Dubstep

The sub is the lead (Operator sine with controlled harmonics)

A dubstep sub is a sine with a chosen second harmonic, a slow attack so it never clicks against the kick, and a release that lets notes glide into each other. It carries the melody, so it needs to be pitch-accurate and audible as a note, not just a pressure.

1. Operator, algorithm with A and B parallel. Osc A sine. Osc B sine with Coarse 2, level −24 dB: gives the sub a pitch the ear can track on a laptop. Automate B level up to −14 dB in the drop and back to −30 in the intro.
2. Amp envelope: Attack 15 ms (the kick's transient needs to be free of the sub for the first 10 ms), Decay 1 s, Sustain 0.9, Release 150 ms.
3. Mono voice mode, Glide 40–80 ms, Legato on: overlapping notes in the MIDI clip slide, separated notes retrigger. Write the sub melody as long overlapping notes in E0–A0 (41–55 Hz); the kick's fundamental should sit just above it.
4. Saturator Soft Sine, drive 2–4 dB, with the DC filter on and Soft Clip off; this is for harmonics, not loudness.
5. Low-pass at 120 Hz so the sub never fights the mid bass. Utility mono. Leave 3 dB of headroom here; the sub is the loudest sustained element in the track.

Kick on 1, snare on 3: the half-time drum frame

At 140 BPM a bar is 1.71 s. The kick and snare are events, not a pulse: both need transients that read at low levels and bodies that fill the space without touching the sub.

1. Kick: Drum Sampler with a layered sample. Decay 300–400 ms, Pitch so the fundamental sits at 55–65 Hz (above the sub's). Add Punch 40% and Sub module off. If you need a sub kick, make it a separate pad with a 50 Hz sine, 120 ms, and only use it in the intro where the sub bass is absent.
2. Snare: three layers in one pad. A 909 or acoustic snare body tuned to 200 Hz, a clap for the 2–4 kHz spread, a short white noise burst for the top. Decay 250 ms. Follow with Drum Buss (Transients +30, Drive 20%) and a Hybrid Reverb (Dark Hall, 1.8 s, 20%) with a Gate afterwards for a gated tail that ends before beat 4.
3. Hats: sparse 8ths with a swing of 54–56% for deep dubstep; for brostep a straight 16th loop with ride on the offbeats. Keep hats −18 dB below the snare.
4. Ghost notes: rim or soft kick at velocity 30 on the swung 16ths, panned slightly. They stitch the halftime together.
5. Drum group: Glue Compressor 4:1, 10 ms attack, 200 ms release, 2 dB gain reduction; then Saturator Analog Clip 2 dB.

LFO wobble bass (Wavetable with synced LFO rate automation)

The classic wobble: a filter opening and closing in time, with the LFO rate switching between 1/4, 1/8, 1/16 and triplets. Wavetable's mod matrix and synced LFO make this a single-device job; the rhythm of the rate changes is the composition.

1. Wavetable: Osc 1 Basics category saw, Osc 2 a Harmonics table at position 40%, both with Unison Classic 3 voices, 20% amount. Sub oscillator off; the sub is a separate track.
2. Filter 1 MS2 low pass, 12 dB, cutoff 300 Hz, resonance 35%, Drive 10%. In the mod matrix, LFO 1 → Filter 1 cutoff +60%, and LFO 1 → Osc 2 position +20% so the timbre changes with the wobble.
3. LFO 1 shape triangle, Sync on, rate 1/4. Automate the rate in the clip: 1/4 for a bar, 1/8 for a bar, 1/16 for half a bar, 1/8T for the last half. This automation is the wobble "pattern"; draw it on a 1/8 grid.
4. Roar Single stage, Soft Sine shaper, Amount 30%, with the post filter low-passing at 4 kHz: harmonics without fizz.
5. Multiband Dynamics with upward compression on all three bands (the "OTT" starting point: Amount 40%, Time 50%) to make the wobble sound consistently loud across the filter sweep.
6. High-pass at 110 Hz. The mid bass must never add energy below the sub.

Variations: replace the triangle LFO with a square for on/off chops, or S&H for the "random" wobble; add a second LFO at 1/16 to cutoff at 10% depth for a "double wobble".

FM growl (Operator feedback + formant filtering)

Growls are vowel sounds: a harmonically dense source pushed through moving formant peaks. Operator's FM gives the density; two resonant filters give the vowel.

1. Operator, the fully serial algorithm (leftmost): D→C→B→A. Osc A saw at 0 dB (the carrier), Osc B sine Coarse 1 at −12 dB with Feedback 30%, Osc C sine Coarse 3 at −30 dB, D off. The feedback on B gives the "snarl".
2. Operator LFO: sync 1/8, triangle, routed to Osc B level with amount 40%. Now the FM depth, and therefore the brightness, pulses.
3. Auto Filter (12.2 redesign) band-pass, 12 dB, 600 Hz, resonance 60%, LFO at 1/8 in sync with Operator's. This is formant 1.
4. EQ Eight: two narrow bells (Q 4) at 700 Hz and 1.9 kHz, +8 dB. Automate them together from (500, 1500) to (900, 2400): that is the vowel moving from "oh" to "ah". Map both frequencies to one macro.
5. Roar in Multiband mode: Fold shaper on the mid band at 20%, Diode on the high band at 10%, lows untouched. Then Saturator Hard Curve 4 dB and a high-pass at 120 Hz.

Variations: run the growl through Vocoder with the carrier set to the bass and a spoken "yeah-oh" as modulator for literal vowels; or use Meld's Formant engine as the source, which already has F1/F2 as macro oscillator parameters.

Roar feedback-tearout bass

Roar's Feedback section turns any bass into a screaming, pitched, nearly unstable tearout. Keep the source simple; the effect does the damage.

1. Drift, Osc 1 Saw, Osc 2 Shark Tooth +7 st (the fifth adds a hollow, metallic interval), MS4 filter at 1 kHz with a little resonance. Mono, Glide 30 ms.
2. Roar routing Feedback. Stage 1 Fold at 40% amount, Tone slightly dark. Feedback amount 50–60%, feedback pitch 0 st (or −12 st for a sub-octave howl, or +7 for the "screech"). Feedback time short (a few ms) so it rings at a pitch rather than echoing.
3. Roar modulation matrix: Envelope Follower → feedback amount +25% so louder notes feed back harder; LFO (synced 1/16) → feedback pitch ±2 st at 10% for the unstable "yoi" wobble.
4. A Gate after Roar with the sidechain fed from a dedicated MIDI track playing clicks on the rhythm you want: the gate chops the sustained howl into a pattern. Hold 40–60 ms, release 20 ms.
5. Low-pass at 6 kHz to remove the unpleasant aliasing-like fizz feedback produces; high-pass at 130 Hz.

Riddim stab (resampled one-shot in Simpler, triplet swing)

Riddim replaces the wobble with a single short bass stab repeated on a swung triplet grid. The stab is resampled, played as a one-shot and manipulated with pitch, not with filters.

1. Design a growl (previous technique) and resample one note of about 300 ms. Load into Simpler, Classic mode, Warp off, so transposing changes length (this is desirable: pitched-up stabs get shorter).
2. Amp envelope in Simpler: Attack 0, Decay 220 ms, Sustain 0, Release 30 ms. Every stab is a percussion hit.
3. Program the 3-step figure above, then apply a 60% groove. Add occasional +12 and −5 st stabs on the "a" of beats.
4. Compressor at 8:1 with the fastest attack to flatten the stab dynamics; riddim is mix-flat and relies on the rhythm.

Deep dubstep: sub melody plus dub chords and spring delay

The original sound: no mid bass at all, a sub melody, a detuned chord stab with a spring-ish delay, and percussion from dub reggae. The sound design is in the space between hits.

1. Analog: two saws detuned 12 cents, Filter 1 LP 24 at 700 Hz, filter envelope 50% decay 180 ms, amp decay 300 ms, sustain 0. Minor chord with a flat 9th, played once per 2 bars on the "&" of 2.
2. Echo with the dual delay at 3/16 left and 1/4 right, feedback 55–65%, the Reverb section at 30% and the Wobble/Noise section lightly engaged for tape wow. Automate feedback up to 85% for a dub throw every 8 bars.
3. High-pass the delay return at 300 Hz; the echoes must not touch the sub.
4. Percussion: a wood block or rim on the "a" of 2, a shaker on the 16ths with 56% swing, a long splash reversed into beat 3 every 4 bars.

Variations: Corpus with the Plate resonator type after the chord for a metallic dubplate feel; Spectral Time in Freeze mode on a send to grab a chord and let it hang for 4 bars under the sub.

Resampling chain for bass "edits"

Modern dubstep basslines are sequences of resampled fragments: a growl, a tear, a wobble, each 1–2 beats long, reversed, pitched and stuttered. The workflow matters more than any single sound.

1. Record 8 bars of each bass rack into an audio track set to Resampling, with varied notes and macro moves. Use Bounce in Place (12.2) on the MIDI clip for a one-step version.
2. Load the audio into Simpler in Slice mode, Slice by Beat at 1/8. Now every 8th-note fragment is a pad on Push.
3. Play the fragments on the 140 BPM grid, mixing 2-beat holds with 16th and 32nd stutters. Use Simpler's Transpose on individual notes via MIDI pitch: a slice played a 5th up is a different bass.
4. Pitch Hack with a −12 st shift and 30% Reverse probability for the random-reversed tails; Redux at 12-bit for the digital grit.
5. Resample again. Two generations of resampling is normal; keep the originals in a Group so you can go back.

Atmosphere: pads, vinyl, risers and the pre-drop silence

Dubstep intros are 32 bars of atmosphere that set up the drop. Granular textures, a wide pad, vinyl noise, and a riser that ends in silence before the drop.

1. Granulator III on a long chord or vocal sample, Grain Size 100–150 ms, Spray 30–50%, a slow scan through the file. Hold one note for 16 bars; add FM at 5% for grit.
2. Pad: Wavetable, Vintage table, Unison Shimmer 4 voices, filter LP at 1.5 kHz, attack 800 ms, with Chorus-Ensemble Ensemble 30%.
3. Riser: white noise with a high-pass sweep plus a pitched Operator sine rising 2 octaves over 8 bars (pitch envelope with a long attack), both into Hybrid Reverb Shimmer.
4. Pre-drop: cut everything on the last beat (or half beat) before the drop; the silence is the loudest moment. Add a single vocal sample or a reverse crash ending exactly on the downbeat.