Beefing up lower bass notes using keyboard tracking
Posted: Mon Feb 27, 2017 9:26 pm
New Sub 37 owner here. I have been trying to create some bass patches where the lowest playable notes still have a good amount of oomph (perceived volume) compared to the notes an octave or two above. Usually the lowest note would be the typical low C for bass (i.e. the C below the E of an electric bass) or sometimes even down to a few semitones lower. That lowest half-octave to octave usually has less punch when the bottom end is based on square or triangle waves. I figured I could use the Keyboard Track mod source to help beef up that lowest octave.
My first attempt was to simply use VCA Level as the destination and then set the MOD amount to full inverse (-5). This didn't seem to have any effect. After some playing around, I came to the conclusion that the problem there has to do with the way the values map from the KB TRACK source to the destination of VCA.
After trying a few more things, I had the idea to try the Filter Drive amount as the destination. I set the MOD amount again to -5 and set the multidrive knob to about 3 or 4 and lo and behold, it worked. The notes around the low C were now louder and it scaled as expected so that the octave higher had only been boosted a tiny bit and the octave above that was about the same as before. My only concern using this method is that it may introduce a bit of distortion when I want a clean bass sound but so far it doesn't seem to be a problem as long as I keep the drive amount knob at around 4. (BTW, you can exaggerate the scaling even more by duplicating the same settings to both MOD 1 and MOD 2 if you don't mind using up both MOD sections, but I actually found that to be too much of a boost anyway.)
If anyone else has done anything like this using a different method, I'd love to know, especially if there is a way to get the VCA Level to do what I was hoping.
My first attempt was to simply use VCA Level as the destination and then set the MOD amount to full inverse (-5). This didn't seem to have any effect. After some playing around, I came to the conclusion that the problem there has to do with the way the values map from the KB TRACK source to the destination of VCA.
After trying a few more things, I had the idea to try the Filter Drive amount as the destination. I set the MOD amount again to -5 and set the multidrive knob to about 3 or 4 and lo and behold, it worked. The notes around the low C were now louder and it scaled as expected so that the octave higher had only been boosted a tiny bit and the octave above that was about the same as before. My only concern using this method is that it may introduce a bit of distortion when I want a clean bass sound but so far it doesn't seem to be a problem as long as I keep the drive amount knob at around 4. (BTW, you can exaggerate the scaling even more by duplicating the same settings to both MOD 1 and MOD 2 if you don't mind using up both MOD sections, but I actually found that to be too much of a boost anyway.)
If anyone else has done anything like this using a different method, I'd love to know, especially if there is a way to get the VCA Level to do what I was hoping.