In this sound design tutorial we will make a simple sub bass in Massive. A sub bass is one of the most basic if not the easiest sounds to make. It only requires a sine wave pitched down without any need of a filter. Enough said initialize Massive to get started.
1) An instance of Massive with a blank patch.
2) As for the oscillators section we only need sine wave. This is a sub bass tutorial so nothing fancy. So go ahead and select a Sin-Squ wavetable in Native Instruments Massive.
Turn the WT-Position to the left and that will give you the sound of a sine wave. After that pitch Osc1 down by -2 Octaves or in other words -24 semitones.
3) We are not going to need a filter for this sub bass. Let’s adjust the Amp Envelope by setting attack time to a value of 0.1o and release time to 0.12 in Massive.
4) Open the Voicing Tab of Native Instruments Massive. Change the play mode to Monophonic. This will let Massive to only play one note at a time. Next set trigger mode to legato triller.
5) Turn up the Master Volume to 85% to increase the overall level of this sub bass in Massive.
6) Click on the Oscillators Tab to adjust the glide time. Move the glide time knob to about 55% and change the glide mode to Equal. By changing glide mode to Equal this means the portamento slides are equal in time irregardless of the interval.
7) Get rid of the Vibrato Macro by removing the Macro modulation routing to the Vibrato. We don’t really need any vibrato for this sub bass in Massive.
Conclusion
That’s about it for making a sub bass in Massive. You can later on add external VST plugins if you need extra processing. An ideal use of this type of sub bass is to layer it with other bass sounds.
If the sub bass sounds too low you can just bring it up an octave. Which is -12 semitones in Native Instruments Massive.
