Hey, guys! Well, the title speaks for itself. Please help me to recreate a reese bass sound from "Kerosene" and "Transgender" by Crystal Castles

Сan't describe in words the emotions I get from listening to this bass. The sound is so thick and warm...

Maybe for some of you this sort of sound will seem like nothing, but I'd be grateful if you could give some tips on how to do it, or share a preset for your favourite vst synth. I'd really like to break down the material and learn how to make something like this myself.

So... I know there are talented sound designers here, which unfortunately I am not.

I've split both songs if you need it
first file is the song "kerosene" - 0:50 bass without sidechain

Spoiler

Spoiler: AI can be shit at times, so here are links to Spotify

 

There are a lot of reese bass tutorials on youtube which are a good starting point.
This for example, which is for the free synth Vital:

 

you can make them with many different synths, you just need 3 oscillators for most of the examples you will find. the sample files sound all high-passed and recorded from Youtube or something. The quality of the links below is better, but these are pretty generic anyway. like Presets generic.

for any of them, I would use the dsp56300 Virus emulator Osiris. or Kilohearts Phaseplant. Actually, watch that Masterclass episode with Reso. He spends a good amount of time making one in Phaseplant from a track on Hospital.

There are some nice ones in this pack: https://www.dcbreaks.com/product-page/access-virus-ti-presets-vol-1 it's for TI but will load into Osiris and would be a good start. then the usual stuff, filtering, multiband distortion, eq, resampling and automation.

 

Last edited: Aug 26, 2023

make a reese bass in 40 sec in live
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/cZMhCWgG1tY

How To Make A Heavy Reese Bass In Serum

MAKING 7 REESE BASS PATCHES IN 10 MINS USING SERUM

 

Thank you. I'll check it out

 

Those are dead basic 'Reeses'. Take 2 saw oscillators, detune one, maybe add a third an octave below, play with the filter a little, add gain, maybe some chorus.

If you wanna follow the standard playbook, resample it, and repeat the filtering/gain process a few more times and mix your new sample with the low end from the original.

 

I'll try

 

the sample style examples got me to open youtube and listen to a 30 year old Ray Keith track. That's how much that sound has "changed" in it's basic form. By this I mean, not at all. The rest is in the processing, and other available synth parameters; to make something more than just any other basic Reese. Most decent software synths will have a basic one in the stock presets, and most of them will have more going on than the examples you posted. If the synth can make one, it can make plenty more of them. So you know the synth you are trying to use is capable of the sound you want. Instead of asking best synth to make them with, you could try asking about making the sound you want with the plugin you intend to use instead. If you want to copy something like a "how to make this sound", pick a really good one to try it with. With such basic examples you may as well be asking for the recipe behind a standard kick drum sample.

 

Nowadays the examples can be all over the place haha. The 'reese' was born when some jungle guy sampled the original track in the early early 90s. Next jungle guy sampled it, did some gain/modulation/etc.. Next jungle guy samples that, does more gain/modulation.. 1999 rolls around. These guys sample it in their new EMU. Run it through a Mackie/Soundcraft desk, with gain, filtering.. Resamples it.. Runs it back through the desk with more modulation and gain. Resamples it..

Saw waves are a good easy way to get straight to the down and dirty dnb reese, but the OG was a Casio CZ patch.

 

by 99 they were already making them really nasty. Replicant was released in that year, and they had already been using that sound in many tracks. Torque was released in 97, but I don't remember if they used any that "followed a recipe", but close. A lot of the time, these known sounds and samples got used 50 times before someone applies some name to them. Most of them are already starting to get annoying by then, because with a name for it; other people can copy it deliberately or make stock presets of them.

 

Man, thank you! I haven't tried the pack you recommended. But I got interested in sound design in Virus TI, and then I came across Viper (even though I've got it installed before, but now I'm seriously stuck in it). And what sweet things this synth can create! I even managed to make a roughly similar sound to the "Kerosene" I was originally asking about. Not a proper preset, because Viper lacks one more oscillator for the sub (like the one in Serum), but the main part can be copied and the sub can be mixed in as a separate layer.

Still learning, but here's what I've got so far (without any post processing). Really like the dirty sound this synth gives

Spoiler

 

Those sound good. After you get something like them, when you get them into a track you can do lots of processing to make them fit the individual track anywhere from basic to mangled filtered stuff.

i have still never used Viper. It is not available for Mac. The legit current version can import Virus TI sound sets. People have said it is lighter in CPU usage than the DSP56300 Virus Emulator, but then a lot of optimization work was done to Osiris so I have no idea how they compare now. Except that Osiris definitely does import TI sound sets and it is free. You can find Osiris here: https://dsp56300.wordpress.com/. or on sister site there are versions uploaded with the various Virus ROM files you need one of to make it work. It works great with most Virus TI presets, but because it is an emulation of earlier models some of the presets are not 1:1 exact how they are on a TI.

The PD (phase distortion) synthesis availability has made them popular for this type of bass/mid sounds. It's one of the reasons Kilohearts Phaseplant is also favored by others. Some good effects plugins add to the possibilities. Filter, Chorus, Multi-band distortion can all work, you just have to experiment. And re-sampling can help too.