Basic Psytrance bass tutorial

Summary

In this tutorial I will show you how to make a basic psytrance synth bass with a basic subtractive synthesizer. Filters, envelopes and equalization are covered.

The Score

Set your tempo to around 140 - 150 bpm. Insert a new synth (any subtractive synth will do), I used 3xosc, a native basic 3 oscillator subtractive synth. Open your piano roll and draw a sequence like on the picture below. Lay notes down on lower octaves.

Fig 1: Bass score

Your note length should be 1/16 (sixteenth note of a measure - 1/4 of a beat ).

1. Leave out all first 1/4 notes and fill the rest on every beat. The first 1/4 of the beat is the place where your kick will come in. Leaving out the bass note at that position will prevent kick and bass overlap. Overlapping can lead to multiple problems (phase cancellation, rumble, muddyness etc.).
2. Shorten the notes so there is distinct difference between them. You can stretch notes at their end (to bypass snapping in FL studio press Left Alt while changing note length).

The Synth

Fig 2: 3xosc main panel

Turn off all of the oscillators except one (shown on 3xosc picture with 1). For the synthesizer waveform choose one that is rich with harmonics - saw or square (2). Lower the pitch of the oscillator to something like -12 or -24 semitones (3). I lowered it to -24 to get the fundamental harmonic frequency in the 50-100 Hz range. The bass should usually be monophonic.

When played you should get something similar to this:

Hosted by kiwi6.com file hosting

Filter and envelope

Fig 3: Filter panel on 3xosc

Next, add a lowpass filter (1). Steeper filters work better, so choose a filter that has the slope of 18-36 dB/octave (they are usually called LP18, LP24, LP36, low 24 etc...). In this particular case LPx2 is a 24 dB/octave low pass filter.
Decrease the cutoff by 2/3 (2). You can add a bit of resonance, but not too much. Next tweak the filter envelope amount knob to 1/2 positive. This means that when the envelope is at the peak point it opens the filter by half of its range.
Envelope controls (4):

Attack: Very short or nonexistent.
Decay and Sustain: Short decay and low sustain will give you that plucky sound you're after.
Release: Turn the release off on both your amplitude and filter envelopes. Last thing you want is your bass overlaping itself, creating rumble and sounding muddy.

In this particular example the volume envelope is off, so there is no release present (i.e. the sound stops when the end of the note is reached). Thus turning off or increasing the release on the filter envelope would have no effect on the sound.
When played it should sound something like this:

Hosted by kiwi6.com file hosting

The Kick

Next add a kick on every beat.
Usually because of the kick length, it will overlap the bass. As mentioned above, this makes it sound muddy, creates rumble or phase cancellation. To avoid that you can use a shorter kick, cut the existing one inside an audio editor, or use sidechaining to duck the bass. Sidechaining will be covered in a future tutorial.
I've cut my kick using volume envelope in FL's sampler channel. Avoid using long kicks with this method, because cutting will take out most of the body of the kick. You don't want your kick to sound thin.
Below is an example of overlapping marked in red, and the result after cutting away the tail.

Fig 5: Kick and bass overlapping issue

Kick and bass playing together:

Hosted by kiwi6.com file hosting

Equalization 

Fig 6: Spectrum of the bass

If we look at the spectrum of the bass synth, we notice it has much going on in the sub bass part between 20 and 40 Hz (1). Always cut out that non-musical sub bass rumble.
By using a parametric equalizer (in this example it's the Parametric EQ2 that comes native to FL studio, for alternative check out the free MEqualizer) select the first band and set its type to high pass. This can be achieved by right clicking the band in PEQ2 and selecting Type -> High Pass (2), or dragging along the small icon at the top of the band controls (3).

Fig 7: Selecting band filter type

By default, the high pass is not steep enough, so adjust the filter order to over 64 dB/octave and cut out everything below 35 - 40  Hz. This will make room for upper bass partials in the bass synth.

Fig 9: Selecting filter order (steepness)

Next make a small dip around 200 - 400 Hz to take away some muddiness and to emphasize low and mid frequencies. And lastly if the bass synth sounds too bright reduce the treble.

Fig 10: Final equalizer state

In this particular example I've cut out all under 40 Hz, made a small dip around 250 Hz, and reduced slightly the treble above 5 kHz.

Final result:

Hosted by kiwi6.com file hosting

Project file: 3xosc Bass Tutorial