Make the Biggest Growl Bass in FM8 You've Ever Heard

In this tutorial, YouTube user Metronik walks you through how to quickly create a devastating growl bass in FM8.

FM8 is one of the best synths out there for making huge growl bass sounds that work in dubstep and electro genres. A whole tutorial could be spent explaining why FM synthesis is so conducive to creating growl sounds, but the focus of Metronik’s tutorial is how to create a huge growl bass in a matter of minutes.

One of my favorite parts about Metronik’s tutorial is at 2:13 he plays the sound accidentally and it doesn’t sound anywhere near what he teased us with at the beginning of the video. It doesn’t sound remotely close to a huge growl bass. He played a sequence before he applied any of the effects to his sound. Although the sound isn’t what you would expect, it is still a very nice bass sound. One of the most important things to remember when creating new sounds in any synth, is that the sound created using the filters, carriers, operators, oscillators etc., doesn’t have to be the final sound you are going for. A lot of the times effects are what gets you all the way there.

Take note of how he notches out some EQ in FM8 to get that huge growl bass effect by cutting and boosting certain frequencies. This is effective because he uses a Formant waveform type in the D Operator.

Remember, it’s not always about getting the sound to be 100% what you want it to be before you put some effects in your synthesis chain. Creative use of FX can really push your sounds to the next level.