Clean Psytrance Bassline by E-Clip

Welcome everybody to the first Blog on eclip-production.com

Let’s start this series of blogs with the most important and the most wanted lesson – Psytrance Bassline.

Plugins needed:

1. Serum

2. Envelopeshaper or Waves Trans-x

3. FabFilter Fab-Q3

4. Voxengo PHA-979

5. Xfer LFO Tool

Open the Serum for setting up the synthesis of the Bassline.

1. First, go to Serums Global window, and check the option “Double-Click for the typable values on controls.”

1. Envelope 1 – Attack to 0, Decay 1/16th note, Sustain -3db, Release 15ms

1. Turn on the Filter- Choose 18db or 24db – Cutoff to 0, Resonance to 0

1. Connect Envelope 2 to Cuttof by clicking on the Envelop2 and drag&drop to the filter’s cutoff

1. Envelope 2 – Attack to 0, decay to 1/16 note (double click on the decay and type 1/16 and press enter), Sustain 60%, Release 10ms

1. Now move to the Oscillator A, phase put on the left, random to 0 and click on the pen icon to draw a new waveform. When the Waveform window is opened, in the downright corner double click on the number 8 and type 6 instead. Now use the 3rd form the top lines and draw a straight line from the left up corner till the end.

4hr in the studio with E-Clip

1. Oscillator A Volume put to zero, and connect Velocity to OSC A Volume.

Now your synthesis of the bassline is ready. Draw a midi with 3 notes, and put velocity of the first note to 60. Now we will continue to the coloring of the bass line.

Before we move to the next part, I would like to add that in this blog I won’t use any distortion on the bassline. In past, I have been using a lot of distortions on the bassline, but after I updated my studio speakers to Focal SM9, I have realized that distortion plugins mess up phase of the bassline, and therefore now I’m trying to make clean basslines without any deformations, and therefore I have stopped distorting my basslines.

Now for processing bassline, first I will add EnvelopeShaperMultiband (Cubase plugin), for those who are not using Cubase, alternative is Waves Trans-X Multiband. Both plugins are doing the same thing, and that’s control of the transients in 4 bands. To avoid phase changes, 1st band should be at 500hz, that’s the frequency where I found that phase of the low-end stays the same. 3rd band set from 2-2.5KHz to 8Khz, and in that range add from 2 to 5db, its a matter of taste and choice.

The next thing to do is to add FabFilter Pro-Q3 and set it up to the “Linear-Phase” mode.

Now make a lowcut with 30db per octave, and set it up on the frequency of the first harmonic of your bassline.

Reduce around 300hz for 2-2.5db

Now insert Voxengo PHA-979 , and put “Force Mono” All my basslines are in mono, and for stereo bassline, I usually use another layer that is low-cutted till 500hz, as low-end should be always MONO for many reasons. Tweak around phase knob around till you find a good phasing spot. I cannot tell you the exact place of the Phase knob, as the good spot depends on your kick. As each kick is different, the setup of the phase knob will be different as well. Phasing the bass line is a technique to make your bassline to be in perfect alignment with your kick, it is now a technique to make your bassline sound better.

Now the last thing is to add a bit more sidechain with LFOTool. We have already done it with a velocity of the 1st bass note, but with adding LFOTool we will make a groove a bit more interesting. Add a LFOTool to the end of the channel strip, and leave space for one last plugin after it. Remake the shape from the picture below, and don’t forget to move the last dot just a bit inside to avoid clicks on the end of the bassline.

Now, just add 1 more LFOTool. This one we are adding for technical reasons. With this one, we want to remove any tales from last not in the kick zone. Just copy the shape from the picture below and you are ready to go

That’s was it for this week, see you next week for another lesson. Subscribe for new tutorials at eclip-production.com