Deep House Bass

Continuing our journey of Operator, we will explore FM synthesis for Deep House Bass.

Steps to follow:
Select the vertical row configuration in Operator
In this case the yellow Operator A is at the bottom, which means its the only one that’s voiced
Turn Operator B’s level up to 0.0dB so B is acting as the modulator, and A as the carrier.
On the volume envelope bring down sustain (-inf dB) making B’s level drop over time as a note’s held down.
Set operator B’s Coarse tuning to 2.

This results in a raw deep house bass sound. Experiment with B’s Level, such as bringing it down to -12dB to smooth the effect.

Listen to this Klubbheads piece for a similar sounding base (skip to about 4:40 to hear it play with drums only).

To read more about different types of bass in Electronica, read this excerpt from Dance Music Manual. Note that the techniques described there are not Ableton based, and might differ in the way in proposes to recreate these sounds.

Theory of FM:
FM synthesis was invented by John Chowning from CCRMA (Stanford).
See the original paper that discusses the theory and principles of designing various musical instrument sounds.


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