808 Bass Sound Design Choices...???

Chew_Bear

New member
I know that you can synthesize a 808 bass from virtually any synthesizer (massive, sylenth etc).

What I would like to know is...Can you synthesize a 808 bass from a kick sample inside of any sampler of your choice...?

My sound design game isn't that strong yet with synthesizers. But...I am getting better/more proficient with samplers and mangling/editing sample audio. So...I am trying to avoid using synthesizers (massive, operator, Sylenth etc) to synthesize an 808 bass. Instead...I am trying to learn how to synthesize a 808 bass from a kick sample inside of Ableton's Simpler/Sampler vst.

Which sampler vsts out there have tremendous synthesizing/mangling powers for sound design purposes from samples/audio...? I know kontakt gets high reviews as one of the most popular samplers out there.

Ableton's Simpler/Sampler is very good and I know that a lot of people would stand to say that its one of the best out there as a stock/daw sampler. But...I am wanting more in options and sound design capabilities when it comes to a sampler.
 
The idea is to get the basic drum sound from your synth and then sample it. You'll never get the perfect kick from just a synth, but it's the easiest and best sounding way to get the basic drum sound. You could use a sample of a sine wave and pitch it just like you would with a synth, but the result just wouldn't be as good. Getting those sounds from a synth is dead easy.. take a sine, pitch envelope, low-pass filter and that's really it. You could play with the built-in effects and filters a bit but most synths don't have a lot of options...

Kontakt can mangle the hell out of things, yeah... but it's not really purpose built for that and it won't help with getting this particular sound. You could.. probably, but it's like hammering a nail with a screwdriver. On a synth it's a 1 minute job.. add 20 seconds to make a preset and you'll never have to do it again ;) From there you treat it like any other sample. It's a great way to get the hang of synths.
 
Synthesis is hella simple. The most complex type you'll find in that field is probably modular synthesis.
For those I'd go to thor or subtractor and spend some days tweaking with a control surface, saving patches daily before moving on to the next thing.

But, this is because I spent more time using plugins than making sampled tracks so my opinion on this is quite skewed in favor of oscillators.

Acoustic sounds are generated in a different way than completely digital sounds, remember this.
If it is not acoustic, it is electronic. If it's electronically MADE, you need oscillators to create that sound :]
 
Synthesis is hella simple. The most complex type you'll find in that field is probably modular synthesis.

Modular isn't really a type of synthesis though. It just doesn't (usually) have hardwired signal paths, but a basic substractive osc-filter-amp type setup isn't any more "complex" in a modular environment.

An 808 kick is really simple in terms of synthesis - it's just a sinewave with a simple pitch envelope (that creates the initial "click" by quickly sweeping down in the beginning), and the amp env to control the decay length.
 
The most complex type of synthesis that comes to my mind is additive synths.
The idea is simple: you can make any sound out of combined sinewaves. But the synthesizers aren't, mostly because it's such a different concept. Unfamiliar parameters if you're used to subtractive synths.
You can get ridiculous basses out of them and sounds that are impossible with any subtractive, so it's worth trying out.
 

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