Hello!!! New here blah blah im a noob. But kinda not.
I maily produce house music and I have been strongly influenced but all the guys on dirtybird.
Ive been wanting to know how they make their basslines sound so gritty and subbassy. REF: http://soundcloud.com/dirtybirdrecords/kyle-watson-the-clock-preview
Sounds like alot of FM, but I can fm synthesize for the life of me. Can someone help me out? or does someone have a sample pack i might be able to reference ?

 

Hi,
1.Do you have any hardware synth ?

2. If not, no prob ;-)

3. The gretty sound it would also come from Soft clipping dude.
Put any Soft clipper plugins ( Console emulations as Waves, Slate … Saturator from ableton built in plugins , TRacks Soft Clipper, or Inflator from Sonnox). And works in Soft or Hard mode or both, it depends obviously, of the plugin,the sound you're currently looking for.
Tracks can do both as Soft Clipping and Hard Clipping.

4. Do this on all your tracks even Busses. You'll see

5.Do it carefully, 'cause it could destroy your mix , do A/B compare; ( don't forget to work in 32 bit then you could'nt destroy your audio file unless going to let say +90; +104 db …)

6.Soft clipping and some times Hard clipping gives the warm, gritty etc… needed for your audio files, and are among the "secrets weapons" of many producers.

7. Cheers

 

actually it is a combination of clipping and limiting... *yes*
Summing your tracks out of the box can help to understand it.