#183: How Do Producers Make Bass Sound So Good?

Achieving a powerful, well-balanced bass is essential for any great mix. In this episode, Marc Matthews takes you behind the scenes of his latest track, breaking down his process for designing and mixing bass sounds. Whether you're working in Logic Pro or another DAW, these insights will help you create a deep, punchy low-end that enhances your overall production.

What You'll Learn:

• How to make sub bass in Serum for a clean and powerful low-end
• How to create sub bass sounds that sit perfectly in your mix
• Techniques for how to make sub bass sound better layering
• The importance of duplicating and modifying bass tracks for a fuller sound
• Tips for final mixing considerations and blending bass in context

If you've ever struggled with making your bass stand out, this episode is for you! Tune in and start crafting basslines that bring your tracks to life.

Links mentioned in this episode:

Xfer Records Serum Advanced Wavetable Synthesizer

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Transcript

Marc Matthews: 0:00

So it sounds like this with my sub bass. So we've got two bass instruments. You're listening to the Inside the Mix podcast with your host, mark Matthews. Welcome to Inside the Mix, your go-to podcast for music creation and production. Whether you're crafting your first track or refining your mixing skills, join me each week for expert interviews, practical tutorials and insights to help you level up your music and smash it in the music industry. Let's dive in. Hey folks, welcome to the Inside the Mix podcast. If you are a new listener, a big welcome. Thank you for joining. Make sure you hit follow wherever you get your podcasts and if you're watching this on YouTube, make sure you hit subscribe and the notification bell so you get notified of new episodes. And also, if you are a returning listener, of course, a huge, huge welcome back.

Marc Matthews: 0:57

Now, before we dive into this episode, folks, don't forget that if you have a question that you want answered by myself and Tim Benson 09 on the podcast, click that speak pipe link in the episode description and submit a 30 second question. It can be something along the lines of hey, this is xyz. My question for Mark and Tim is you can find me at xyz, so it's a good opportunity to give yourself a shout out as well. All you need is your mobile phone. You don't need a SpeakPipe account or a fancy setup. It's just like sending us an audio message and, of course, if you do do that as well, you'll be entered in the monthly draw to win a coffee voucher on me. So click that link in the episode description and submit your questions. Alternatively, if audio isn't your thing, just send me an email mark at synthmusicmasteringcom or you can dm me. Dm me, rather, on instagram at inside the mix podcast. A lot of call to actions there, but we want to answer your questions on the podcast folks, and we're looking forward to hearing more from you.

Marc Matthews: 1:59

So I recently finished a mix for a new song that I'm going to be releasing. So this is the 17th of feb that I'm recording this and this song is going to come out at some point in March. It's a follow-up to Separation and I've sent it out to a few people and I've been asked a few times now how I created the bass, what patches I used and basically the production behind the bass in this in short. So this episode is just going to be a quick tutorial on how I created the bass for this new track. I think it's going to be called Disease or Diseased. I was toying with Bloodline as well, but I'm not entirely sure, so it might change. So when this is released, who knows what it's going to be called? Anyway, let's dive into this one.

Marc Matthews: 2:40

So, to create the bass in this track, I am essentially using two bass instruments and they both got Serum. So to create the bass in this track, I am essentially using two bass instruments and they both got serum. So this is what it sounds like. I'm using just a basic serum patch and this is what it sounds like with just one bass instrument, with my MIDI, okay, and I'm using a patch called the Realist, and I might have done some other tweaking in here as well. But basically, to get the bass sound I use, I generally do start off with some patches that I like, and then I tweak them to be conducive to the mix and the production. It's got to marry with the kick drum, right, so I'm creating space with various mixing techniques further down the line. So I take it from that.

Marc Matthews: 3:28

Well, I'll play it again this, okay, and I'll add one more bass instrument. I don't like to layer basses. I like the bass to have room to breathe. I don't want too much going on down there in the low frequencies and the sub frequencies as well. So I'm going to add a sub bass and so it sounds like this with my sub bass. So we've got two bass instruments, okay, so now I'll demonstrate how I did that. It's really simple.

Marc Matthews: 4:01

So I've muted the original sub bass and what I'm going to do is I'm just going to command and d duplicate this bass track I've already got. I've got my midi here and I'm going to drag it down. Okay, so it's just a duplicate. So I've got bass and base. Basically, let's call this, uh, we'll call this sub base and I'll do it in lower case so I can see the difference between the original and it didn't work, so let's call it sub base again. Maybe I need to press enter this time. That might help, mind it. And we'll call it sub base too. Right, and because I've duplicated it, I've got the same serum patch on there and you can see I'm using Neutron for EQ and I've got a kilohertz can't remember how it's pronounced side chain compression to the kick going on there as well. Basically, all I'm going to do is I'm going to open up the serum on sub bass 2, the duplicated one, and I'm just going to disable the first oscillator. I only want the second oscillator, so I'm going to play it on its own now. So this is the duplicated sub bass instrument track.

Marc Matthews: 5:10

Okay now the reason I've duplicated this and I'm using the same patch is because I want the attack, the envelope of the sound, basically to be the same as the original bass, so that they'll marry up nicely together. Now I may go in and tweak it a bit with the envelope, because we're going to use a sine wave in a minute and I might need to, and the cutoff as well. For the filter, the cutoff is being modulated with this particular patch. But the reason I've duplicated the original bass one is because I want again, I want the sub bass. For all intents and purposes, I want the patch to be exactly the same, but I'm just going to change the oscillator, or rather I've disabled one oscillator. So I'm going to change oscillator B basically to a sine wave. So change oscillator B basically to a sine wave. So I'm gonna go to digital. I tell a lie, it's not digital, it's analog and I'm looking for basic shapes and I've got a sine wave. So this is what it sounds like now.

Marc Matthews: 6:08

Now you can hear there's a with the envelope. It might need a bit of tweaking, but now it's sounding much more like a sub-bass. So now let's play the two together. So let's solo both the bass and the sub bass and I realize I need to up the master on the sub bass. There we go. You can hear it now. Before, because we've taken away a lot of that frequency content and we're using a sine wave, the signal level has dropped so I forgot to increase it on the master. But now I increased the master, the overall volume of the instrument. You can hear it. To begin with I was like, oh, there's no difference, which wouldn't be great, right? So I'm going to play the bass without the sub-bass and this is with. Now it's a bit loud at the moment and I did have it 2 dB down in terms of overall level in the.

Marc Matthews: 7:18

Well, this is the first mix. Actually it's not the final mix of this track. So that is how I generally create basses. I'll have an original patch. Whatever synth I'm using.

Marc Matthews: 7:28

You can do this in any synth. Really, as long as you can manipulate the oscillators and you can change the waveforms and whatnot. Can't think of a synth that you can't really do. That I'll probably be corrected on that. And then I just duplicate that with a sub-bass instrument. I use the original patch and then just change, or rather disable, any oscillators I don't want. I only want one oscillator and then I change it to a sine wave essentially. And I mean you could play around with the octaves if you want, drop the octaves down, mess around with that. Probably don't need to do that in this instance, but this is one way of doing it. So others might say well, I do X, y, z, but this is just the way I do it and have been doing it of late, and in the past I probably did it differently, and in the future maybe I'll do it differently then, but this is just one way. So what I will say is I generally I cannot think of a time recently in the last few years where I've had more than two bass instruments on a track.

Marc Matthews: 8:24

So let's play it in the context of the full mix. I'm actually going to drop this sub-bass that I've just created by 2dB, because that's what I did with the original and I'm just going to. I need to unmute the rest of the song and make sure that original sub-bass is muted. So let's play this from the build into the first drop. So here we go. Well, there we go. Logic decided to have a disk overload, even though I've got a Mac Studio with an M1 processor in it and 32 gig of RAM. For whatever reason, it didn't like it. But I'm just going to play it again from that drop one. So this is from the drop. So we're eliminating the build now. No-transcript.