Designing a Gritty NI Massive Acid Bass Synth

When I design this kind of sound, I try my best to make sure it can be used in music beyond what may be expected at first. The process is simple enough to get the core sound, and then from there it is a matter of fine tuning until you find a sweet spot that lends itself to multiple music styles. If you do it right, you should be able to set up some Macro controls that will allow for easy moving between very different deliveries and adjust development on-the-fly. Let’s take a look at how this one is set up.

Start by loading a default Square-Saw I wavetable into OSC1 and drop the pitch two octaves. Now load another Square-Saw I wavetable into OSC2, set it to run in Bend+ mode and drop the pitch value to -23.82. Finally, load a Sine-Square wavetable into OSC3 and drop the pitch two octaves. This last oscillator will act as nice sub bass presence to our NI Massive acid bass that will add a punch that can be felt as well as heard.

Now we will take the time to set up some envelopes and an LFO that will be used a few times as we program this NI Massive acid bass. First, the main amp envelope is set up.

A secondary envelope is set up now, which will be used to modulate some parameters to help shape the delivery of our synth.

An LFO is set up with a somewhat unique approach. (The exact settings in this image were actually arrived at through playing this sound and making adjustments after it was fully programmed. Keep that in mind when you apply this method to a sound that you design from scratch.) Take note that there are two modulation controllers from within this LFO that are used to program it. This is critical to replicating this specific NI Massive acid bass synth.

Now we can set up our filters much more quickly and intuitively, since we already have our modulation controllers set up. A Lowpass4 filter is loaded into the Filter1 panel. A Bandpass filter is then loaded into the Filter2 panel. The secondary envelope is assigned to modulate the Cutoff and Resonance parameters of both filters. The LFO we set up earlier us used to control the Bandwidth parameter over time. A Velocity Macro Control is also assigned to affect the Cutoff and Bandwidth parameters of the Bandpass filter. These steps play an essential part in how this NI Massive acid bass is delivered.

A Brauner Tube Amp is loaded on the FX1 tab for some distortion and edge. A Dimension Expander is loaded on the FX2 tab to add width and depth. The EQ is turned on and used to further shape this NI Massive acid bass.

The Modulation OSC panel is used to introduce an FM effect through the Filter1 panel.

A small amount of Feedback is added to the mix.

A Hardclipper and a Sine Shaper are inserted at this point to really bring out the gritty edge of this NI Massive acid bass synth.

And the last step is to partially bypass OSC3 in the audio signal flow to allow for some of the sub bass presence to go unprocessed. (The default set up on the Routing tab allows for OSC3 to bypass filters, inserts and FX processing and come in at the EQ, whic is the end of the signal flow.)

Here is our NI Massive acid bass synth in action alongside some drums to share just one way it can be used in a mix.

Thanks for stopping by!