This is a guest post by Josh Pentland.
Awwwwww, it’s that special time of year. Grandma Esther, Aunt Lilly, and the entire family are coming by to enjoy some stuffing, football, and of course turkey carnage!
Yes folks, each year on the fourth Thursday of November, we take part in Thanksgiving!
Now ask yourself, how can we honor this fine puritanical holiday better than treating everyone to a fully produced, ear blistering, bass pounding, oscillating, scrumptious, gobble- wobble dub step track?
Well today is your lucky day! I will walk you through the process of creating that bass “wobble” effect-using ProTools.
Create and Loop a Drum Pattern
To create your dubstep track: load your favorite drum machine plugin onto an instrument track, or record a drum loop to an audio track. I like to use the ProTools plugin ‘Boom’. The rhythm should be simple and syncopated, shuffled, or incorporate tuplets. The tempo is nearly always in the range of 138-142 beats per minute, with a clap or snare usually inserted every third beat in a bar.
How to create a sub bass track with the ‘Vacuum’ plugin in ProTools
When it comes to the wobble bass in dubstep, the first thing you need is a foundation. You can accomplish this by recording and looping a ‘sub bass’ track.
- Sub bass is created utilizing a lower and deeper register.
- Using the vacuum plug-in (docked on an instrument track in ProTools), create a simple and dark bass melody using a midi keyboard, which you will loop throughout the song.
How to layer your dubstep track with different bass sounds
- Copy your ‘sub bass’ melody from track 1 to another instrument track in ProTools (We will call this Track 2 for the purpose of this tutorial).
- Alter the bass sound by experimenting with different presets on the Vacuum plug-in. The bass sound should be higher in the keyboard register than the sub bass that lives on track 1.
- You get a huge dub step sound through layering the song with numerous bass tracks and bass sounds. You accomplish this by copying the bass melody to new instrument tracks, altering the bass sound, tweaking the pitch, or adding different notes.
How to create the wobble effect using automation
To create that unique wobble effect, you want to focus on the filter cutoff.
- On ‘track 2’ click on the Vacuum plug-in and open the automation window (which is to the left of the ‘bypass’ button in Vacuum), enable the filter cutoff (labeled ‘LPF cutoff’), as well as the arpeggiator (labeled ‘arp rate’).
- On track 2 in the edit window, enable your automation; I choose ‘touch automation’.
- Now you have two options at this point to input your automation data onto the track.
- You can draw it in using the pencil tool.
- You can use your ‘mod’, or modulation wheel on your midi keyboard to record the automation data.
I have an M- Audio Axiom keyboard, which are fairly standard. My preference is using the mod wheel.
How to record the filter cutoff Automation using mod wheel?
The mod wheel allows real-time recording into ProTools, which translates to more of an organic feel than manually writing in the data with a pencil tool.
- On your M- audio midi controller, set the mod wheel to the ‘filter cutoff’ automation preset that was created in the Vacuum plug-in.
- On the automation drop down window in the edit window you’re going to want to set the preset to the mod wheel.
- You are now ready to record your wobble effect! Arm the track and record. While recording, twist the mod wheel back and forth on your keyboard to create a wobbly bass sound.
Recording arpeggiated automation using the pencil tool
Now that we’ve recorded the filter cutoff automation data with the mod wheel we are ready to add the arpeggiator automation data using a pencil tool.
- On track 2, through the drop down automation window, add another automation preset (it’s the small ‘plus sign’ on the automation drop down window).
- On the drop down automation window, choose ‘arp rate’, and turn on the arpeggiator switch in the Vacuum plug in. You are now ready to draw in your automation.
- Choose the free hand pencil tool and start drawing in the automation. I like to draw big swooping lines, going up and down. Rewind the track and listen!
Although it seems like a fair amount of different steps, if you’re familiar with ProTools and you have some time and patience, you will be ready to blow grandma’s mind at Thanksgiving!!!
Josh Pentland is a musician, producer and engineer from San Diego, CA. Josh’s experience includes internships at Studio West and Signature Sound in San Diego, and two operator level certifications in ProTools ( music and post production), from the Recording Arts Center in San Diego, CA. He has a bachelors in Communication from ASU and resides in Tucson, AZ. Josh stays active in music, studio engineering and production.
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9 Comments on "Turkey, Football, Grandma, Pro-Tools and a Dub Step track!"
Loved it!! Thanks Im gonna try this….
Josh Pentland is my hero.
“On your M- audio midi controller, set the mod wheel to the ‘filter cutoff’ automation preset that was created in the Vacuum plug-in.”
DUDE?? WHAT?? you just lost me. PLEASE EXPLAIN FURTHER, WHERE DO I FIND THIS?
You almost succeded. My mid controller doesn’t have a place to set the mod wheel to the filter cutoff. help. I’m missing something.
I use my mod wheel and it makes the bass ”wobble” as I move it but none of it records. I.E. the line for the mod wheel makes no movement and it sounds cool but I have nothing recorded.
HOW DO I GET IT TO RECORD WHAT I’M DOING?
Again, I have the bass already recorded, I just want to get it to record what I do with the mod wheel when it’s playing back… thanks man
allright I found it. But still no recording going on… very annoying.
Hey lanmacg! I understand your frustration as I have been there! Automation wont record unless you have an outboard device such as a keyboard, or controller. Otherwise the automation is simply just written.
automation will record on a track with a if your using a midi keyboard…
Thanks Josh but I have midi keyboard. My computer caught a serious virus and now I have to wait to factory restore and re-install pro-tools after backing everything up, but that’s beside the point!
Before the virus hit I realized I needed to put Midi Merge on in order to record my wobbles, now they are recording over the bass I already have in place.
New Problem- So of coarse I layer my bass. I then choose which bass track I want to have that nasty WUBBLE WUBBLE WOOB WOOOOB on. The problem is after I record the wobble with the mod wheel on my keyboard it records onto every bass track? When I’m recording and listening it sounds right, the wobbles are only being recorded on the track I want (record enabled: with red light on). BUT THEN… when I play back every track magically becomes wobbly (every track has same exact wobbles recorded in the Mod Wheel area. I then have to go back and highlight the Mod Wheel area and cut out those wobbles on the tracks I didn’t want the Mod Wheel to be used… Sometimes when I do this It deletes on just that track… Sometimes when I do this it delete all wobbles on every track, leaving me with nothing. Cool huh? I’ve also tried, before recording anything, highlighting the track I DO want the wobbles on, and THEN recording with my mod wheel over the bass I want. Which seemed to work better but still random wobbles would show up in the Mod Wheel area on other tracks. Any one else experience anything like this??
Sorry that was very wordy
The solution is to not make shitty dubstep wobble wobble music.
Thanks for your very un-constructive comment.