To make a vintage funky synth bass in Serum first initialize Serum to have a blank patch. That way you can start making this vintage synth bass from scratch.
(1) : The first waveform for Osc A is going to be a sawtooth.
(2) : Bring Osc A down an octave and increase the Level of Osc A to about 80%.
(3) : For the second oscillator which is Osc B, select the Basic Mg wavetable which is under “Analog” wavetables menu. Keep in mind that Analog wavetables come by default with Serum.
Bring Osc B down by -2 octaves and keep the WT-POS (wavetable position) at default to use the first wavecyle.
(4) : Turn on the Sub Osc and take it down by -2 Octaves. Then select a triangle waveform.
Serum Filter Section for Funky Synth Bass
(5) : Turn on the Filter and select the MG Low 24 filter type. Make sure you also switch on the filter routing for Osc B and Sub Osc to let the sound come through the Filter as well.
Now adjust the Filter’s parameters to have the following values :
Filter Cutoff = 20Hz
Filter Resonance = 25%
Filter Drive = 25%
Filter Variance = 25%
Envelopes for Funky Synth Bass
(6) : In Serum Env 1 is hardwired to control the VCA by default. Now for this funky synth bass you want to have a slightly fast attack time and a considerably short release time.
(7) : Next step is to use Env 2 to control the Filter Cutoff. So drag and drop the Env 2 Mod destination to the Filter’s Cutoff henceforth setting the Mod amount to be around 50.
Extra Modulation for Funky Synth Bass
(8) : To add extra movement to the Filter Cutoff use the Velocity mod source with the value of 25 controlling the Filter Cutoff point. The note velocity will then determine how far will the Filter open based on the modulation amount.
(9) : To emulate the pitch drift which is common with analog synthesizers. You can use an LFO to modulate the fine tuning of the Oscillators ever so slightly. The idea is not to go overboard with this technique.
(10) : For the Voicing part turn on the Legato and Mono mode. Also set the Portamento to “Always”.
Effects for Funky Synth Bass
(11) : For the effects section you could use a slight touch of distortion to add extra harmonics to sound. This will give the sound more character.
