Recreating bassline for Radiohead's "all I need" from scratch

[Jammin]

I really like the bass sound on 'All I Need" on Radiohead's new album. http://profile.imeem.com/16rJ2yY/mus...ad_all_i_need/ (Just wait for the song to start playing after clicking the link)


I'd like to try and recreate it (or something similar) to use in one of my tracks, but I'm really really new to synthesis - I usually just use presets and tweak 'em. I'm just getting into it all and the creative potential of synthesis is awesome. I'm a guitarist at heart but I've been grabbed by the electronic music bug!

Lately I've been coming up with a lot of chilled, smoking type music and that bass sound would be perfect.

I've got a whole bunch of free synths from CM coverdiscs like Crystal and ZebraCM, but I'd like to use my newly downloaded Z3ta+ to recreate that sound from scratch, but I don't know where to start - like which wave types to choose etc. What would you use to recreate it?


HP pavillion Intel Centrino Duo 1.66, Edirol UA-101, Sonar 6

[Hraka]

I managed to get a similar sounding bass with two simple analog oscillators on a pulse wave, move the octaves and semis down on both (same setting) to get the desired deepness of sound. set the mix to about 30-35 (0-127) so that osc1 is the dominant wave. Now set pulse width of osc1 to 0 and PW of osc2 to about 50% (not entirely sure how your synth will display this). set filter to low pass 18/24 w/e you prefer for sound (the radiohead thing sounds like its around 18 ) with 0 resonance. Now on the amp, I gave it a bit of attack, medium delay, high sustain and no release. Put it all together and run a bit o reverb on it and you should be good.

Whenever you hear that kinda rough oscillation in something, first look at a square or sawtooth wave.

[Jammin]

Thanks for the advice - really good advice! I spent all last night messing around with saw/ pulse waves in a few of my VSTi Synths, and I got some really nice sounds - and some really dirty chunky sounds too.

One more Q however. When I play a note on most of the patches I created last night following your steps, they tend to stay the same volume no matter how long I hold the note. I'd like it to start loud when I initially play the note and then slowly fade out, like when you hold a note on a piano - does that make sense? I imagine it's got something to do with the attack/sustain/decay settings??

[Hraka]

I imagine it's got something to do with the attack/sustain/decay settings??

Yep, you're spot on with it. Sounds specifically like you're searching for a moderate to low sustain setting. Think of the whole attack/decay/sustain/release as a function of time (which it is, thats actually what the term envelope refers to).

If we're specifically talking about the amp envelope, the attack setting will be representative of how fast the sound gets up to its maximum sound. So a fast attack (ie: very low setting) would be quite representative of a percussive instrument (you hit the drum and automatically its loudest sound is heard) while a slow attack would be something that you find on a bowed instrument (like a violin, the notes kinda fade into being instead of being forcefully knocked into existence).

Decay is the time (normally shown in milliseconds also) that the sound takes to get to its normal level of sound. Play around with both extremes of this one to get the basics of it, most of the really good uses for decay settings in envelopes come in once the envelope is assigned to various settings like filters and effects.

The "normal level of sound" is also known as the sustain of the envelope. Thats the setting that controls how long the song gets played while holding down the note on your keyboard. If you max this setting out, the sound will play till infinity if you hold down the key for that long. If you set this to its minimum setting then the sound will only occur for a second, no matter how long you hold the key (assuming a minimum release setting).

Release is the final part of any envelope and it represents what happens to the sound after you take your finger off the key. A high setting will cause the sound to gradually fade out very very slowly kinda like reverb a very low setting will cause the sound to disappear as soon as you let go of the key, no matter how loud the sound was.

So it might appear slightly confusing as to whether you want to mess with the sustain or the release settings. The main difference is that sustain has to do with what happens while your fingers are still holding down the keys, and release is what happens to the sound once you release the key.

Hope this helped!

[Fullofkittens]

I managed to get a similar sounding bass with two simple analog oscillators on a pulse wave, move the octaves and semis down on both (same setting) to get the desired deepness of sound. set the mix to about 30-35 (0-127) so that osc1 is the dominant wave. Now set pulse width of osc1 to 0 and PW of osc2 to about 50% (not entirely sure how your synth will display this). set filter to low pass 18/24 w/e you prefer for sound (the radiohead thing sounds like its around 18 ) with 0 resonance. Now on the amp, I gave it a bit of attack, medium delay, high sustain and no release. Put it all together and run a bit o reverb on it and you should be good.

Whenever you hear that kinda rough oscillation in something, first look at a square or sawtooth wave.

A pulse wave with a pulse width of 0 is silence...?

[Hraka]

A pulse wave with a pulse width of 0 is silence...?

ah, yes thanks for the correction. Meant to refer to a square wave (2t=T) for the first osc and a pulse of around 4t=T for osc 2. Still currently learning all the specifics behind the science myself and on the synth I was using square and pulse waves are the same setting you just alter the square wave to get the type of pulse you're looking for so thats where the 0 came in (0 change from the symmetry)