Designing a Huge NI Massive Reese Bass

We have featured many different Reese style bass tutorials here in the past, and this is one more huge NI Massive reese bass to add to your collection of go-to sounds. 

When you set out to design an incredibly large and aggressive bass synth, the likes of the huge NI Massive Reese bass we are looking at today, you must remain aware of how wide it becomes and how much phasing is involved. If the sound ends up too extreme in either direction, it may not sit well in the mix and can even fall prey to phase cancellation. It is a best practice that I continually repeat in classes, “know what your sound looks like”. And the Reese bass is one of those sounds that can give you a lot of trouble later on if you are not proactive with it. All that said, the Reese is a synth that simply cannot be replaced and will continue to evolve for years to come.

This particular bassy synth is rather complex and has some characteristics that most Reese’s do not have. Therefore the time needed to create it is a bit more than you may have expected. We will cover most of the main points of the process here in this post and hope that you watch the video all the way through at least one time to get the small details and help you replicate the synth exactly on your own.

Beginning like a very basic detuned supersaw synth, this one quickly takes a turn away from the conventional approach to this style of bass. A default Square-Saw wavetable is loaded into both OSC1 and OSC2, and each one os detuned slightly in opposite directions to generate a natural phase effect. Next a Scrapyard wavetable is loaded into OSC3. Additional phasing is introduced to OSC3 via the Modulation OSC panel. This is run through both Bandreject and Comb filters in Serial mode.

An LFO controls the Wt-position of OSC3, while another controls the Cutoff of the Bandreject filter and the Damping of the Comb filter. An envelope is assigned to modulate the Intensity of OSC1 and OSC2, the Phase knob of the Modulation OSC panel and the Pitch knob of the Comb filter. Another LFO is assigned to control the modulation of the Noise panel amplitude. A Macro control is assigned to the Resonance of the Bandreject filter, the Wet/Dry of the Hardclipper insert effect and the Wet/Dry and Drive parameters of the Parabolic Shaper insert effect.

A Classic Tube Amp is used to give an added boost and edge to the sound. A Phaser is used to provide more movement. The synth is set to run in Monophonic mode and the  voicing is increased to a total of five, which allows for the use of the Pitch Cutoff and Pan Position features, both of which have an envelope assigned to modulate their parameters. The video does a good job of showing the details of all the various settings and routing for this huge NI Massive Reese bass.

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Cheers,
OhmLab