Creating Techno sub bass – tips and tricks [VIDEO]
Today we’re looking at some sound design techniques for creating techno sub bass for your tracks.
One of the major differences I picked up between Techno and a variety of other electronic dance music sub-genres is the unique approach to sub bass. Something I have been approaching totally the wrong way, coming from a Psytrance background.
While genres like Psytrance rely on notes and mid-range energy to create groove in the bass, Techno often relies on a unique side-chain pattern and the relation between the kick and the bass, sometimes even to the point where they sound like a single sound source.
Sometimes this is done by heavily processing and resampling the actual kick drum, however in this example for ease of being able to follow along, I used a basic sine wave. Don’t be afraid of overlapping the placement of the kick and bass, as we will apply a side-chain effect to make space for each sound in the mix. Polyverse Gatekeeper is an exceptional plugin for this type of side-chain effect, as it easily allows you to create a sequence of different curves to cycle through, here you’re able to create a huge variety of grooves.
What about the mid-range?
I generally apply a high-pass EQ to my synths and leads, around the 250hz region, this helps to separate them from the low-end content and create definition for each element. However, now that we’ve reduced the amount of mid-range content in the bass by only using a sine wave, we can now drop the frequency range of the high-pass EQ, allowing for more low-end content from the synths and leads to come through. This will undoubtedly make your synths and leads sound much bigger in the mix, without clashing with any frequencies from the bass.
For an in-depth walkthrough of the process, check out the video here to create some gnarly techno sub bass :
