How to Make a Dirty Reese Bass in NI Massive

There are obviously many ways to design a solid Reese style bass with Native Instruments Massive, and this is another that is easy to follow, recreate and even make it your own with a little tweaking.

With many sounds like this one, there are often requests for tutorials showing how to make a specific artist’s version of that sound and that can be a slippery slope for a lot of people. Some of the reasoning behind why it bothers some people really into making there own sounds, is shared at the beginning of this video by YouTube user yec0dy. He explains that it doesn’t do much good to constantly follow somebody else’s steps on how to make a sound compared to making your own from scratch whenever possible. And he has a good point. Once you begin to understand the mechanics of the synth and the concepts involved in the different types of sound design, it becomes pretty easy to create just about any kind of sound you want to and they truly are your own! So make sure you play around with this sound a bit after your are done following along and see what you can come up with on your own.

This one starts with a square wavetable on OSC1, a Wicked wavetable on OSC2 and a Cicada wavetable on OSC3. Each of the three main oscillators are dropped about an octave, with slight variations to create a slight amount of phasing. Some extra phasing is introduced to the OSC3 through the Modulation OSC. This can then be run through a filter, like a Daft, Scream or Band Reject to add some wobble capability. Adding a Brauner or any other type of tube amp in the FX tabs will give it a boost and add a small amount of distortion. A dimension expander will widen the sound and give it more presence. Switching the voicing mode to monophonic will allow for gliding between notes.

Again, this is such an incredibly simple sound to tweak in so many different ways to make it your own sound and fit seamlessly into just bout any of your projects so make sure you play around, experiment and try new things. You may surprise yourself with what you are capable of!

Do you have a sound or method you would like to share with the rest of the MassiveSynth community? If so, just send us a message letting us know and we’d be happy to chat with you about how we can help you get your ideas in front of a larger audience. Thanks for stopping by!

Cheers,
ΩhmLab