Technique » Synth Secrets » Phased Techno Bass

Phased Techno Bass

Learn how to make a driving hypnotic bass patch using u-he’s Diva.

In today’s Synth Secrets, we’re going to cook up a twisting, phased bass patch that’s perfect for driving, hypnotic techno. Take a listen to what we’re going to make together:

Our softsynth of choice for this exercise is u-he’s Diva. Its rich analogue character and its capability to build nasty, howling tones with its feedback circuit is second to none. On top of that, it has an effects section that sounds like lush, analog gear, and we’ll make heavy use of those tricks in this article. If you don’t already have Diva installed on your machine, grab a free demo of it here and follow along. Now, set your workstation to 140 BPM, drop the following (very simple) MIDI onto your instrument track, and let’s get after it.

Step 1: Basic Setup

First, initialize the patch by selecting Init from the preset browser. Then move to the mixer section and turn the volume for oscillators two and three (the knobs on the bottom-left of the mixer) down to zero. A solitary oscillator voice will give us the cutting tone we need. Then, head to the bottom of the interface and change the voicing mode from Poly to Legato. It won’t sound like much yet but it won’t take long for this to take shape.

Step 2: Shaping the Volume Contour

Though there’s no space between notes in the MIDI we’re using, we want to create a patch that doesn’t have an abrupt – or overlong – release after we stop feeding notes to the synth. For that reason, we want to change the amp envelope to give us a modest tail after the last note is released. To do this, head over to the amp envelope, labeled ADS ENV 1, flip the RELEASE switch to enable a release tail after the note is released, and set the decay to about 9 o’clock. You’ll hear what that does for us at the very end of the clip.

Step 3: Make It Howl

Now we’re going to unleash the more brutal aspect of Diva’s character. First, turn the FEEDBACK knob up to about 1 o’clock – this feeds some of the filter’s audio output back into the mixer. From settings of 0 to about 50%, that just thickens the tone, but once you go past the halfway point you start to get a raucous howl. Now, open the filter cutoff nice and wide.

Step 4: Get Twisted

Now we’re going to start applying some effects to this over-aggressive patch, twisting and morphing it until we get something serviceable. Start by selecting Phaser1 in the Effect 1 section, and set the parameters as you see pictured here. The rich harmonic content generated by the sawtooth wave and the feedback loop give the phaser plenty of mid and high frequencies to work with, giving us a cutting phase effect.

Step 5: Add Space

We want this thing to sound like a seething machine shouting in a dark, glistening cave. The next obvious step, then, is to add reverb. Fortunately, Diva’s plate reverb is up to that task. In the second effects section, select the Plate2 effect and set the knobs as you see pictured here. We want it to be verb-soaked enough to evoke a foreboding sense of space, but not so drenched that it’s unintelligible.

Step 6: Modulate

Now we’ll make this sound evolve over time with a long, languid LFO. Like some classic vintage analog synths, Diva dedicates its first LFO to pitch modulation, so we will skip right over to the LFO 2 (MOD) section. Change the Restart behavior to Sync, which allows the LFO to continue running uninterrupted across multiple notes, and set the sync value to 4/1 (or one cycle every 4 bars).

Then we head back to the filter section and turn the LFO 2 knob down to about 9 o’clock, and we’ll actually pull the cutoff value back a touch, too, to give the LFO some more room to work.

Step 7: Post Processing

Now we’re going to do an aggressive bit of post processing to smash this thing into line. Using Ableton Live’s built in effects, we’re going to do a bit of parallel processing with a stereo widener on one bus and a band-passed overdrive effect on the second. We’ll smash it all through OTT and finally use a glue compressor effect keying off the kick drum to make the whole thing

The final product:

And here it is once more in the context of a mix:

We hope you enjoyed the process. It’s amazing how simple it really can be to create truly satisfying synth textures when you know what you’re aiming at and have great tools like u-he Diva in your arsenal.