Hi Everyone

How to make the following percussive synth bass?

I'm not sure whether I could achieve the sound by layering some tuned perc sound; however, I would like to understand how to design this sound by using traditional waveforms

The synth bass plays all over the track; however, you can hear it without vocals from 02:29

Thank you in advance

 

Last edited: Apr 11, 2023

You don't need to layer it with a 'tuned perc sound' - you can use a sine wave with a pitch envelope which is exactly what a kick drum transient is. Depending on the synth that could be one of your oscillator layers (or I'd probably use an instrument rack in Ableton and layer it like I would a kick)

I think a lot of the impact there though is the syncopation of the bass synth in time with the kick which really helps. The actual synth bass itself sounds like a saw bass with a bit of resonance and a filter envelope to give that squishy sound.

 

Last edited: Apr 14, 2023