How to make groovy bass MIDI patterns for your tracks
Winter has hit South Africa properly, all the more reason for some music production tutorials to warm up the studio and what better way than to look at bass MIDI patterns.
Today we’re going back to basics and discussing a technique I use to quickly and easily create unique MIDI patterns on-the-fly. This trick is particularly great on basslines, for creating compelling and evolving patterns.
Creating a groovy bassline can be a laborious task, going backwards and forwards to find the exact groove, often times the amount of time it takes to create a good MIDI pattern ends up putting a lot of us off the entire process. If you’ve found yourself in that situation of you’re sitting with creative block, be sure to try this out – it’s super simple yet very effective.
The core concept is to break down the task of creating the entire sequence into much smaller, easier-to-manage tasks – creating multiple smaller sequences that you piece together like Lego blocks, on-the-fly.
Another reason that makes this technique such a powerful workflow “hack”, is the ability to create a multitude of different variations quickly and easily. Once you’ve come up with the main elements for your track, creating an evolving bassline using this technique should take you a few minutes!
Not specific to bass MIDI patterns!
The technique in today’s music production tutorial is not specific to bass MIDI patterns, the logic can be applied to almost any instrument across the board – it’s a particularly nice technique to use in combination with something like polyrhythms to create immersive arps and lead sequences.
It’s also not specific to one genre, I use this technique often across the board – in Breakbeats, Techno and Drum & Bass, so hopefully it helps spark some creativity and inspiration for you guys whether or not you’re into Trance.
Without further ado, let’s check out my bass MIDI patterns video, and let me know your thoughts!
