Design Melodic Drops With Zebra

Creating heavy bass sections that sound clear and logical can be very difficult, so for this week I wanted to share some insight on how to go about this. Let’s learn how to design melodic drops with Zebra!

When you want to build aggressive and/or bass heavy songs like the pro guys do there are lots of things that you need to pay attention too, for example the mix, the right reverb, a great rhythm and off course you need some good sounds.

But there is also one element that is easy to forget, and that is what I like to call “The Focus Point” .

When I just started out making music I wanted to create sick drops like Noisia, Spor, Trifonic, etc. but often this didn’t turn out very well!

What I started noticing was that my drops had the heavy sounds, but they did not have the consistency and the melodic flow of the pro guys.

If at this point you don’t have any idea what I’m talking about, go and check out some of your favourite (heavy) songs, I think you will notice that almost every drop section has some sort of melodic line above all the heavy bass sounds.

This can be a melody with a different synth, or it can be the bass sounds themselves creating some kind of melody.

Sometimes this “line” is very obvious and appears upfront in the mix, and other times it is very subtle.

The goal is always the same though; To give the listener something to hold on to, an element that is easy to follow between all the other madness.

The most common technique to use is the “Call and Response” method where the last phrase of the melody responds to the opening line.

What I like to do is use a combination of pitched bass sounds and combine these with some arpeggiator or other thinner sounds to give a bit more melodic interest.

This week I’ll show you how to make on of those arpeggiators in Zebra and I show you how I work with these concepts.

I hope this helps you out in creating some sick bass sections!
Otherwise just send me a question and I’ll try to expand on these ideas!