Hi there!

First off let me say, that I am still quite new to producing and sound design for that matter, I’ve just recently (2-3months) started to gain somewhat of a solid understanding of it, so please excuse mistakes or lack of knowledge.
Second thing. i think this question (or questions) needs some introduction, it is very specific and might not be easy to answer. So please bear with me. (I’m in need of FM experts basically…).  Also, pls excuse any grammar and language mistakes. English is not my native language...

I could use some help / advice concerning progressive (psy-)trance. I produce mainly offbeat progressive... the basic beat is quite simple, it consists of very pronounced and punchy kick, and a  very very well designed bass pluck.
My problem is concerning the bass pluck. With the Kick 2 plugin I can quite easily design heavy & Punching kicks but im having some serious problems getting anywhere near the quality or character I want when it comes to the bass pluck
Here are some tracks to demonstrate what i'm after:

Tezla – Back to the 80’s
https://youtu.be/8i4oQUGf_-g?t=54s
Ranji & Tezla – New Ways
https://youtu.be/B5TLtbAEDiM?t=4m28s
Ranji & EPIC – Falling To
https://youtu.be/_mpyaQhBFhs?t=1m
Sideform - Timebending
https://youtu.be/-9iHMWU2hgI?t=4m19s
Sokrates (Tezla) – Time To Get Serious
https://youtu.be/SKDiN63S30Q?t=46s
Ranji – Take Me Away
https://youtu.be/5TUrpLjHgt4?t=54s

here's an image i made. it should help explaining what i'm talking about



In general people say you have to use simple a simple saw wave as a basis, Lowpass envelope it and then process the living hell out of it. And I think they are right to a certain extent. This way I can get quite nice results but they are in no way satisfying. They don’t Sound as Fat, and they always keep that Sawtooth feeling to them, and they don’t have that signature Rumble in the sub portion.  Basically, I don’t think these producers create their sounds this way.
After a while of not getting forward, I started to analyse the waveforms of some of my favourite tracks and I noticed that they all have one thing in common. Each wavecycle consists of what appears to be a tiny kick (Sine with its pitch dropping) which then revolves around a static sub sine. [Examples on the image]

I looked at the basses from my own tracks, and they looked nothing like the ones on the image. Maybe a tiny bit, but the "Sawtooth" was visible pretty clearly.
And as one would expect, by looping a kick sample, on a very high pitch, you get this sort of sound, but I sincerely doubt that these guys use that technique…

Then I tried to recreate these waveforms within virtual synthesizers (Mainly Serum), by playing with the FFT function, or even drawing my own waveforms… but this way of doing it is painfully hard to get right, and leaves you with little to no control over the waveform at all...

Then I found the “ICanHasKick” Wavetable within Serum [Image]. This one gave me something to use and to build upon. But in the end did still not satisfy, for the control over the wavedorm is still quite limited.
EDIT:i also messed around with the mathemathical functions in serum, which is quite fun, but creating asymmetrical, and imperfectly exponentially or logarhythmically evolving wavecycles by using functions is way above of what i understand of mathemathics

Recently I then found out about additive synthesis and most importantly about FM synthesis. I watched lots of tutorials, concerning FM synthesis, the theory behind it and how it is used in digital music. I quickly realised that FM could probably bear the solution to my problem.
After reading some more FM theory I found out how it could maybe be done. By using a modulator waveform that looks somewhat like the graph y = (1/x)
[-> image, sytrus] or considering the properties of dezibelle it would probably have to be logarhythmic…(I guess).

I tried to do this within Image line Sytrus, because you can customize waveforms for each operator. This actually worked out after a while.
OP1: Sine; Ratio 1
OP2: Saw, “Half” On, Tension ca -50%; Ratio 0.5
However I still needed to control how loud the waveform got over the course of one cycle. This I fixed with ring modulation. To finish it I used another operator and routed it right to the output.
This actually gave me the kind of wave I was looking for [-> image, wavecandy], however i still very little control over the waveform (I had to hunt for sweet spots for hours; automating the FM amount resulted only in a ugly mess of a sound)


So finally my questions:

1.   Am I in anyway correct to search for my solution within the realms of FM?
   a.   If yes, how do I gain more control over the waveform? Or am i in the right direction in the first place?
EDIT:Might i be better off by using multiple levels of modulation, insteat of just one? (I've got a Electric Bass Guitar preset fo FM8 which achieves a similar sound (sonically and visually), i just don't understand how and why its done...

   b.   Would this exact type of sound then be possible within FM8, since I prefer to use that plugin over sytrus
   c.   Should I use cutoff animation, or animate the amount of FM to create the pluck characteristics… or both?
2.   Are these type of sounds obtainable in a different way?
   a.   If yes, how? distortion, compression, some sort of wicked use of polyphony – phase cancellation? Where should I start? I really have no clue…
   b.   Is hardware necessary? Since I can’t really afford buying a hard synth.



If anyone finds time to answer these questions, I would be unbelievably grateful.
I’ve been searching for this solution for nearly 3 years.

Thanks a lot in advance for even reading that nightmare of a “question”

Warm regards
Quantix