808 bass
From DNBWiki
The 808 bass, also known as 808 Sub and 808 Kick, is a kick drum sound from the Roland TR-808 drum machine. The sound of an 808 kick is iconic of hip hop and the dance genres as being a full, 'phat' bass sound. The kick sound is so deep, mainly hitting the sub bass frequencies between 20-100hz, that in fact it is very rarely used as a kick sound - but rather as 'sub bass' instrument, or for layering beneath a higher kick sound.
[edit] Theory
Without going into too much depth, the kick is essentially a sine wave with a sharp decay in pitch and can easily be recreated on most synths. Navarone's 808 Tutorial Explains how to synthesize the 808 using Reasons Subtractor synth, the theory behind this tutorial can easily be applied to other soft synths, samplers and VSTi's.
[edit] Processing and Usage
- As standard, most drum and bass producers will apply processing such as distortion using two layers; one being a highpassed, processed layer, and the second being the original untouched 808 sound. Bass frequencies can easily be lost by phase-inversion caused by the effects device, or distortion of the sine wave. This technique of 'clean-layering' preserves the ever-so important bass frenquencies needed for drum and bass. filtering an 808 with an lfo sync`d sweep can produce rhythmic effects especially when used with heavy distortion and eq.
- A rippling effect similar to that used in Kenny Ken and Andy C's track 'The Quest' can be made by simply playing two adjacent or close notes on the keyboard.
- The 808 is commonly sampled or synthesized, processed and then resampled.
For more processing methods see Bass techniques.
