Make A Thumping Deep Tech Bass in Massive

In this tutorial learn how to create a thumping Deep Tech bass in Massive. It has a lot of percussive attack, perfect for busy mixes!

In some genres like Deep Tech and Deep House, the bass is the focus of the song.

It can basically act as a lead. Finding or creating a bass sound that can be the focal point of a song isn’t always easy.

This Deep Tech bass in Massive is a really thick and percussive sound that will fit well into a lot of songs.

So we have this new sound in Massive and using three oscillators for this sound. So for oscillator one going for a dirty throat wave table, which has a nice character to it. Bring your wave table position (Wt-Position) around to the left and the pitch down by 2 octaves, which gives a really nice fuzzy tone.

In oscillator two using Screamer wave table and this is one of my favourite wave tables in massive. It has such a nice sound and play around with that wave table position and take away some of that intensity at the top by a little bit and then bring it down by one octave.

This just great for bass sounds.

Then bringing the throat back in with a solid tone going on there and using a sin wave as well here (Sin-Square) in oscillator three and the Wt position all the way to the left and it just has a sin wave. Then bring the pitch down by two octaves and this is going to be the sub for our sound by just providing the weight in at the low-end.

Using both filters for this sound and setting them up in serial mode, so the sound is going to pass through the oscillators, through filter one, the through filter two and then to the output.

So bring the volume of filter two up and then bring the mix of the two filters down to the bottom.

So in filter one, I’m going to use a daft filter with some envelope modulation on this by bringing the resonance to about a quarter of the way and the Cutoff about a third of the way up and use an envelope to modulate the frequency of the first filter. so click and drag the crosshair of envelope one to the first modulation box in the Cutoff frequency. Then click and drag up which provides a bit of envelope modulation on the Cutoff frequency. Then set the envelope up here, and bring the Decay level to about there and then the attack off a little bit, which gives a nice plucky sound.

Now going to the second filter, setting it up with a low-pass filter, doing a similar thing by using the second envelope to control the Cutoff frequency in this low-pass filter, by clicking and drag the crosshair of the second envelope, dropping it into the first modulation box of the Cutoff frequency of filter two.

Bring this Cutoff frequency all the way down, then click and drag up in that box which applies a bit of envelope modulation onto this filter and have the envelope there so we have quite a lot of envelope modulation on that Cutoff frequency.

Then set the filter up by sharpening the attack a little, with the decay staying around halfway and bringing the decay level right down, and taking the resonance off. This gives a solid pluck bass tone which has a nice character to it.

Now going to the Voicing section, boost the voices up to two and make the sound monophonic. Then go back to the oscillator section, take the glide right down which gives a nice and smooth transition between the notes, but not too much, so we are not getting that pitch bend glide going on.

Also going to use a tiny amount the pitch Cutoff, so turning that one, we have two voices and we can spread the pitch of these voices ever so slightly by dragging the slider. If you drag it right out, it gives that dirty sound, so just a little bit adding a fitness to the sound.

Then going back to the oscillator section, and check the Restart via Gate on the oscillator phases, giving that nice consistent tone with each key.

Also I might play around with the oscillator phases and on the second oscillator on the phase re-trigger point out will change the tone a little.

Also on the modulation oscillator dirty up the sound a little. So using some phase modulation on oscillator three which give quite a nice effect by taking some of the weight out and adds nice character. Also you can detune this slightly to -0.10. I’m going to use a macro to control that which is something that we can maybe automate with the sound, but you wouldn’t always necessarily want it on there. It does sound a bit more weighty without it, but it adds a nice character.

Also using the filter frequency modulation (Filter FM) to affect filter one by clicking in the box and you can hear the effect that is having. Again, use this same macro two to control that. It is increasing the filter modulation on filter one, but also increasing this phase mode on oscillator three and calling this Mod Osc.

Then setting up another macro here, which I mentioned at the start that we’re automating the sound a little bit and using a macro to control various parameters on envelope one. So holding SHIFT I can click and drag this macro to affect the attack of this first envelope that is controlling the Cutoff frequency of filter one and he decay and the decay level with just subtle amounts. This changes the envelope shape a little bit, so quite a nice automation option. Then rename that env.

The just a couple of final things to set up with the sound by using the Dimension Expander (in FX1) but with the size right down so we don’t increase to much width into the sound. It’s a bass sound so we want it central. This warms it up a bit by adding depth and also adding a tiny amount of delay as well and maybe taking the left and right channels down to 1 over 8 and the feedback right down. You don’t have to have that delay on there, but it’s just quite nice.

I’m also going to use an insert effect here, and a sin shaper, just to drive the sound, and bringing the dry/wet down a little and that is the sound complete.

So now we have this bass riff happening and and basically it sounded quite nice but it didn’t have a nice groove. So what I have done and rather than use the logic grooves I’ve extracted one from Maschine. So if you use Maschine, I’ve extracted one which is about 30% groove then applied it to this midi part, and the you have got this kind of bass which is a bit garage and deep-house style with a loose feel.

So on some of the notes you can see they are quite late.