Bass House Project - Post Mortem

Whoa guys! It's been a hot minute since I spoke to you last on this project! So much in fact that it's actually done! Before I get into everything, I'll list the finished product down below for you guys to listen to! So without further ado, here's my latest track: Levels - Nervous!

Levels - Nervous: Link - https://soundcloud.com/user-793794570/levels-nervous

Where've you Been man?

I'll be honest, for a solid week I wasn't motivated to write blogs at all, especially this one considering its rather ridiculous size. However, I knew that in the end, it's something that needed to be done. I decided that instead of spamming you guys with smaller updates and making excuses as to where the final product is, I would just put my head down and focus solely on grinding in the studio to get this done so I could bring you this blog! Throughout the course of this blog I'll be outlining the new additions that weren't mentioned in previous blogs as well as going over the mixing and mastering process for this track!

New additions to the track

Time to give some honourable mentions to elements that really made this track what it was in the end!

The infamous second layer

As I've mentioned in previous blogs, the second bass layer has always been a difficult one to arrange in this mix. However, I came to realise that the answer to this problem was rather simple. I've listed the patch below for anyone who's interested!

Layer 1 - Massive Synth Patch: Screenshot taken 16/7/18

To create this synth, I simply duplicated my main synth and tweaked the inner settings of Massive. The only real differences between this synth and the main one is that the tuning on oscillator two's saw wave has been taken up by an octave and the envelope has been tightened to the max on the cutoff frequency, making it entirely percussive with zero traits of a glide whatsoever. This synth is also the slightest bit smoother than the main as the C tube distorter was also disabled in this patch. The reason for this was that I simply didn't want too much distortion and/or clashing between harmonics. However, even if said problems did occur, they were easily fixed and most unwanted sounds would probably be removed through balancing the EQ's - which I will touch on later.

White noise!

If you've listened to 'Nervous' by now you would have realised that there is a presence that fills a lot of space when the bass glide comes in, this would be none other than pure white noise! As usual, I used N.I's Massive to create this one too and the synth patch is below!

NOISE - Massive Synth Patch: Screenshot taken 16/7/18

As you can see, I have absolutely no oscillators running and Massive is simply generating highly coloured white noise through a daft filter with zero cutoff frequencies. This appears around 3 times throughout the track to fill space and to create an atmosphere. However, I realised that on its own, it sounded rather out of time and had no 'bounce' to it. This is where the Ghost Chain (GC) came in handy as when side-chained to it, it created the exact sound that I was looking for.

White Noise Compression: screenshot taken 16/7/18

The only real problem I had with this one in the mix was matching the threshold with the glide synth as it still sounded out of time when the threshold levels were different on their compressors. This was easily fixed though as all it took was simple level matching.

The evil laugh

This little number only appears 3 times throughout the track but I thought it still deserved a little mention in this blog as it is a key part in some vital transitions such as the ends of both drops! The processing for it can be found below!

Evil Laugh Processing: Screenshot taken 16/7/18

As you can see, all that was really needed was a simple delay and some reverb considering the sample itself was already very clean and mostly processed.

Separating the Basses

This was a massive part of making the mixdown clean and is generally so with a lot of bass house tracks. In order to have balance within the layers, it is essential to assign them each to their own frequency regions. Below I'll be running through each of my bass layers, their EQ's and where they sat in the mix, starting with the sub.

The sub

As you could imagine, the sub bass is what gives the mix its overall body in the low end and essentially rules the 100Hz region. Therefore, thats where I placed it.

Sub Bass Processing: Screenshot taken 16/7/18

As you can see, I've trapped everything from the Sub within the 100Hz region using a slight high pass and a massive low pass to remove anything above approximately 150Hz. This was to give the sub as much body as I could without removing absolutely everything from the very minimal top end it has.

Next in line - the main bass

Considering the main bass is whats giving off the overall sound of the track and supplying the 'oomf' and depth, I had to tread carefully as to just how much low end I took out of this one. However, no matter what I did, the 100Hz region was out of bounds. So what did I do? Tread very bloody lightly...

Main Bass EQ: Screenshot taken 16/7/18

From what I could see, the main area that this synth was sitting in was within the 150Hz to approximately 1kHz region. To ensure I still didn't cop any of the high end, I made a huge low pass until around the 900Hz area to maintain the deep feel. As far as the high end goes, that was up to 2nd layer...

Finally - the 2nd layer

This was the last layer in my track and I placed it predominantly in the high end area between around 500Hz and 5kHz.

Layer 1 EQ: Screenshot taken 16/7/18

This layer is not usually seen on its own as it was specifically created to give the main layer a slight boost. However, there are rare points throughout the track that it shines through on its own such as the middle sections of the drops.

The final Mix

Below you'll find the final screenshot of the session, unfortunately I ran out of time towards the end of my studio session and forgot to take a screenshot of the actual mix window in Ableton. However, this shouldn't matter too much as most of this track is actually in mono!

Final Session View Screenshot: taken 19/7/18

As far as panning goes, the only things to seperate out of the centre were the hi-hats and percussion! As you may have heard when listening to final version, the hats are panned over towards the left while the percussion sits more towards the right. The vocal samples, chords and other elements that could've been panned weren't needed to be as they were either meant to be in mono to begin with (bass and vocals) or they had effects such as Simple Delay and Auto Pan which immediately granted them movement in the stereo field.

Mastering

Before I begin on this section, I must give a huge shoutout to Riverine for helping me master this one as I knew absolutely nothing about the mastering of tracks and it would've sounded nowhere near as good without his help. Go check out his stuff if you have a minute, its great!

Now that that's out of the way, lets get into what made this track loud and fat ;).

Mastering Chain: Screenshot taken 19/7/18

(Apologies in advance, once I created the effect rack, I was kind of clueless as to how to open it back up again... *noob alert*)

As you can see above, the mastering chain for this track was actually rather small as there weren't as many frequencies to deal with apart from the low end. In addition to this, other effects such as Saturation weren't needed as a lot of the synths in this track already had a lot of distortion on them. The first EQ was used to sculpt any unwanted and/or hurtful frequencies out of the mix with the second EQ following close behind to do some final monitoring and crush any last little frequencies that may have passed through. From this, the signal then ran out into 2 compressors, the first being a Glue Compressor. This was mainly used to just tighten everything together and get it ready for limiting. The second compressor was an FET Compressor which was really just a precautionary method to bring a little bit more volume in and adjust the ratio and threshold before the final stage. Finally, we have limiting through the iZotope Ozone 7 Vintage Limiter. This is where the track got really loud as the threshold on the limiter was set to around -17.9dB. Just goes to show how much you can crush EDM with it still sounding really good.

What could I have done better?

As much as I love this track, it does have a few little bumps that I could've touched on slightly. The first being the timing of certain vocal loops in the build-up and breakdown sections and the other being the arrangement of the drops. Although I was really happy with the final version of this track, I still believe that I could've gone a bit harder and experimented a lot more with sound design and synthesis to make the drop sections really unique. Something else I never got around to doing was recording my own vocals. This was mainly due to two key factors, the first being that I didn't know what to write lyrically and the second being because I'm lazy :').

Overall

To wrap this massive blog up, I had a tonne of fun creating this track and it feels amazing to finally put more music out again, especially in the genre I love the most. This is just the beginning for me and you can bet your ass you'll see a lot more tracks like this in the future. However, before that happens I'll be producing a trap/future bass style track so stay tuned for that! Until next time guys, peace.

Levels :)