by Jim Clark

Common tricks for obtaining good, fat, bass sounds include:

Pedro Monkeyfinger wrote:

FatBass03.pch by Hans Wetter uses distortion and multiple oscillators.

I like feedbacking chorus (works great on kicks, too) I also REALLY like that offset into a waveshaper trick employed here. There's a VERY large range of sounds that you can get out of this patch, so twist the knobs, or assign CC's to the waveform selectors, the FM amounts and the switches.

that one generate very fast envelopes or transients using gate or pulse signals passed through a 6dB/oct HPF, followed by a half-wave rectification (diode module). This technique is illustrated in the following patch. Using this approach instead of an Envelope Generator creates very fast transients that have a smoother log decay shape, due to the faster clock rate of audio filters than that of control modules like the envelope generators.

Dave Peck wrote:

One of the problems I have run into with bass patches is the problem of phase relationships between oscillators. If the oscillators are not detuned, the patch can sound very different every time you load it (or every time you deactivate/reactivate the slot containing the patch) because the NM starts the oscillators at random phase relationships. I solved this by using oscillators with SYNC inputs to lock the phase. Much better.

I also used the trick of mixing in the Overdrive in parallel rather than just putting it in series and varying the Overdrive amount parameter, and rolling off the top end after the overdrive. This prevents the problem of losing apparent bass response when increasing the Overdrive.

The patch includes controls for morphing the envelope from percussive to sustaining, octave balance, overdrive, and an octave bend.