Filtered Bassline Swing and Groove?

B

Backspacez

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I'm having a lot of trouble when filtering a bassline geting a feel/groove to it. If you listen to a bunch of boom-bap type songs from the 1990s you'll hear the bassline is really grooving with the sample. Listen to Put It On by Big L, you'll know what I'm talking about. That's a filtered bassline that Lord Finesse is using, right? If that's not a good enough example, this guy (he's mad good, check him out) does the same type of thing, listen to the track "Steelo": Steelo | Massology

Anyways, I always hear that and I try to emulate it by using a low pass filter in Parametric EQ 2 (I use FL) but it just doesn't have any groove or swing feel like other tracks do. Maybe I'm doing something wrong, maybe I'm using crap samples, I'm not sure but I'm really stumped, I've searched around here for filtering basslines and stuff and I do what they say but nothing works. I've tried many different things on my own but nothing seems to do the trick.

Any help or tips would be greatly appreciated, thank you.
 
If you're using the factory stuff with FL do yourself a favor and get some real plug-ins.
A better vst/vsti could get the job done.

Peace
 
Groove/swing does not come from fx processing.

It does come from how it is played. if you have piano roll or grid entered your bass line then it won't groove. You need to either play it in or apply a groove template to the track after you have finished entering it.

Applying FL's pattern groove/swing won't help any as it is a global parameter that affects all tracks/sequences/patterns equally
 
a VST for making basslines? Or just the FX in general. I'm not sure what a 'real' plugin contains but if you could please enlighten me that would be great.

Bandcoach,
Okay, that makes sense. Do you play your drums on an MPC or a keyboard, or something else?

Would you guys recommend the plugin that comes with FL studio "FPC"? I'm pretty lost here guys, thanks.
 
If you're comfortable using FPC to trigger samples then continue doing that.
But,when i say vst/vsti,i mean that you should use a better filter effect or play a bassline
out with a vsti and then maybe go back in and even filter that.

Think outside the box bro.

Peace
 
I mouse mine in and then apply a not so secret recipe for humanising them:

  • Velocity randomise +/- 5 of a selected velocity (any more and it sounds like a different volume level, any less and you don't get enough variation) - no drummer hits the same part of the kit exactly the same way twice unless it is a velocity limited electronic kit
  • Position randomise +/- up to 5% of the ticks in a 16th note - we break musical time into
    • bars
    • beats
    • 16ths
    • ticks
    The MIDI spec says that the 16th can have as few as 6 ticks (24 pulses-per-quarter-note(ppqn)), it does not limit the upper value. Most daws apply something like 384/480/960 ppqn, which means that the 16th has 96/120/240 ticks. There was a version of cubase that went to extremes and had 960 ticks per 16th (3840ppqn) easily fixed by setting a new value in prefs.

If I want a groove then I need to apply a groove template or revisit the way I notate my music
 
Wow Bandcoach, you really know your stuff. I see you reply to a lot of topics on posts and you always have a great answer. To humanize my drums, I would just zoom in on the note and nudge it over a little bit but it sounds out of tune because i'm not able to move it subtley enough so it's way too off beat. I would always change the velocity/release a little bit with a few ghost notes as well.
 
Slicex plugin is to sample in FL and it has great Low-Pass Filters build in.
And i haven't heard a better filter than FL's Love Philter yet. FL has great plugins already. (not all of them but the filters are fine)
 
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