This is a sound design tutorial on how to make a sub a bass using Reveal Sound Spire. It’s quite frankly a beginner friendly tutorial so you don’t need to worry about too much technical sound synthesis stuff.
We only need to use a basic waveform and that’s a simple sine waveform for a sub bass. You can add distortion if you want but that’s just a preference.
1) Initialize a blank patch of Reveal Sound Spire.
2) Change the play mode of Reveal Sound Spire to Mono 2 which is legato. After that select the number of polyphonic voices to 1.
The Glide knob controls the rate at which the notes will slide. So adjust glide setting to a value of about 30%.
3) Turn the volume of Osc 1 completely to the right and change the tuning of Osc to -2 Octaves.
We don’t want a sawtooth waveform so use the WT Mix knob to morph the wavetable into a sine wave. Make sure you dial the knob completely to the right.
Filter and Amp Envelope
4) Select the Infecto LP2 Filter type which is an emulation of the Access Virus Filter. Dial the Filter Cutoff knob to about 30% and leave the resonance at zero.
N.B Make sure you turn off Env 3 routing to the Filter. In Reveal Sound Spire this is set by default however in this case we don’t need it.
5) Let’s now adjust the ADSR of the Amp Envelope with the following settings:
- Attack time = 3%
- Decay time = 50%
- Sustain level = 100%
- Release time = 5%
Effects for Sub Bass
The effects we will use for this sub bass are a Shaper, X-Comp and finally an EQ. If you prefer not to use any effects then that’s fine because the overall sound is done already.
6) The Shaper FX is capable of adding extra harmonics. Except our goal here is to do it in a subtle fashion. So tweak the parameter of the Shaper FX as follows:
- Dry/Wet = 10%
- Shaper Mode = Soft
- HQ = off
- Drive = 16%
- Hi Cut = 24%
7) The next effect we will use is an X-Comp. Therefore set the mix level of the X-Comp to 8%.
Once you have done that click on the buttons which say Warm, Soft and Boost respectively. There are located right below the X-Comp in Reveal Sound Spire.
8) Turn on the EQ and click on the High Shelf button. We want to roll off some of the harmonics generated by the Shaper FX.
So tweak the High Shelf EQ with the following settings:
- Level = 0%
- Q = 20%
- Freq = 45%
Other Related Sound Design Tutorials
- How to Make a Sub Bass in Massive
- How to Make a Sub Bass in u-he Diva
- How to Make a Sub Bass in Serum
- How to Make a Sub Bass using Sylenth1
- How to Make a Sub Bass using 3x OSC
