Tutorial: Distortion & Complex Bass Design
Comments (117)
This is actually so useful thank you so much !!!
Just when I think that we have reached the end of the video KOAN Sound: "I'll add some more variation in" Me: BRAAAAAAAA!!!
No words other than, WOW
and to think this is what they were doing 5 years ago LOL
sheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeesh!
What im confused about is, isnt the gain from a utility placed before a saturator and the gain knob on the saturator the same thing?
And on EQ8, which comes before and is there specifically for normalizing bumped EQ bands... My guess is just that everyone learns things differently and it's probably just a quirk.
I was under the assumption that if you were to reveal how you do your sound design it would lead to lots of copycats. I now realize that very few people would be truly able to copy this without years of prior experience in bass sound design, and that those who would be able to do not need this tutorial
Lots of people can make all kind of sounds, they could give away every secret and every preset and sample, but your favorite producers soul and talent is not in in their sound design, its in the arrangement of the track and the note intervals they tend to choose. You could 100% spend all your time mastering/surpassing Koan Sound design fairly quickly, but then not be able to arrange them tastefully. Its a balancing act.
Is this sort of bass design possible using vital ? Im not a big fan of operator so would be nice to know I could redo this on vital :)
There is FM within Vital. There are two big knobs next to the wavetableposition the first one is for the spectrum effects and the second one is for the frequency modulation. You have to choose the oscillator doing the frequency modulation first, of course.
Howdy! Awesome tutorial, after 4h I am at Minute 23 :D. I am on ableton 12 and for me with the LFO I hear the automation but I dont see the bell curves move. Does anyone know what I mean and have a solution to it? I mean it works but its hard to see, would like to have it was possible.
top centre on lfo where it says 'mod' , click that, it will change it to 'remote' and you will see the curves moving.
Such a legend
44:45 “gonna label some stuff cus this’ll get quite complicated… AT SOME POINT”
How do they get the bass to sound so full? I follow all the steps and mine still sounds thin in comparison. Maybe it's a difference in volume.
The thinness can come from so many points in the process, like if u have auto warp on and any of the bounces u do aren’t unwarped before putting them in the sampler, or if any of the cutoffs from the splits are too far apart or automated to be so, genuinely so tricky
🤯 been in the back of my mind to join this patreon and wow what have i been doing. i knew something like this existed here and yea wow...
filters look activated in Operator but they aren't really activated, right?
I saw that too. My guess is the sustain of the filter envelope is at 100.
for the past 3 years ive tried going through this tutorial maybe 2 or 3 times a year and every time once it gets to around the 35 min mark my bass stops doing the thing. anytime i try automating that resonated eq into all the saturation and distortion it just sounds like garbage
HAHA! That literally just happened to me (and it takes a LOT longer than 35min to 'get' to 35min in the tutorial). Sometimes I just wanna throw the laptop out the window like a frisbee. Still - the patches do sound sick before that. Who knows... Glad it wasn't just me
Trash 2 and Tantrum both discontinued.. lol
Neutron 4 has the Trash distortion now
It's taken me 3 hours to get through the first 10 minutes of this
I giggled at that... but now I've started working through it I can see why. Gee Wiz! It's totally awesome though. I'm hoping once I make the patch, to replace the distortion units with others I more commonly use to 'compare' all the different versions I can make
that intro is gold
Apparently tantrum is sold out, weird for a vst
Hey Will. There is a really throaty, moist bass that you use in tracks like Chalk It Out (1:00-1:10). It's definitely my favorite KS bass - was wondering if you could shed some light on this! Is it a single track similar to the above tutorial; i.e., multiple parallel effects? Or is it layered with some type of foley or a specific distortion? It's such a cool, strange sound because it has such a guttural character but not over the top.
Having an issue with my Pitch after the final resample. When i pitch up or down on the midi the tone changes but it doesn't really have an effect on the distortions. I set Transposition to a macro knob from Simpler and got this result. When I switch to sampler the transposition works with the distortions, but i cant map that to a knob for automations. Any idea?
the gain staging into the distortion is a huge tip. Thanks!
can anyone explain the reasoning behind pitching the midi up 31 steps, instead of 36? 13:40
Its to bring it back to 'C'. Bass is strongest on 'F' so they designed it on 'F' to get clean and beefed tones and the brought it 'C' so that they can play whatever key want to from the midi.
this is insane, I have never seen someone have this much control over their bass, most people just resample once its gets too messy. sick as fuck.
Thank you so much. So innovative and creative. Use of distortion is incredible!
I gotta say this is incredible. thank you so much
2 minutes in and my mind is already blown. Fuggetaboutit
This is so awesome, however I may have to bill Koan Sound for a new pair of trousers. Only problem I'm encountering (apart from shitting my pants) is with the macro rack, anyone know how to create something like that? Any videos online or anywhere I can download something similar? Any help much appreciated. Cheers and keep up the awesome tutorials!
you just have to make a group of the plugins, just mark the plugins you want to make macros with, and hit cmd+G. This puts all the plugins in a group, and to the far left you see a sidebar. Click the icon on top(icon is a macro) and voila
incredible
so after all that do you run a clean sub channel?
would love to know the answer to this!
Dont sleep on the gains. i love the level of control , i feel the power!
Madness, thank you!
Some info for folks inclined to try Tantrum as seen in this video...currently it appears to crash Ableton, Bitwig, and Logic on Mac/Big Sur. I am using an intel chip so this is not a M1 thing. So far I'm having some difficulty getting information about this from them. When I get a coherent response I will post that.
Absolutely mind blowing stuff. Thank you!
"I'll try distorting it because why not" sound design in a nutshell
This is so amazing!!! Sometime you should make a tutorial for how to make your more mellow and subdued wobbly basses (like in the song Fuego). I am very curious how you make them
is that a simpler or a sampler on the first re sample? you say its a sampler but its labeled simpler :'( cant get those sexual pitch bends
Yeah man I'm struggling with the same thing. I'm trying to make a rack similar to the macro rack but am struggling because I is noob.
This has to be one of the more insightful tutorials I have ever watched for any type of bass music,. Clearly explained and demonstrated on a subject that is purely experimental. Thanks a lot for sharing this information it is definitely a more advanced tutorial but opens up endless possibilities in the realm of Automation and DIstortion. I managed to get Tantru on sale when i first watched and its a really interest tool coupled with the likes of Trash and Outputs Therma and Portal too. :D You Guys are Sick Thanks Again!!!
Thank you for sharing 🔮
Don't know if anyone has suggested this but for many of these videos an Ableton project to study with the processing you are showing would help tremendously. It's easy to let stuff slip by...I work through these with Ableton after watching it once and find I miss many small things along the way. Studying the musical examples of how you applied the techniques would be awesome. Not asking for your actual tunes just the examples you create for these vids. Thanks again.
That would be pretty cool, especially this project .
Got pretty lost near the end but I'll watch and work with it a few more times. I think I'm probably not alone there.....quite the chain(s)....Thanks guys I am eating this stuff up.
you werent joking geez
after watching the whole thing, I vote for this as best tutorial of all time, all catagories
wow this is amazing, thanks!
thanks
probably the best tutorial i ever watched. thanks, guys...
anyone know what the macro in the sampler is that massively increases the sound on attack? https://imgur.com/a/81wROhG
nevermind. It's an envelope assigned to the pitch. ... I think.
I notice that there is all kinds of clipping going on on various devices. is that not really a problem unless the track itself isn't clipping? Since we have the limiter.
Yeah the limiter prevents any clipping on the channel as its the last thing in the chain :)
That Valhalla rack you use, do each of those chains have an instance of valhalla on them?
I think one of them is completely dry then he automates the one with the Valhalla on 100% wet as a wet/dry control!
After hearing Maruda Sudden Death Yakz use Reason foe their sound design and now seeing you guys use it and how it actually works Im SO interested in it. Love the modular/analog approach! Im learning ableton AND reason in this one this is incredible content thank you!!
Any chance you could share your Operator default patch? I'm only 3 mins in and I can't get my distorted white noise + sine patch to sound anything like yours (sounds awful) I noticed there are some weird things going on in the default Ableton operator patch though, & I think that may have something to do with it. I tried attentively copying every knob, value & parameter, but it's just... not working. Thanks for putting this together though, excited to continue it once I figure this out lol
I had the same issue, check your sustain values because that seemed to be the problem with mine, oh and on the first osc their settings are a little different than the rest.
This tutorial taught me more in an hour than I learned in months of school 🥴 I tried using the multiple and gate from trash 2 on those upper particles and it worked really interestingly!! Lol
this video broke my brain, holy smokes!!
yeah the end turned my brain to mush. These guys are actually wizards
I would really like to see some more abstract sound design FM synthesis techniques on the next tutorial.
Second this.
thanks for this, gents !
This is a great video, but I got stuck for like half an hour on the technique of adding a reverb tail and using the gate to get rid of the artifacts, because no matter what I did to adjust the reverb and/or the level of the reverb chain, the reverb tail was louder than the sampler signal, so the gate had to kill the whole sound in order to kill the tail. I dunno how that happened. Drove me nuts, so I just said 'fuck it' and got rid of the reverb.
Was the reverb in a chain, or on the entire track? If it was on one of the chains, it likely would have been easier to control
one of the most insigntfull things i've ever seen thank you so much
Holy hell this is a god-tier tutorial, thank you so much
Super helpful, thank you !
This tutorial is incredible, thank you so much !
This is so fucking coooooooooool!! Thanks
Noticed you have a limiter at the end of the chain on the original sound, is that always at the end of your chain when making these kinds of sounds?
yes
my cpu frowning as i watch this
Unbelievably game changing. Thankyou so much.
WHOOO indeed hahaha I fuckin' love you guys
Alright. That's it. I'm gonna watch this every day before going to sleep. :D
This is amazing! Much love for sharing these tricks!!
bruhv
Woah learnt so much, super inspiring, I like how aggressive you are with the EQs and never thought to use a utility to control the mayhem. Had a go processing my analog synths this way and got some cool results, thanks!
You guys are unreal.
This was one of the BEST tutorials I've seen. Super helpful! Thank you so much!
Man I was like tearing my hair out wondering what they were doing in the 2010s...
always knew u guys were using the tape mode in scream 4 lol thats my goto too
Love this so much! Learning from true masters :D
If this was a youtube video it would break the internet
Even has time for the epic intro to the video 😃 i’m done
Racks on racks on racks. Utility before distortion...wtf have I been doing with my life. So appreciative to see this level of detail on your iterative process, thank you!
*Entire cities ablaze, planes falling from the sky like meteorites, screams of agony echoing civilization's last breath* "Let's see what else we can do"
For reallllll!!!!
Will, the level of mastery displayed in this video is amazing. How you can keep track of all the different chains and parameters that effect each other almost made my head explode at some points. The concepts you go over show what's possible when you invest the time, it's inspiring, much respect and thanks.
best tutorial ever going to have to practice
Wow, that'sssss... A lot to take in...
insanely helpful, thank you!
It even made me like my own comment!
Better than processed MEAT!
This is the dad of distortion
These tutorials are crazy good, my brain hurts
OMFG, I'M STUNNED. Best tutorial i've ever seen i'm my life.
God yes
Incredible
legendary
Joining your Patreon was the best idea I had all lockdown.
just wonderful !
Really hope Intros are a thing from now, LOVED IT ! !
OMG YES!