I think a lot of that is in the processing, because Korg Tritons are favorites among the Hip Hop/Rap crowd. I use a lot of Roland Stuff. The XV Series has a lot of Sub Bass patches that are good for that sort of stuff, but I'm sure the Korg has some sub bass patches as well. Then, I think EQ is the big thing, just don't kill it because bass eats up a lot of headroom in a mix.

Amateurish suggestion: Boost around 40-90Hz sharply, limit it with tiny attack and release values, and hope masking covers up the distortion caused by the literal clipping caused by the limiter... or you could use peakslammer instead of the limiter so that the distortion doesn't occur. I did this once and was pleasantly surprised by the results.

The boost gives that deep sound, and the limiting ensures that it eats up a constant amount of headroom - no sudden peaks.

Tiny attack and release will distort low freqencies. Stay at least above 25 ms, or maybe even double that. Better yet, just check to see if the compressor is mucking up the low end by hitting bypass occassionally.

jbuntz: Exactly, which is why I threw in the masking comment ;)

It needs to literally be clipped so that the headroom for everything else isn't gobbled up.

The alternative would be to use a Peakslammer-esque plugin (Thanks to Ethan for the heads up on that one!). I personally haven't tested it out, but it would be better for limiting without altering the tonal character.

You know, I just picked up a tip from Bob Clearmountain on Bass techniques...he sends an output to a Sans Amp and grunges it a little bit which in turn makes it stand out a little more.

He'll do one track clean and then a dirty track with the sans amp effect...slightly panned to seperate and it actually does an impressive job!

Opus

use your triton's low pass filter to cut the highs and add resonance to the bass, try using a typical synth saw or a sine wave with the filter...

Another alternative is to double the bass line with a sine-wave (!) synth one octave below the regular bass line.

It's important that it is close to a pure sine-wave because anything else will contain higher frequency harmonics that could interfere with other material.

BTW, this also works well to give the KICK DRUM more deep end.
Use it on either the bass or the kick - never on both, though !

MisterBlue.

You can always bring in a "REAL" bass player and have them lay down a 6 string part...hehehe

:h: Treena

Originally posted by Treena Foster:
You can always bring in a "REAL" bass player and have them lay down a 6 string part...hehehe

:D

Compressed sine waves are also somewhat effective, or sine wave through a tube warmer for even harmonics. Not to mention uber-controlled volumes :D .

Just needs to be synced with the kick drum for that starting oomph.

What is a real bass player and where can I buy one? :D

Well I have one sittin' here tracking a Warwick 6 string Thumb Bass right now :D .............well at least he sounds like a bass player, although it really is my son who is a (lead) guitarist.

:D

Haha... RBP, RNC... Real Bass Player, Real Nice Compressor. Get it? Maybe that's what their next product is going to be.

aha, but the RNC is very picky about the RBP (it can be very unkind to bass frequencies) , better put it in SNM (super nice mode) and hope you have a SND (super nice day).
but seriously, i do a lot of hip hop production, i have a triton but mainly usr propellerheads Reason 2.5 for most of my production. (check out www.northeastshore.net) make sure you have tho polyphony set to 1 and a legato attack so you can get those superfast r&b twists and turns. this ends up sounding very compressed but actually is not. LPFs also work very very well. monitoring these frequencies gets to be really tricky also (subwoofers anyone?) good luck.

No, seriously, hire a bass player, they sound real. :roll:

Treena :h:

or of course you can hire a real bass player... but they better be really good and intimately familiar with hip hop and r&b because it is a very nuanced style of music. i play live bass on many of my tracks, less often on the hip hop /R&B stuff but it all depends what the situation calls for. i was thinking of bringing a live bassist in for an r&b session i was doing a couple of years ago. i asked him to check out pino palladino's playing on d'angello's voodoo record (almost all live instrumentation, except for the one DJ Premier track) but he actually seemed offended that i didn't want him to just play "his style" on the recording. it is the same reason you would not bring in a classical guiatrist to play on a blues record. jmho

Moog bass and the variants thereof are very pravalent to hiphop. It has that sub you want.