FM8 Dubstep - Using the Pitch Envelope to Create a Wobble Bass in NI FM8

For FM8 Dubstep – There are many ways to achieve a nice wobble when designing a synth sound, and FM8’s unique and sophisticated envelope system gives you added flexibility and control over how you choose to get it done.

The most popular methods used to create wobble bass synths nowadays usually comes down to an LFO modulating a filter cutoff, amplitude of an oscillator or the pitch value of an instrument. With FM8 Dubstep is only minutes away!

Of course there are other ways too, and this tutorial aims to show you how to easily use the pitch envelope inside of FM8 to add one more options to the list of how to get it done. This approach is potentially more creative, and perhaps even gives you more options as to how your sound will be delivered and develop over time. Be very careful not to go too far in any one direction with pitch though, as it may not work too well if you move too high or too low in octaves in your project.

This sound gets started with some basic prep. First the number if Unison voices is increased to a total of 8. Then the entire synth is transposed down one octave. Next the Analog Quality is increased just a touch. Not that those little changes are made we can begin designing the bass.

Now moving on to the FM Matrix, where a sawtooth waveform is loaded into Operator E and routed into Operator F, after being fed back into itself to add some grit. The pitch ratio is also reduced by half, to a value of 0.5000. Operator F, now being modulated by Operator E, is loaded with the default Sine waveform and is routed to to the main output.

Now that the main sound is done, you can begin shaping the curve of the pitch envelope. But before you will be able to hear the effects of the changes you make, you will need to turn up the Amplitude Envelope parameter, as this is how the envelope is applied to the synth. Rather than drawing in your own curve, you can choose to use a preset which can save you a lot of time and frustration. Now that you have your FM8 dubstep wobble happening, you can feel free to experiment to your hearts content with different effects, like distortion, delay, reverb, amps, etc.

If you happen to have a request for a future FM8 dubstep tutorial or have one of your own you want to share with the rest for the community, let us know by sending a message our way. Thanks for stopping by!

Cheers,
OhmLab