I notice in a lot of KRNE tracks, and in songs by other artists like Goldwater who are really mobile with their 808s, some releases of the 808 are short, while some are long.  They have a bounce to them - could anyone explain to me how to effectively use the ADSR to make my 808s not sound so flat?  So maybe some have long release, some don't, maybe play around with the sustain for expression?

My abilities in this realm are really limited and I'm sick of avoiding it.  What's the easiest way to approach this, specifically in Ableton?  A sampler and automating ADSR, or using audio samples and just using volume automation to "mimic" playing with the ADSR?  I use the Hip Hop sub bass preset in Ableton for Operator which is awesome, but I'm thinking maybe it's time to learn how to automate the parameters effectively.

So lost here lol

 

one huge thing for me recently was bouncing stuff down to audio. I used to duplicate the 808 patch, change the release, make automations, etc. and it was all a mess and got super inefficient. luckily ableton makes it easy to resample or freeze/flatten tracks so what I do now is write all the bass lines in midi, then when im done, ill duplicate, turn off the midi track (or delete it and save as a new project file), freeze/flatten the track and then chop and fade audio where need be. I find it's much easier to manipulate audio and have that visual reference of the audio track.

Brillz's tutorial on his Facebook is pretty good: https://facebook.com/ItsBrillz/posts/596389447123285

Just posting to highlight my signature...