Designing Professional Dub Tech Bass Synths with NI Massive

This helpful tutorial will share how to make professional Dub Tech bass synths in NI Massive that can also work well in Deep House and other genres.

NI Massive is a great tool to use for designing Dub Tech Bass synths, and this tutorial shows just how easy it is to make something special. The deep, warm and analog feel of this style of sound is the backbone of many popular music genres and once you have successfully recreated the sound showcased in this video, you should be able to begin building your own sounds in a similar vein. This is not just a sound for Dub Tech, nor is it necessary to use exactly the same wavetables or effects for your sounds. So you should feel encouraged to spend some time experimenting with and exploring this incredibly deep synth and see what else you can come up with on your own.

This Dub Tech bass starts out with a HardSync wavetable loaded into OSC1, with the pitch dropped two full octaves. Then, a Reducer wavetable is loaded into OSC2, set to run in Formant mode and with the pitch set to 5.00 which provides us with a nice chorded effect. A default Square-Saw I wavetable is loaded into OSC2, with the pitch dropped to -7.00 which is in key with the second oscillator. These oscillators are routed in equal measure to both Filter1 and Filter2. A Lowpass filter is loaded into Filter1 and a Comb filter is loaded into Filter2. The filters are set up to run in serial mode, but can also be modulated between serial and parallel for a nice effect.

A Modulation Envelope is set up and assigned to modulate the Cutoff parameter of Filter1. A second Modulation Envelope is set up and assigned to control a three octave pitch bend across all three of the oscillators. These two envelopes provide a lot of the character and desired delivery for our Dub Tech bass. A Classic Tube Amp is loaded into the FX1 tab for some drive and grit, while a Synced Delay unit is loaded into the FX2 tab to really extend the sound and gives us a lot more depth. The total number of Unison Voices is increased to three and are spread out via the Pict Cutoff feature on the Voicing tab. The synth is also set to run in Monophonic mode with just a small amount of Glide (set on the OSC tab).