Patch Request: Jay Robinson - Hold Out (House Bass)

Any time, bro. I tried adding distortion inserts too but it just added too much fuzz. Glad I could help.

Thanks for the reply and patch Bill 😀
Yeah the hardest part we found trying to make this patch was that if we got the low end right we couldn't get the proper mid range buzz and keep it sounding warm. And if we got the mid range right we lost the fat low end bass sound. we tried so many different variations but couldn't nail it. Stoked on this forum and everyone for helping out! Thanks a bunch!

Thanks for the Videos Mstaicu! I do use that precess on a lot of my stuff to get to bring out the harmonics and it works great, but this patch seemed like it had a lot more going on with it than that so it was quite a bit above my level of knowledge. Thanks for the rely and the help!

Hey Hexspa, really great job on this! This is very VERY close to the sound. We were trying to use a bit crusher on the end because we couldn't get the sound right in any of our synths, then we switched to a lot of other saturation and distortion plugins (Guitar rig, Amp, Decapitator, camel crusher) but they we kept loosing the nice fat low end in the sound. We tried different layers and effect racks but could not get anywhere near where you took it. Thanks so much for this and explaining in detail how you came up with it...Really helpful! Its cool to see how you pulled it all together in only massive without any other processing. Gonna a fun patch to mess around with 😀

Hey Dannye. I just made my patch version of the Jay Robinson "Hold Out" track Bass House Synth line.

I did it in Native Instruments' Massive. It's a monophonic 'legato triller' patch with moderate equal glide. I went with a middle intensity square wave into two Scream filters routed in series. The first filter cutoff is set to about 1:30 and 50% resonance which helps thicken up filter 2, that also has 50% resonance but also a touch of cutoff modulation for some bite using Envelope 4.

From there it goes into a Classic Tube in the FX1 slot and finally into the EQ which has much of the high end removed, a small notch at what I estimate to be around 2kHz and the tiniest low shelf taking the sub level down a hair. I realize the Hardclipper is on for Insert 2 but it isn't doing anything. Lastly, I added 2 semitones of pitch bend using Envelope 1.

One important part of this patch is how it uses the Macro controls. I routed Macro 1 to Filter 2's cutoff, and a very small amount to the Classic Tube's drive control. This is mainly for the first note in the phrase I copied that sounds a touch brighter than the other notes. I used Macro 2 to increase the pitch decay time for Envelope 1. You can hear this in the last two notes though I suspect they change this throughout the part more often.

I happened upon this combination by pitching the track up two octaves. This let me hear the pitch bend more clearly as well as what I considered to be a square wave sound. While you can definitely hard clip a sine wave to create this, I prefer to use as little processing as possible. The bass line in the track sounds heavily saturated, almost parallel compressed. While I'm not exactly sure how they did it, I found the Classic Tube as well as the Scream filters to be helpful in this regard.

One thing I'll add is that the kick samples really add to the punch of the bass line. I noticed that the amplitude envelope's attack is set a lot slower than I initially suspected. By setting it slower, you get out of the way of the kick and also eliminate clicks and pops.

Oh, and the whole secret to this bass, for me, is shaving off the buzziness in the high end. This is a very round, saturated sound but with no fuzz. The very first note in my recording might have a touch of fuzz because when I did my final check I pushed up Macro 1 a lot. In fact, I think some of that extra brightness comes from the quiet Reggae sample on the downbeat.

I'm open to feedback. Thanks.

Attachments

808-Hold-Out.nmsv

Thanks guys! I'm just heading into burning man and will be offline for the next week but stoked to check this out when i get back!

The higher bass sounds like an FM bass to me: a sine wave modulating another sine, with envelope automation of the modulation amount. I've attached a Serum patch that's somewhat close. The lower bass sound in the original is very nice, haven't tried that yet.

WSL-FM-Bass.fxp.zip

Hi Dannye. To my ears, that sounds like a heavily saturated sine wave bass, also referred to "distorted 808 bass" on the web. Fanu did a few good tutorials on this topic. It is also something quite frequently used in drum and bass and trap music. I ask the community to correct me if I'm wrong.

It's also used in this song as well. Comes in at 1:30