I'm pretty at making just about any sound I want with a synthesizer, that is, in its shape and timbre.

But the sound itself always ends up sounding sort of brittle and weak, even harsh.

For example, Zomboy/Skrilex have very loud and distorted bass sounds, but relatively speaking, they have this really nice sort of creamy/fuzzy sound to them. They're not all metallic and harsh.

Basically, I make the midrange sound, highpass between 100-200hz depending on the sound, and then from there I don't know what to do at all, never have. Sometime a lowpass really high between 18k-20k, but that doesn't make a huge difference. Everytime I try to go a bit deeper on EQing these sounds I end up doing more harm than good.

In terms of volume in the mix, I don't think thats the issue. Everyone mixes differently, but in this style most of the main elements, like kick/snare/mids/sub, the volume of each is pretty similar track to track.
 
Any tips?

Quote from: sinnergy on May 12, 2016, 05:30:26 am

I also took a look at at this and found some interesting stuff.

What I found interesting was their sidechaining... At this point in the bass music loudness war, I was under the impression basically everyone is using some form of volume automation sidechain that knocks the volume of more or less the entire mix to zero (Mids+Sub at least)

In this track, only the subbass was getting dropped to zero, in fact, the heavy midrange synths were only being knocked down ~50%, the keys/leads a bit more, and just slightly on the percussion and background stuff. Maybe this was done just because of the bass house signature groove?

It just seems like, how are you going to achieve such a loud mix when you've got the loudest thing in your mix, the kick, hitting right on top of another element that is right up there in gain, the mids, and not have the mids ducked all the way down.

Either way, saved all those LFOtool settings for when I wanna try my hand at a bass house tune

And even today, watching the Funtcase in the studio, he talks about how he doesn't sidechain very heavily since it sounds unnatural (which, is sort of rich considering how unnatural the sort of music is to begin with).

The mids don't take up nearly as much headroom as the sub and kick so you don't have to sidechain them 100% in order to get a loud mix m8

Guess not, I just figured at this point everyone's trying to squeeze every half decibel out of the mix that they can. But I guess when you get good enough, you can lay off that sort of stuff.

Going to try easing up on the mids SC in my tracks and see if that helps the groove and flow a bit.

I also took a look at at this and found some interesting stuff.

What I found interesting was their sidechaining... At this point in the bass music loudness war, I was under the impression basically everyone is using some form of volume automation sidechain that knocks the volume of more or less the entire mix to zero (Mids+Sub at least)

In this track, only the subbass was getting dropped to zero, in fact, the heavy midrange synths were only being knocked down ~50%, the keys/leads a bit more, and just slightly on the percussion and background stuff. Maybe this was done just because of the bass house signature groove?

It just seems like, how are you going to achieve such a loud mix when you've got the loudest thing in your mix, the kick, hitting right on top of another element that is right up there in gain, the mids, and not have the mids ducked all the way down.

Either way, saved all those LFOtool settings for when I wanna try my hand at a bass house tune

And even today, watching the Funtcase in the studio, he talks about how he doesn't sidechain very heavily since it sounds unnatural (which, is sort of rich considering how unnatural the sort of music is to begin with).