Like most young millennial/late Gen-Z producers, Skrillex was the primordial spark that drives them today. Almost a decade later, most are still dumbfounded on how he crafted his distinct sound. After watching every tutorial on ¨HOW TO MAKE AN EPIC SKRILLEX GROWL IN SERUM¨ for the past 8 years, nobody has gotten even close. It got to a point where I thought nobody knew the secrets. Until I heard these tracks:



&




These tracks made me realize that there truly is formula to those craft those distinct early/mid-2010 glitch hop/Dubstep sounds. If anyone has the ear to possibly dissect and recreate the basses/tones of these tracks it would be very much appreciated

 

this is what Spitfya has listed as Gear on his Soundbetter profile:

GEAR HIGHLIGHTS

• Blue Yeti Microphone
• Sennheiser 280 Pro
• Akai MPK Mini 2
• a PC with windows on it.

I'd give you 1:1 odds it is Serum.

 

there not hard to make like at all just play around with the serum monster tables processing in serum modulate the eq and the distortion with lfos and shit tons of ott

 

or just grab the samplefire serum pack

 

or any one of the million patces virtual riot gives away for free on the regular

 

yes it's pretty basic stuff that you can find on most dubstep pack (more the old one, before the "riddim era").

But if you want to make it yourself, the simpler would be Massive as it is what was the most used at that time (Skrillex was also a big FM8 user but this one is more complex).

In Massive it's simple, use 2 osc, one with "Modern Talking" wavetable (on Spectrum mode), the 2nd with "Deep Throat" (on Bend -/+ mode), "intensity" and "amp" all the way up on both.
Put the filter 1 on Scream more, and then use the Perf or LFO to mudulate the "cutoff" and the "scream" knob, add some resonance. Those two should go in the same direction, the intensity is up to your taste.
On the "Modulation osc" tab turn on the "Ring Mod" on osc 2 and the "Phase" on osc 1, both all up (or less if you want, those change the tone a little bit)
Then you can add some distortion with the "insert 1" & 2 tab, the clip and P shaper work well.
Add some FX if you want, like dim-exp if you want some stereo, but at this point you should have a sound that's close to what you want.

The important thing (after the osc shape of course) is in the modulation, for the cutoff it's all course (from 0 to the max), the scream depend on your taste, the higher, the more agressive it will be.


For the equivalent in Serum, you can find the Massive wavetable easily, but I'm not sure what filter would be the closest, and what Warp mode would be the best to match the Spectrum from Massive, but you can use some monster wavetable that have those change inside them already. The key is mostly in the screaming filter modulation here (there is a scream filter in serum but it doesn't sound like the one from massive but maybe I didn't experiment enough to find a close setup with it)

 

Last edited: Jun 7, 2021

FM8 + some serum(esq) sounds
for skrilex

not for that pop shit above
thats serum or similar

 

There's like 30 -odd hundred youtube tuts on dubstep growl. they all pretty much have the same thing in common if not the same waves used. the technique is the same, the sound is slightly different, but then uve got almost unlimited waveforms to chose from.

 

..wrong synth, wrong synthesis. go for pure FM, additive. (not that you can't get close, but...). It just sounds different

 

here is one I stumbled onto: https://synthmob.com/samples/the-one-skrillex-growls-free

it has a tutorial geared towards massive and 50 samples. could be worth reading if you haven't.

 

It's not the synths that are the hard part but the chopping/editing of them, and that supreme Skrillex mix that makes the super fat sound I think

 

https://www.antidoteaudio.com/freebies there are a bunch of very good free serum bass presets and samples. their samples are always great if you like this sort of music. the bass growls in this one https://www.antidoteaudio.com/free-dubstep-sample-pack
are somewhere around how you would want to start out in Serum.

while thanks for posting your approach to it in massive, I do agree with the OP that all these tutorials and so on only get close by varying degrees. but they seem like they are just missing "something". this thing could probably help:

 

For the modern bass music sound, and if you want to sound like everyone else: Serum, Phase Plant, Vital. Then add ridiculous amounts of OTT and Disperser. There are thousands of tutorials about this on Youtube.

 

Yep, distortion is the main component, using wave shaper distortion got me close even with conventional 1 Osc > 1 Filter + resonance synthesis.
Finding the right modulation amounts is key.

 

if you go fm you dont need distrotion
at least not in extrenal fx sense, thats why they sound so "clean" while also growling

 

dondada you do need if its just subtle distortion to bring out the mids, eq distort compress

 

You misunderstood
but i think i understood the guys above
to make it clear, use (external) FX to ad something (you like)
But the Building blocks should be as clean as possible to have the most Impact!

The oldskool way in DnB for instance was to rip a bass through distortion or overdriving a desk
Sample, Rinse,Layer, Repeat

But FM,this is more of a different philosophy
Create, play with pitch, tempo, Formant/Frequency shifts
everything tightly controlled!!
------
ad Eq Fx to Taste/Mix

 

@dondada is absolutely right here..

With FM (like FM8) you are making the growl/vowels by modulating an operator with others. Your freq spectrum will look like a sort of formant filter... but without a filter. The frequencies are added (additive synthesis) and the result is a "cleaner" but also more "brutal" sound. What you do afterwards with it (put 5 OTTs, disto, eq, comp,.. on) is another story.

There is also a vocoded vocal layered. Lot's of automation, editing, resampling,.. Nothing wrong learning from what was already done. But try to not get obsessed chasing how a certain "famous" sound was made - make it your own!

..also Skrillex himself said what he used on basses countless times.

 

speaking of which i do have a fl patcher preset which cosits of nothing but 46 otts all wired up together then routed to aclipper/gate if anyone wants it