# Subharmonic bass- and kick synth layering techniques



## MartinH. (Aug 17, 2020)

I'm still trying to reverse engineer sounds from Mick Gordons Doom sountracks and I noticed some very punchy transients in the low frequencies that I thought must be impossible to bring out with _just_ EQ and transient shapers etc.. I thought there must be something else going on, but I didn't know what to search for. "Tight bass" or "punchy bass" brings up all kinds of EDM tutorials but not what I was looking for. Then I remembered that "Enforcer" by Boom sounded similar and I watched the trailer again: 



Very helpfully they described in a comment that it is a subharmonic kick drum synthesizer that detects transients and layers kick drums under it. And that makes total sense to me. I think I could do something like that with the tools that I have and get pretty close to the result that I want. I'll definitely experiment with this.

I have 2 questions left though: 

a) If lets say I want to use those layered kicks to make a metal guitar riff have more punch, do I vary the pitch of the layered kicks with every note in sync with the riff (I could imagine that to sound rather goofy), or do I keep it at the frequency of the lowest open string, or do I pick a frequency that promises to deliver reliable bass punch on most playback systems? Afaik 50hz is the popular frequency for Kick drums, and I could imagine whether or not it makes sense to tune it to the lowest note/key of the riff depends on how far off that fequency is from 50hz.

b) Are there any other names of related techniques that I should be reading up on for this kind of stuff? I feel like I don't even know what to search for half the time.


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## jcrosby (Aug 17, 2020)

I don't know about guitar. That's not a technique I've ever stumbled across in years of doing this. 50 Hz is also awfully deep in terms of guitars. That's where the bass and/or kick need to sit. You really can't have 3 main elements trying to occupy the sub, you'll just wind up with a congested and muddy low end. Once you get below 100 Hz you really want to think of things as a series of sine waves with limited room fighting for space...

As far as percussion you can do the same thing enforcer does a number of ways... Layering kicks underneath percussion, electronic kicks tend to do well, (A lot of trailer composers do this). You can use something like XLN's Addictive trigger or a similar drum replacer to trigger and add a kick or percussion layer... I tend to prefer a Kontakt patch of short punchy kicks I have, and copying MIDI, but a drum replacer on a duplicate track would do the job.

The trick is to use short kicks. Tight punchy kicks will get you a lot more mileage than long kicks, as the tails of the percussion and a long kick are bound to have a non-harmonic relationship, creating unpleasant frequency clashes... The kicks also tend to be centered higher, 70-100 Hz... This lets the deeper percussion and sub bass rule the stuff down around 40-50.

You can also add a small imperceptible delay to the percussion (5-10 ms) so the kick hits first. It's subtle, but the transients of the short kick will cut through a little better... (Depending on the track, there've been times where I've delayed everything but the percussion by just a few milliseconds so the percussion rides the mix. Totally depends on the track though of course..)


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## jcrosby (Aug 17, 2020)

FYI I realized it might not have been super clear why I mentioned percussion.... Basically the purpose of enforcer is specifically to add punchiness to sound fx, percussion and drums... 

You could use it to add punch to anything, but for what you had asked about in terms of guitar, a transient shaper or dynamic EQ really are the best tools for the job.


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## Pier (Aug 17, 2020)

Here's another plugin that does this:





There was another one but I can't seem to remember its name...

Personally, since I mostly use synths, I just add a sine wave or generate a sub low end pulse with any synth.


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## Pier (Aug 17, 2020)

I found it!

Refuse Lowender:






reFuse Software: Lowender


reFuse Software: Tools for music and audio creation, including the Lowender and Bucketverb plugins.



www.refusesoftware.com


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## MartinH. (Aug 17, 2020)

Awesome replies so far, thanks so much guys! Lots of good food for thought and things to try. I'll post a more detailed response tomorrow.


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## jononotbono (Aug 17, 2020)

Pier said:


> I found it!
> 
> Refuse Lowender:
> 
> ...




Lowender is amazing.

Also, Brainworx bx Subsynth is a great plugin!


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## Pier (Aug 17, 2020)

jononotbono said:


> Also, Brainworx bx Subsynth is a great plugin!



Woah


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## visiblenoise (Aug 17, 2020)

Might not be ideal, but still relevant: https://www.wavesfactory.com/product/sk10-drum-sub-kick/

I'm interested in hearing what kind of results you get!


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## darcvision (Aug 17, 2020)

visiblenoise said:


> Might not be ideal, but still relevant: https://www.wavesfactory.com/product/sk10-drum-sub-kick/
> 
> I'm interested in hearing what kind of results you get!


great plugin, because its free and easy to use.


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## MartinH. (Aug 18, 2020)

jcrosby said:


> I don't know about guitar. That's not a technique I've ever stumbled across in years of doing this. 50 Hz is also awfully deep in terms of guitars. That's where the bass and/or kick need to sit. You really can't have 3 main elements trying to occupy the sub, you'll just wind up with a congested and muddy low end. Once you get below 100 Hz you really want to think of things as a series of sine waves with limited room fighting for space...
> 
> As far as percussion you can do the same thing enforcer does a number of ways... Layering kicks underneath percussion, electronic kicks tend to do well, (A lot of trailer composers do this). You can use something like XLN's Addictive trigger or a similar drum replacer to trigger and add a kick or percussion layer... I tend to prefer a Kontakt patch of short punchy kicks I have, and copying MIDI, but a drum replacer on a duplicate track would do the job.
> 
> ...



Thanks again for your excellent advice, I got a lot out of that post! Thinking about bass below 100hz as "a series of sine waves with limited room fighting for space" is a great way of phrasing it and helps me better understand where the bass problems in my mixes could come from. Check out this track, where at 0:42 it seems to me like another deeper layer of synthetic bass is added.




I think this is the guitar processing where Mick blended the sound together with the chainsaw sound from the original Doom, using Zynaptiq Morph. I can't tell whether that's adding the bass or he layered another synth under it. 

I'm experimenting with different ways to process very downtuned guitar riffs, like Drop E and below. I find that at these super low tunings, the guitar chugs sound more and more like a percussive instrument, which gave me the idea of trying processing or layering techniques for percussions in the first place. Also with lowered string tension the transients aren't as tight anymore.

Great idea about shifting around layered samples by a couple ms to make their transients cut through better, I never thought of that. I'm made this thread hoping to learn some general new tricks for my toolbox, these things are exactly what I was looking for.
Maybe it would also make sense to zoom in real close and make sure to phase-align the low frequencies of layered elements to the original sounds, so that there's no phase-cancellation on the sub bass?




jcrosby said:


> FYI I realized it might not have been super clear why I mentioned percussion.... Basically the purpose of enforcer is specifically to add punchiness to sound fx, percussion and drums...
> 
> You could use it to add punch to anything, but for what you had asked about in terms of guitar, a transient shaper or dynamic EQ really are the best tools for the job.



I think you're right, I've probably wanted to make the guitar fill too much of the role of the bass-guitar because I'm less familiar with those and have more practice tweaking guitar tones. And I've recently made some changes to strings and pickups of my guitar that I haven't fully tried out yet.




Pier said:


> Here's another plugin that does this:
> 
> 
> 
> ...




Thanks! It's great to see a couple of walkthroughs for these plugins to better understand what they do. I hadn't heard of this one before. I think there may be yet another one that hasn't been mentioned yet, by "plug and mix". I got a couple plugins by them from some focusrite bundle promo with my audio interface, but I barely use them.




visiblenoise said:


> Might not be ideal, but still relevant: https://www.wavesfactory.com/product/sk10-drum-sub-kick/



Nice find, thanks! I tried it on a couple of different things and I think I'll actually use it on kick drums. On bass I had the feeling the frequency it generates is slightly off. For guitar it added some oomph, but I preferred another setup that I tested: I split the signal from one of the double tracked guitar DIs to another track, added a bass overdrive pedal plugin, a low- and highpass filter, and a transient shaper. My goal was to add some sub bass that isn't as rumbly and muddy as the distorted sub bass. 
I need to check the result again tomorrow with fresh ears and over speakers at a reasonable volume but on my headphones I liked it.




visiblenoise said:


> I'm interested in hearing what kind of results you get!



Me too :D. I hope soon-ish I'll have something that isn't too embarrassing to share. Still getting used to the new 0.090 guitar string (I couldn't tune it higher than drop-E now, even if I wanted to :D ) and the emg 808x pickup that I just installed.




In case anyone cares, I recently stumbled over this bass VI that goes down to double drop C: 









DjinnBass


DjinnBass redefines the benchmark for the next generation of virtual basses. Perfectly suited for extreme, progressive or modern music, where maximum clarity and punch at low registers is paramount. Packed with the industry-leading tones offered by Darkglass Electronics, Neural DSP & Kalium...




www.submissionaudio.com






I haven't bought it yet, but during sale-season I might get tempted.


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## visiblenoise (Aug 18, 2020)

MartinH. said:


> Thanks again for your excellent advice, I got a lot out of that post! Thinking about bass below 100hz as "a series of sine waves with limited room fighting for space" is a great way of phrasing it and helps me better understand where the bass problems in my mixes could come from. Check out this track, where at 0:42 it seems to me like another deeper layer of synthetic bass is added.
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Just for interest - I'm fairly certain that this track is the poster child for the chainsaw/guitar trick:


Doesn't necessarily mean it wasn't also used on At Doom's Gate, but it doesn't really sound similar there, to me it just sounds like the bitey djenty tone. I think there's a synth that's probably doing bass duty below the guitars (based on how the pitch bends down there feel). Just my guess.

Man the guitar tone is great, the treble part almost sounds formant-like. I was gonna say maybe it was layered with some additional synth formant white noise or something, but maybe it's just the guitar tone.


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## jcrosby (Aug 19, 2020)

MartinH. said:


> Thanks again for your excellent advice, I got a lot out of that post! Thinking about bass below 100hz as "a series of sine waves with limited room fighting for space" is a great way of phrasing it and helps me better understand where the bass problems in my mixes could come from. Check out this track, where at 0:42 it seems to me like another deeper layer of synthetic bass is added.
> 
> 
> 
> ...




You bet man! I definitely hear either a bass, possibly a synth layered in there... Could very well be that he's using something like morph to mix the sub frequencies of a bass synth or processed bass guitar. Could be any number of things since he tends to get pretty creative and experimental on the production side...

Yeah, the delay trick is something I picked up over the years. I've seen a few hip hop and EDM producers I know use it. Basically what you do is bus all your non drums to their respective buses.... You can delay each bus except the drums by a few milliseconds. Use your ears as when it comes to the lower frequency stuff you might lose a hair of low end if you don't listen for improved low end... When you bypass all the delays at once you should hear the drums sink back in the mix a bit... You should also notice the low end sounds slightly more difficult to decipher... It's a subtle technique. Some people may not even notice an audible difference... But the physics/psychoacoustics behind it are simple...

Basically what's happening is the drums hit before anything else... unlike just relying on EQ only, by not having a transient there at the same point in time you're making space in a way that you can't with any other kind of processing... There's literally no competing transient there at that exact same time... 

Mid to high elements can have a really short delay, lower stuff will probably sound better with a slightly longer delay... Try and keep it under 10 ms as we simply can't perceive two elements playing this close together as separate. You're brain hears them as in time... 

This is the same principle that Waves in Phase, Melda MAuto-Align, and Sound Radix Auto-Align work on... Delaying signals you tell it to, in order to find the optimum phase response... By shifting elements back in time your manipulating the phase relationship to the attacked of drums, (or anything else you want to give transient priority)

You could of course go deeper into it! One other cool thing about this trick is it naturally loosens everything up in imperceptible amounts... It works a bit like humanize in that the music ever so slightly looser behind the beat.. Depending on the track it might give you the impression that it has just a hair more groove...

Obviously this is a specific technique for specific use cases... Not ideal for orchestra, but can be really useful in music where the transient or drums have to dominate the mix like metal, drum and bass, hip hop, etc...


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## MartinH. (Aug 20, 2020)

I'm having a really hard time composing anything this year, call it writer's block if you want. This is part of the reason why I'm so focused at the moment on sounddesign- and tech stuff - it allows me to spend relaxing hours in front of my DAW while tweaking knobs and sliders during my slow descend into madness. And afterwards I can't get the riff out of my head that has been playing for an hour on repeat... 

But I often find it disappointing when people get like 3 pages worth of replies to a question and then don't post any of their resulting music to listen to. So here's... _something_. I could keep tweaking this forever and I'm sure I'll hate it tomorrow, but my ears are tired and it's too late to keep burdening my neighbors with playing this on repeat over my speakers, so I'll just post it now.



jcrosby said:


> Yeah, the delay trick is something I picked up over the years. I've seen a few hip hop and EDM producers I know use it. Basically what you do is bus all your non drums to their respective buses.... You can delay each bus except the drums by a few milliseconds. Use your ears as when it comes to the lower frequency stuff you might lose a hair of low end if you don't listen for improved low end... When you bypass all the delays at once you should hear the drums sink back in the mix a bit... You should also notice the low end sounds slightly more difficult to decipher... It's a subtle technique. Some people may not even notice an audible difference... But the physics/psychoacoustics behind it are simple...



Thanks a lot for the explanation and especially describing what effect to expect when toggling the delay on and off. I think I can actually hear the difference! I used a negative track delay of -10 ms on the layering kicks, because that's about the "wavelength" that I could measure on the guitar recordings, so I hoped the phase aligns better that way, but I didn't bounce it to wave to check yet. I find it easier to use negative delays on the kicks instead of delaying everything else.




visiblenoise said:


> Man the guitar tone is great, the treble part almost sounds formant-like. I was gonna say maybe it was layered with some additional synth formant white noise or something, but maybe it's just the guitar tone.



They really are great, but I haven't gotten anywhere close to any of his guitar tones yet. Your comment gave me an idea to try a new way of processing the guitar signal though. Another rabbithole to dive into.



jcrosby said:


> You bet man! I definitely hear either a bass, possibly a synth layered in there... Could very well be that he's using something like morph to mix the sub frequencies of a bass synth or processed bass guitar. Could be any number of things since he tends to get pretty creative and experimental on the production side...



It can be really fun to try out new setups and see what happens. So I tried this on the guitars:
a) process as usual at first
b) send copy of that processed signal to new track and put some optional filter or tubescreamer on it
c) send that signal to two new tracks, put an exciter on one and invert the phase on the other
d) route the result of these two together with a) into another track and do the final EQ and processing there before it goes to the master

The idea is to use the phase cancellation to isolate just the signal changes that the multiband exciter creates, so that you get just the fizzy harmonics in isolation and can filter/process/boost them separate from the main signal and then merge them back together. I narrowed their stereo width a bit too.
I think this offers a lot of creative options when you consider that the signal you send to b) doesn't need to be the normal processed signal at all, you can use different amps or distortion pedals to generate the harmonics from and can add them back to the signal. I find the results still somewhat hard to predict though, I need to experiment more with this.



Overall I think I completely failed taking control of the lowend of this track, it's all too muddy still. Listening to another example from Mick Gordon for comparison made that very clear to me:





When you listen to this from 1:55 to about 2:25 you can hear plenty of very tight bass sounds. To me that sounds like more than just layered kicks or one of those regular subharmonic synthesizers. Any idea how this is made? Is this something that might be achievable with triggering very (!) tight and short kick samples from a drum trigger that is fed a lowpassed detection signal?


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## Pier (Aug 20, 2020)

MartinH. said:


> When you listen to this from 1:55 to about 2:25 you can hear plenty of very tight bass sounds. To me that sounds like more than just layered kicks or one of those regular subharmonic synthesizers.



I think I can make something like this. Do you have Zebra?

Edit:

Nice track! You totally nailed the DOOM vibe.

In terms of sound it starts great but when the guitar-like sound enters at 0:30 it gets so loud that it eclipses everything else. Also, the drums in the back seem kinda mid rangey? Maybe you could try adding a low end electronic drum to reinforce that. Another option could be using a multiband compressor or dynamic EQ to tighten the low end and bring it forward.


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## MartinH. (Aug 20, 2020)

Pier said:


> I think I can make something like this. Do you have Zebra?


Sadly not, none of the u-he Synths. I have the synths from Komplete and a couple really old ones like my favorite: the discontinued Albino 3. How would you go about making something like this in broad stroke terms?



Pier said:


> Nice track! You totally nailed the DOOM vibe.


Thanks man, happy to hear that!



Pier said:


> In terms of sound it starts great but when the guitar-like sound enters at 0:30 it gets so loud that it eclipses everything else. Also, the drums in the back seem kinda mid rangey? Maybe you could try adding a low end electronic drum to reinforce that. Another option could be using a multiband compressor or dynamic EQ to tighten the low end and bring it forward.


It definitely can be improved and tomorrow with fresh ears it will probably be more obvious to me how to do that. However I think many of the problems are in composition and "orchestration", so better mixing alone won't get me all the way where I'd want it to be.

Thanks a lot for listening and your feedback!


Edit: I think the FM8 preset "hard low distortion kick" might be in the right ballpark, I'll try that tomorrow.


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## method1 (Aug 20, 2020)

@MartinH. Assuming we're talking about the same sound (the almost staccato synth bass) You could do something like this in massive using a couple of stacked sines and some distortion. Put that through a sub enhancer and you should get fairly close, attached a massive patch I quickly put together.


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## Pier (Aug 20, 2020)

MartinH. said:


> How would you go about making something like this in broad stroke terms?



There are two sounds. A bass like sound with longer notes, and some low end percussive sounds with a lot of low end.

For the bass sound I would start with a very "busy" signal. Either some sine waves with distortion, or a couple of oscillators with saw waves at different octaves. Then either use a low pass or band pass filter to only get the low end. Finally add a softer distortion to that. Maybe add a high pass filter with resonance almost fully open to enhance the low end or another sine wave as a sub oscillator.

For the percussive sound it sounds like the typical kick drum. The base is a very deep sine or triangle wave with a very short envelope modulating the pitch. You can combine layers (one for the click, one for the body, one of the very low end, etc). See how plugins like Kick 2 do it. Then add more distortion to taste.

If you have FabFilter's Pro Q 3 try playing around with the dynamic EQ on the frequencies below 80Hz. You could also try with TDR Nova which is excellent and free.



MartinH. said:


> However I think many of the problems are in composition and "orchestration", so better mixing alone won't get me all the way where I'd want it to be.



It's not only about mixing, but about the sonic intention. You're looking for that tight low end, right? That's just as important IMO as finding the right chords and writing the proper arrangement to evoke... something. Ah, I don't know, I'm digressing.


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## MartinH. (Aug 21, 2020)

MartinH. said:


> I'm sure I'll hate it tomorrow, but my ears are tired and it's too late to keep burdening my neighbors with playing this on repeat over my speakers, so I'll just post it now.



And sure enough the guitars sound like total crap to me today ^_^. But on the bright side I already have a much better understanding of what I did wrong than yesterday! 


I've listened to three Doom OST tracks with a 165 hz and 100 hz brickwall lowpass once each and compared to how my track sounds through that filter. On Mick's tracks you can really hear the energy and rythm in those frequencies, everything is tight, organized and controlled. Elements don't fight with each other and if you know the track you can totally imagine how the rest of the frequency spectrum would sound. Perhaps most importantly, the dynamics are high, there are gaps and pauses all the time. And the difference between a low bass intensity part and high bass intensity part is big, it his you like a hammer, often accentuated by dropping the bass almost entirely before a new high-bass riff hits. I think the first thing I need to do is _remove _lowend from 90% of my instruments and then more strategically go about adding it back in, think more about contrast and sections and orchestrate better which elements gets to play in the bass range and which don't at any given time. The way I structured my riff was also detrimental because there aren't enough pauses to create that contrast. "If all is bassy/loud, nothing is". Right at the intro I already have too much bass, so when listening through the lowpass filter it's barely a difference when the riff hits, but it should be a very noticable shift. 

I haven't tried it yet, but as another experiment to add to my todo list, I want to try out routing a track in a way that there's a gate on the lowend that is controlled via midi on a second channel (or possibly a very fast moving filter contrilled by midi?), so that I can be more deliberate on when exactly an instrument gets to put its foot down in the lowend and when it should stay outside that frequency range.





method1 said:


> @MartinH. Assuming we're talking about the same sound (the almost staccato synth bass) You could do something like this in massive using a couple of stacked sines and some distortion. Put that through a sub enhancer and you should get fairly close, attached a massive patch I quickly put together.



Thanks a lot! That definitely sounds like it belongs in there, but I think I mean another element/aspect. It's hard to describe. What note range is your patch supposed to be triggered on? At E0 it sounds tight and round with lots of lowend, but at E -2 it is rather clicky with a bump at 1.2 khz. I can see uses for both.

I checked another track with a highpass and lowpass filter and the aspect of the sound that I meant is mostly audible in the high end. I think it could be something like a distorted/resonant kick, like the FM8 preset that I mentioned, but it's not just layered on top of kicks, it's triggered by some low frequent, slow attack synth sounds once on every "peak" of their waveform. Like if you think of a sinewave as hills and valleys, trigger a very short kickdrum sample on every hilltop and valley. 

I played around a bit with the drumtrigger plugin in Reaper and holy crap, it's totally possible to trigger a kickdrum synth or sample that way! I haven't found the right sample/sound yet and I still need to figure out a better way to sidechain gate this new signal with the volume of the source signal, but I can totally see this being used to create some hellish synths and guitar riffs!





Pier said:


> There are two sounds. A bass like sound with longer notes, and some low end percussive sounds with a lot of low end.
> 
> For the bass sound I would start with a very "busy" signal. Either some sine waves with distortion, or a couple of oscillators with saw waves at different octaves. Then either use a low pass or band pass filter to only get the low end. Finally add a softer distortion to that. Maybe add a high pass filter with resonance almost fully open to enhance the low end or another sine wave as a sub oscillator.
> 
> For the percussive sound it sounds like the typical kick drum. The base is a very deep sine or triangle wave with a very short envelope modulating the pitch. You can combine layers (one for the click, one for the body, one of the very low end, etc). See how plugins like Kick 2 do it. Then add more distortion to taste.



Thanks again! I'm attaching my latest synth experiment. It has 3 sections, A, B, and A+B. 
A is a sinewave blended with about 25% sawtooth wave, run through a boss metalzone pedal emulation, limiter and tubescreamer (TSB-1).
B is a copy of the synth from A, but 100% sinewave, and it triggers the FM8 distorted kickdrum via Reaper's "Audio to Midi Drum Trigger", and I'm using -5 ms track delay to line up the transient in a way that I think sounds better. 
C is just A and B combined. Not quite there yet, but I think I'm on the right track for some interesting results, especially considering it doesn't _have _to be a kick that's triggered . 
I wonder what happens if I cut out just tiny snippets from a recording of a chainsaw and use those...





Pier said:


> If you have FabFilter's Pro Q 3 try playing around with the dynamic EQ on the frequencies below 80Hz. You could also try with TDR Nova which is excellent and free.


Thanks, will do! I use Nova quite often for its LP and HP filters because I like those better than those in ReaEQ, but I need to use the dynamic part of it more.


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## method1 (Aug 21, 2020)

@MartinH. - The patch works best in the C0-C1 range, but it was thrown together rather quickly 

Xfer LFO tool is useful for shaping low end via sidechain, you can get really precise and tight results with it.


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## Pier (Aug 21, 2020)

MartinH. said:


> I'm attaching my latest synth experiment. It has 3 sections, A, B, and A+B.



This sounds great but.... it has no low end? I thought you wanted to create one of those sub basses


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## WhiteNoiz (Aug 21, 2020)

MartinH. said:


> Overall I think I completely failed taking control of the lowend of this track, it's all too muddy still. Listening to another example from Mick Gordon for comparison made that very clear to me:
> 
> 
> 
> ...




Tried to make an impression of that. Check the attached mp3.

What I hear is a lot of mid-low mid presence with maybe rolled off highs. It sounds somewhat dry with a tighter foundation. I'd say more like "weighty" 'cause I fon't feel there's enough presence for such dry sounds (more like width or proximity). I feel like the "bass" is more around 140 hz or so and the body at about 240-666. 

Other than that, I feel like there are a lot of time based and shaping fx (there could be saturation, vocoding or wide (or oscillating) filters, granular fx, pitch modulation or dissonant harmonics, many voices/chorusing, time stretching, portas/glides on the leads, strong attacks or snappy sounds on the rhythms and amp sims, overdrives etc). You should also probably play around with EQs a lot. THat's my take at least...


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## visiblenoise (Aug 22, 2020)

@MartinH. Great job on the mockup! The general mood was spot on - what did you use for the atmospheric bass synth sound?

I do think more could be done to the guitar tone to make it fit in better. It has an unpolished, midrangey, metal-song-demo kind of sound, and so the bass frequencies seem to take a back seat. Whatever bass tricks you tried aren't coming across strongly enough.

On a side note, what is your guitar signal chain? Did you use mics? Was just playing around with VST amps today, so it's on my mind...


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## MartinH. (Aug 23, 2020)

jcrosby said:


> As far as percussion you can do the same thing enforcer does a number of ways... Layering kicks underneath percussion, electronic kicks tend to do well, (A lot of trailer composers do this). You can use something like XLN's Addictive trigger or a similar drum replacer to trigger and add a kick or percussion layer... I tend to prefer a Kontakt patch of short punchy kicks I have, and copying MIDI, but a drum replacer on a duplicate track would do the job.
> 
> The trick is to use short kicks. Tight punchy kicks will get you a lot more mileage than long kicks, as the tails of the percussion and a long kick are bound to have a non-harmonic relationship, creating unpleasant frequency clashes... The kicks also tend to be centered higher, 70-100 Hz... This lets the deeper percussion and sub bass rule the stuff down around 40-50.
> 
> You can also add a small imperceptible delay to the percussion (5-10 ms) so the kick hits first. It's subtle, but the transients of the short kick will cut through a little better... (Depending on the track, there've been times where I've delayed everything but the percussion by just a few milliseconds so the percussion rides the mix. Totally depends on the track though of course..)



You were so spot on with this, and I found the perfect example in the Doom soundtrack! Check this one kick + braaam at 0:48



I've made a screenshot of the waveform in Reaper: 







The area that I've marked, where the kickdrum is played before the super bassy synth plays, that's 180 ms long! And it's the perfect example of one the effects I'm looking to recreate. 

I've gone through some old sample collections that I bought for neurofunk and psytrance and listened to and looked at the waveforms of over 300 kickdrum samples. This one sharp peak right at the beginning is a big part of what I was looking for and that's not lowend at all. I was thinking I need more or better lowend to give the lowend the impact that it has in the Doom OST, but I think I rather need more specific highend that _supports _the lowend, and less lowend in other places to create that contrast and dynamic and make the lowend feel impactful. 
And then at the end most likely some better mastering.





method1 said:


> @MartinH. - The patch works best in the C0-C1 range, but it was thrown together rather quickly
> 
> Xfer LFO tool is useful for shaping low end via sidechain, you can get really precise and tight results with it.



Do you mean this one, or an LFO feature inside Massive?

I'm not very familiar with Massive but I think I should learn a bit more about it. Seems to be one of the least cryptic synths that I have in my collection, but still fairly powerful. I was sticking with albino so far because afaik Massive can't do the stereo hardpanned and detuned sine waves without using two instances of it, and I wanted it in one synth instance for easier tweaking. 



Pier said:


> This sounds great but.... it has no low end? I thought you wanted to create one of those sub basses


You're right, I noticed that too when I uploaded it, but I thought layering another low sine in is easy and the thing about the sound that I found interesting wasn't in the lowend. You're asking very good questions though, and it had me thinking about this a lot the recent days. I've analyzed parts of the Doom Soundtrack through a different lense and gained some new insights from it:



Pier said:


> It's not only about mixing, but about the sonic intention. You're looking for that tight low end, right? That's just as important IMO as finding the right chords and writing the proper arrangement to evoke... something. Ah, I don't know, I'm digressing.


You're right! Feel feel to digress any time, it's great food for thought. I think I was basically asking the wrong questions from the start more or less. I was fascinated by the energy and impact and thought I need more bass for that, but it's almost the opposite. When I listened to the Doom OST with a 200 hz highpass filter and compare to the same parts with a 200hz lowpass filter, I realized that Mick found ways to always make the highend support the lowend and also "describe" what's going on in the lowend in a way, that would be perfectly audible even on a tiny speaker. There's usually some kind of resonant distortion/excitation/whatever-it's-called on the deep bass synths, that extends them into the high frequency range and generates that bbbrrrRRRRZZZZzzzttt sound that I asked about before in another thread. And the lowend is just super tightly organized with lots of breaks to let you breathe and create contrast.


More in the next post...


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## MartinH. (Aug 23, 2020)

WhiteNoiz said:


> Tried to make an impression of that. Check the attached mp3.
> 
> What I hear is a lot of mid-low mid presence with maybe rolled off highs. It sounds somewhat dry with a tighter foundation. I'd say more like "weighty" 'cause I fon't feel there's enough presence for such dry sounds (more like width or proximity). I feel like the "bass" is more around 140 hz or so and the body at about 240-666.
> 
> Other than that, I feel like there are a lot of time based and shaping fx (there could be saturation, vocoding or wide (or oscillating) filters, granular fx, pitch modulation or dissonant harmonics, many voices/chorusing, time stretching, portas/glides on the leads, strong attacks or snappy sounds on the rhythms and amp sims, overdrives etc). You should also probably play around with EQs a lot. THat's my take at least...



That's an awesome impression! I think you totally nailed the lowend. When I put the 200hz lowpass filter on it, I would believe it's from the soundtrack if you told me that's where it's from. I think the only thing missing is the highfrenquency sharp transients that I talked about in my previous post to accentuate the bass. You've got clicky stuff in there, but it's not in sync with the low bass synth, and when you put a 200hz highpass filter on it, you can no longer tell when the bass synth plays because it's missing that brrrrzzt sound in the highend that makes the shape of the low sinewaves audible in the higher frequencies.





visiblenoise said:


> @MartinH. Great job on the mockup! The general mood was spot on - what did you use for the atmospheric bass synth sound?


Thanks man! I hope the next version I'll post will be a lot better, but it'll take me some time to get there because I want/need to do some experiments in other projects first.

Do you use Reaper? If not, let me know at which timecode(s) the sounds play that you're interested in and I'll try to describe with screenshots what's going on. It's mostly different things layered.




visiblenoise said:


> I do think more could be done to the guitar tone to make it fit in better. It has an unpolished, midrangey, metal-song-demo kind of sound, and so the bass frequencies seem to take a back seat. Whatever bass tricks you tried aren't coming across strongly enough.



Yes, the guitars still suck for sure. The "creative processing" I tried on it, may even have been detrimental. And I really need to give more attention to the bassguitar in general. I just keep forgetting how much of that what my brain has filed under "great guitar sound", really is bass+guitar+(drums+)mastering.

I've found this really cool tutorial on using a waveshaper to emulate a guitar amp: 



That made me finally download that free plugin bundle from Melda an there's some _really _cool stuff in there. That waveshaper alone offers a ton of options, but there's a bunch of other really useful things in there.

That youtube channel has some pretty cool guitar tones and he demos different amp sims with a mostly identical mastering chain and even uploaded the Reaper project for people to learn from. That was a bit of a revelation because in my journey to learning more about mixing and mastering I had gone back from having a bunch of Ozone plugins on the master, to having basically nothing on the master and trying to get it all right with just mixing. I think I need to put some effects back on the mastering chain to get my sound where I want it to be. Here's the video where he goes over his mastering chain: 



I tried copying it onto one of my other projects and while some of the settings didn't quite work, I thought it's a lot closer to the sound I want. So I definitely need to spend some more time improving my metal mastering techniques.



visiblenoise said:


> On a side note, what is your guitar signal chain? Did you use mics? Was just playing around with VST amps today, so it's on my mind...



Do you have Reaper or should I make screenshots of the settings? 

I was in the middle of switching over to a new guitar signal chain, adding bass guitar, moving some things around, orchestrating the elements that occupy the lowend range better, and trying out some Ozone presets on the master, but I have to go now, so I'll just export and upload it as is. Let me know if you think the guitars got better or worse and which version(s) of the signal chain you're interested in because they're rather different. You'll notice some distracting gaps in the riff now. I just edited some breaks in and wanted to place some highfrequency synth stuff there, but I don't have the time for that right now, so it sounds very weird...


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## Joël Dollié (Aug 23, 2020)

There was an article about the Doom 2016 soundtrack where Mick said that he didn't use subharmonic generators for the most part, unless it's something really slow.


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## MartinH. (Aug 23, 2020)

Joël Dollié said:


> There was an article about the Doom 2016 soundtrack where Mick said that he didn't use subharmonic generators for the most part, unless it's something really slow.



Thanks for the info, that article sounds very interesting, do you remember where it was or have some kind of hint on how I could find it?


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## Joël Dollié (Aug 24, 2020)

MartinH. said:


> Thanks for the info, that article sounds very interesting, do you remember where it was or have some kind of hint on how I could find it?


I tried to find it again but couldn't.. All I can remember is that it was a physical newspaper (scanned onto a website). Must be hidden somewhere, I must have looked for production oriented interviews.. He did so many. But I clearly remember him mentioning that.


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## MartinH. (Aug 26, 2020)

Joël Dollié said:


> I tried to find it again but couldn't.. All I can remember is that it was a physical newspaper (scanned onto a website). Must be hidden somewhere, I must have looked for production oriented interviews.. He did so many. But I clearly remember him mentioning that.



Thanks for looking! I tried my luck as well but couldn't find it. What I did find though was a facebook post with an AMA that he held: 



There's a lot in there, even what strings he uses on the Guitar.

@jcrosby: After you've mentioned OTT in the other thread I tried it, and it's exactly what I needed! Sound example of a first quick test is attached. Not perfect but the core of the things that I'm looking for is there. 


The effect chain looked like this and I automated the drive knob of Head Crusher. All the Replikas have the mix knob at 1%. The screenshot shows the first OTT instance's settings, the others are a bit different.


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## MartinH. (Aug 26, 2020)

poetd said:


> Try this on your transients (yes its a muppet), automating some silence in just before them can really help them stand out more.




Thanks a lot! This is a great idea, I have to try that. I think in Reaper I could even automate it via sidechaining. He says you can't because the sidechain compressor wouldn't duck the signal soon enough, but I believe in reaper I could use an inverted gate or a sidechained compressor that both have a pre-open / pre-comp feature to start ducking before the kick hits.


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## jcrosby (Aug 26, 2020)

MartinH. said:


> Thanks a lot! This is a great idea, I have to try that. I think in Reaper I could even automate it via sidechaining. He says you can't because the sidechain compressor wouldn't duck the signal soon enough, but I believe in reaper I could use an inverted gate or a sidechained compressor that both have a pre-open / pre-comp feature to start ducking before the kick hits.


You can actually achieve this with a compressor that has lookahead. Pro-C2 is simply incredible for this.

This also happens to solve two issues that can happen when sidechaning - The ducking is 'pre-reactive' as the puppet (  ) says. And it removes audible 'clicking' that can occur with heavy sidechaining. (We're talking HEAVY sidechaning... Attack at 0, 18 dB gain reduction or more. Which yes although extreme, is completely within the realm of sanity in aggressive genres of EDM like Drum & Bass...

And speaking of that audible clicking... It's actually a lot more destructive than you might think. That click is full-frequency-spectrum and happens on the grid with the kick which causes phasing issues. The phase interference can totally reshape the summed waveform of the kick and sub bass, causing visible phase rotation and an inconsistent low end.

Live's built-in compressor is especially bad for this... I've checked it using scopes, rendering audio, etc... Serious clicking that creates a weak/flabby Kick/Sub combo that can drift and be inconsistent over time... Pro-C2 with lookahead jacked up all the way however slices through sidechaining like a hot knife on butter.

Check out the screenshots below where you can see the result of sidechaining in Pro-C2 with Lookahead off, then Lookahead on.


*No lookahead. (Pro-C2)*





*No lookahead --- A waveform discontinuity, much like a bad audio edit... Soloing the bass reveals very audible "Clicking" Side Effects. *






*Lookahead On - 20 MS (Pro-C2):




*


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## MartinH. (Aug 27, 2020)

jcrosby said:


> You can actually achieve this with a compressor that has lookahead. Pro-C2 is simply incredible for this.
> 
> This also happens to solve two issues that can happen when sidechaning - The ducking is 'pre-reactive' as the puppet (  ) says. And it removes audible 'clicking' that can occur with heavy sidechaining. (We're talking HEAVY sidechaning... Attack at 0, 18 dB gain reduction or more. Which yes although extreme, is completely within the realm of sanity in aggressive genres of EDM like Drum & Bass...



Wow, thanks a lot for another super detailed post! I think that lookahead feature must be pretty much the same as what ReaComp does, just by a different name. I tried to replicate your experiment: 







With 20 ms lookahead and 20 ms attack it definitely sounds better and the waveform doesn't have these weird peaks. 

Although I did notice a problem with reacomp that I don't understand: even at 0ms attack it doesn't start compressing right on the grid, it has about 0.5 to 1 ms delay till it kicks in. So those visible spikes there are less a result of the click the 0 ms attack produces, it's the result of varying degrees of phase alignment between the sub bass and kick at the time where the kick hits, because the comp kicks in slightly delayed. The lookahead fixes that of course. Maybe that just means I shouldn't use ReaComp with 0 ms lookahead at all and always use at least 1 ms. I wasn't able to determine whether this is a problem of ReaComp, Reaper, or my settings. I tried reducing the RMS timewindow, but that didn't fix it.




jcrosby said:


> And speaking of that audible clicking... It's actually a lot more destructive than you might think. That click is full-frequency-spectrum and happens on the grid with the kick which causes phasing issues. The phase interference can totally reshape the summed waveform of the kick and sub bass, causing visible phase rotation and an inconsistent low end.



Ok, this is really interesting because I don't understand it. I'm unfamiliar with phase rotation, so I watched a video on it. If I understood coorectly, rotating phase means the waveform looks different but sounds the same, and in consequence that means summing it to another signal would give audibly different results for a rotated phase, even though the soloed rotated phase signal sounds the same as the original. Is that correct? I don't quite understand yet how that click specifically is a problem (unless of course you don't want to hear a click there). I definitely hear that it sounds better with the lookahead, but I can't tell what part of that is caused by the cleaner lowend that doesn't get phase interference from the two different low frequency signals overlapping out of phase (that part I understand), and what is caused by the lack of a the 0 ms attack click (that part I don't understand).




jcrosby said:


> Live's built-in compressor is especially bad for this... I've checked it using scopes, rendering audio, etc... Serious clicking that creates a weak/flabby Kick/Sub combo that can drift and be inconsistent over time... Pro-C2 with lookahead jacked up all the way however slices through sidechaining like a hot knife on butter.
> 
> Check out the screenshots below where you can see the result of sidechaining in Pro-C2 with Lookahead off, then Lookahead on.



I couldn't find a second compressor in my collection yet that I could compare against ReaComp, they usually don't go down to 0 ms attack or can't sidechain. I googled pro-c2 and it seems like that plugin reports a fixed latency of 20ms, so that you can automate the lookahead between 0 ms and 20 ms, correct? ReaComp's lookahead (or pre-comp as they call it) goes up to 250 ms (I think you might even be able to type in higher values, but that's where the slider ends by default), but you probably shouldn't automate that.


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## WhiteNoiz (Sep 2, 2020)

MartinH. said:


> That's an awesome impression! I think you totally nailed the lowend. When I put the 200hz lowpass filter on it, I would believe it's from the soundtrack if you told me that's where it's from. I think the only thing missing is the highfrenquency sharp transients that I talked about in my previous post to accentuate the bass. You've got clicky stuff in there, but it's not in sync with the low bass synth, and when you put a 200hz highpass filter on it, you can no longer tell when the bass synth plays because it's missing that brrrrzzt sound in the highend that makes the shape of the low sinewaves audible in the higher frequencies.



Well, it's possible the bass parts have layers in a lot of frequencies. I did keep them separate (and didn't really sync them). Most bass sounds are high cut, so that's why the buzz gets lost. The high stuff is separate in general. I tried to selectively boost some mid-highs for the lower sounds, but yeah, it's cut a lot in the highs. It needed quite a bit of EQing to try to match it tbh. Maybe you could also use something that generates harmonics or an octaver or something? Then saturate only those frequencies. Or duplicate the channel, split the frequencies and use different processing.

Also, maybe try fuzz on the guitars.

Attached a take on the kick thingy too, check the attachment.

Mostly trying to emulate the process, not the exact sound. Some things to note: Use mostly ER on the verb and create the movement with delays, flanging, phasing, auto-panning, chorus, gating etc instead. Hefty amounts of EQ (and better matching). The noise, distorted layer on the pad uses bit reduction; it adds a nice crunchiness. You'd mostly need heavier modulated bass I guess.


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## Living Fossil (Sep 2, 2020)

MartinH. said:


> I couldn't find a second compressor in my collection yet that I could compare against ReaComp, they usually don't go down to 0 ms attack or can't sidechain.



If it comes to such applications, Klanghelm DC8C is hard to beat. Just don't forget to turn the saturation off.
The only problem of DC8C is that it doesn't cost much more... 






Klanghelm


Klanghelm audio plugins (VST, VST3, AU, AAX)




klanghelm.com


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## MartinH. (Sep 7, 2020)

Sorry for the late reply guys! I saw your messages and had hoped I can combine my answer with another audio snippit to post, but I got stuck on other stuff, so no progress to show yet, sorry. 
I'm having a bit of CPU load trouble with my template too. All the fat stacks of FX plugins weigh heavily on my poor old quadcore and make working in the project a bit sluggish. I haven't found a good workaround yet, I'll probably have to start freezing tracks, which I strongly dislike doing and normally try to avoid at all cost.



WhiteNoiz said:


> Maybe you could also use something that generates harmonics or an octaver or something? Then saturate only those frequencies



I've had good results with using the Ozone Multiband Exciter for things like that. It's one of my favorite plugins.

You've nailed that tight kick sound!



WhiteNoiz said:


> Also, maybe try fuzz on the guitars.


Good idea, will do! You mean something like the R47 (RAT emulation) plugin? Where does it go in the chain, before the amp like an overdrive, or as replacement for the preamp? Combined with overdrive or without?




jononotbono said:


> Also, Brainworx bx Subsynth is a great plugin!



Looking at an old project of mine, I rediscovered a plugin that I forgot I had: 



It seems to work pretty well, but in one usecase where I tried out all the different variants of similar plugins that I have, I actually liked one of the reaper stock ones the most. Iirc it was called "Bass Manager/Booster".


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## MartinH. (Sep 7, 2020)

Living Fossil said:


> If it comes to such applications, Klanghelm DC8C is hard to beat. Just don't forget to turn the saturation off.
> The only problem of DC8C is that it doesn't cost much more...
> 
> 
> ...



Thanks for the recommendation! I haven't tested it yet, but I downloaded "molot" today, because I saw it recommended somewhere and Mick Gordon used a Russian synthesizer on the soundtrack. I'm curious what kind of color this thing will add: 









VladG Molot Compressor | Tokyo Dawn Records


Vlad's legendary Molot compressor. Raw, brutal and direct, with subtle traces of rock'n'roll!




www.tokyodawn.net


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## WhiteNoiz (Sep 8, 2020)

MartinH. said:


> Good idea, will do! You mean something like the R47 (RAT emulation) plugin? Where does it go in the chain, before the amp like an overdrive, or as replacement for the preamp? Combined with overdrive or without?



Haven't used that particular one, but yeah, something in "pedal" form. Guess that will also depend on the rest of your processing and the source sound. Add it wherever it seems to fit best. Experiment. I'd probably say before the amp and as a replacement to the overdrive, but nothing's stopping you from trying different combos and see what you get (you could even use both overdrive + fuzz or filtering or saturation). You can try something like Distorque Facebender; I've found it handy (it's free). If you don't have some other accessible replacement that is or just wanna try things out.


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