○ Distortion – tube setting, 12:15 pos., 1 pos., pre and HP
○ Compressor – threshold at 8 pos., ratio turned down, attack 12:05 pos., release & gain 11:55 pos.
○ EQ – frequency at 10 pos., Q at 12 pos., gain at 1 pos.
– Back to the main Filter window
○ States that Band 24 is a favorite filter
○ Liked that Serum has drive & fat parameters in its filters, as well as the Mix/Level knob.

06:40 – modulating the sound (OSC A) through the filter

07:00 – goes through the variations of the bass sounds

08:00 – looking at the second bass from the loop
– Uses OSC B with a regular square wave, same amount of Unison & Blend, and then explains how he uses Serum’s LFOs to create movement
– LFO 1 goes to eleven sources
– Likes two LFOs doing different patterns, finds this can create interesting results
– LFOs 3 & 4 are more subtle movements, over a longer duration of time

10:00 – explains bouncing to audio and how he sequences the parts of the bass

11:00 – explains the bass variations, goes in to how he has edited the Basic Shapes wavetable to give different characteristics.
– Spectral morph, adds harmonic distortion

13:50 – explains how he sonically glues these basses together

14:50 – Sonalkiss Stereo Tools, to set a threshold between what is mono and what is stereo

16:15 – sub pattern, actual sub is a sine wave with some distortion

16:45 – bounces MIDI to audio, tightens up the start & end of each loop

20:30 – 8-bar loop and some quick variations

22:00 – bounces all bass, explains how bass hitting slightly off grid of the drums is good because it gives sonic space AND creates some groove
– Can help make a steppy, clinically sounding tune become funkier

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PART 2 (24:06)
– Creating variation layers with random FX layers, which he finds keeps sounds harmonious

03:00 – looking at how everything fits together in the mix
– “If you chop your audio, put a fade where the snares are hitting.” -> 25ms fades at start

05:30 – using TDR Nova parallel dynamic EQ to deal with kick & sub bass relationship
– Chris prefers this over Wavesfactory’s Trackspacer plugin, and TDR Nova is free

07:20 – more variations with Serum, changing the wavetable but keeping all other parameters the same

09:00 – making a reece for the turnaround section
– Not a complex patch, just clean & well modulated

11:00 – how to set LFO to key position
– Note # assigned to LFO rate

17:15 – resampling and manipulating in Kontakt

*** I NEED TO RE-WATCH THIS SECTION. WILL UPDATE ***

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THOUGHTS & QUESTIONS

– I’ve done some modifications to the stock presets, from changing the table order, reversing the direction of frames, to setting morph modes on wavetables that were not morphed before. Interesting way to build up wavetables to experiment with. I also like creating my own wavetables from distortion plug-ins. Also made some new patches for myself after watching these videos.

– Part 1 @ 22 minutes, my favorite bit of advice from these two videos.

– TDR Nova: https://www.tokyodawn.net/tdr-nova/

– More DC Breaks production videos here: https://www.dcbreaks.com/production-videos