Designing a Layered NI Massive Strobe Bass

When designing a layered sound, especially a bass synth, you need to be careful to not make it too complicated or heavily laden with effects or things can quickly get out of your control. This sound is kept clean and is still quite interesting and full of character. This allows it to be used in music genres ranging from house to psychedelica and techno to trance. The key to making this one work is taking advantage of a couple of unique features that are underutilized by many in this synth and finding the right delivery for the project you’re wanting to use it with. Let’s see how this NI Massive strobe bass is made.

Begin by loading an AdditivOctaves wavetable into OSC1 and lowering the pitch by two octaves. Then a Bender wavetable is loaded into OSC2 and the pitch is lowered one octave. And last;y, an Electric wavetable is loaded into OSC3 and the pitch is dropped two octaves.

The next step is to set up a few controllers. First, the main amp envelope is set up. This largely shapes how the sound will be delivered.

Here, a second envelope is set up with the basic default curve. This will later be applied to several parameters to further shape our sound and affect how it develops.

An LFO is set up and set aside to use in the next step. It will be one of the most important sources of modulation in this NI Massive strobe bass.

Now the filter panels are set up. A Comb filter is loaded into the Filter1 panel, while a Daft filter is loaded into the Filter2 panel. The envelope we set up to be used as a modulator is now put to use, as is the LFO. Pay close attention to the routing of the filters, and all three main oscillators that feed into them. This is crucial for the sound to turn out right. For now, you may find is easy to work on this sound if you mute the LFO assignment on the filter mix crossfade slider.

Some Hi-Metallic noise is now added to Filter1. This will help accentuate the high end of this NI Massive strobe bass.

A Hardclipper and a Bitcrusher are inserted to provide some grit, edge and a touch of analog noise to the bass.

The Modulation OSC panel is set up to introduce some phasing to OSC1, with a pitch value f 12.00. This will generate much of the high end for us in this NI Massive strobe bass synth.

The Voicing tab is the next stop. Here the total number of Unisono voices is increased to two and the synth is set to run in Monophon mode. (At this point you should probably turn off the glide feature on the OSC tab by turning the Time knob all the way down.) Some additional phasing is added through the use of the Pitch Cutoff feature and the Pan POsition feature is used to slightly widen the sound.

The last steps of the process are adding FX and EQ. First, a Synced Delay is added to extend the sound, while a Dimension Expander is used to create a larger environment for the NI Massive strobe bass to develop and move around in. The EQ is used to finish shaping the sound. Before you begin using this sound, do not forget to un-mute the LFO assignment, if you chose to mute it earlier in the process.

Below is a small audio sample of this NI Massive strobe bass synth in action, playing alongside some drums to give you a sense of how it may be used.

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OhmLab