Designing a Dark and Dirty FM8 Reese Bass

It really only takes a few minutes to make a seriously dark and dirty FM8 Reese bass that can be used in dark Dn’B an other hardcore electronic music genres. This sound is good for use in any kind of music that evoke evil, menacing, dark, disturbing and otherwise danceable emotions. Seriously though, a bass like this one can add some incredibly haunting low end presence to your projects and can also be resampled and taken to new places quite easily. It’s up to you just how much phasing, distortion or glide  is showcased in your Reese, but this example is quite heavy and distorted.

As you can see in the image of the FM Matrix below, this FM8 Reese bass has only one operator routed to the main output strip and otherwise, the overall routing of the synth has been kept very simple. This is to help ensure that the bass is not spread out too much. You can face some nasty phase cancellation issues if your sounds get too wide in any way. The bulk of the character in this synth is derived from the pitch values and the modulators.

The Master window is the next stop in the process. Here the total number of unison voices is increased to seven. The synth is also set to run in a Mono polyphonic mode, meaning that only one note will be playable at a time. Turning on the Portamento feature allows the synth to glide between those notes. And how could it be a good FM8 Reese bass without detuning! It has also been panned slightly to increase the width a bit for a larger presence. Both the Analog and Digital Quality sliders have been bumped up a bit to give it more character.

The last step is to tweak a few tings on the Effects window. Here a a Tube Amp is added to show off the rough edge of this FM8 Reese bass and introduce more drive and distortion. A Shelving EQ and Peak EQ are used to better shape the sound, accenting some frequencies and attenuating some of the muddiness. And lastly, a Phaser is inserted to give the bass more movement and interest.

Below is a small sample of the FM8 Reese bass playing along side some drums to give you an idea of how it can work in a mix.

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Cheers,
OhmLab