Dubstep with NI Massive Part 1: The Growl Bass

NI Massive has become of one of the most commonly used synths to design dubstep bass synths with. This series looks at using it for more than just bass sounds. This first installment explores some ideas and methods that are easy to implement with this powerhouse synth and hopefully sheds a little light on soem things you can do differently to help improve your instruments and your sound design sessions within Massive.

It starts off with a Modern Talking wavetable loaded into OSC1 with the pitch value dropped two octaves. A Sine-Square wavetable is loaded into OSC2 with the Pitch value dropped two octaves. A Bandpass filter is loaded into the Filter1 panel. A Classic Tube Amp is loaded into the FX1 tab for drive and some distortion. The EQ is truned on and used to accentuate the low end and the mid lows of this sound for added punch.

The synth is set to run in Monophonic mode on the Voicing tab. Any glide present is removed and the Restart Via Gate feature is activated on the OSC tab. The Modulation OSC panel is turned on the pitch value increased by three octaves and used to introduce some phasing to OSC1.

A modulation envelope is set up and assigned to control the amount of phase delivered to OSC1 via the Phase knob on the Modulation OSC panel. This same envelope is also used to modulate the Wt-position knob of OSC1. Since the phasing effect from the Modulation OSC panel is so drastic, you may want to set up a Macro control to provide more control. Another modulation envelope is set up with a long attack and assigned to modulate the Cutoff parameter of the Bandpass filter. A third modulation envelope is set up and assigned to the Pitch values of both OSC1 and OSC2. This helps to provide a more plucky pitch bend in the initial delivery of this sweet dubstep growl bass. For added interest and character a Performer can be set up and assigned to modulate the pitch values of both OSC1 and OSC2 to add a slight pitch bend effect every fourth step, or whatever works best for your music!

Cheers,
OhmLab