How to make a Garage Bass with FM8

In this tutorial, learn how to make a very digital sounding FM8 Garage bass that will work well with Deep House and House too!

The bulk of this FM8 Garage bass is made up of five stacked sine waves. It is interesting to note that with FM8 you can make very unique sounds using basic waveforms. If you stacked 3 sine waves in Massive for instance, you would not get a sound as gritty and thick as in FM8.

First, activate five Operators and route them to the filters. It is important to detune at least one Operator to a sub-frequency pitch to help add some meat to the bass using the ratios.

To get that affect with this FM8 Garage bass you have to create the correct settings in your envelopes. Linking your envelopes will make this step a little quicker and easier. Especially because this sound uses five Operators.

In the Master Section, pushing the Digital slider will help add some crunchy top end.

Johnny uses a third party EQ to help cut out some of the resonant tones that can occur using Sine waves. This will help make the FM8 Garage bass more clear in a mix.