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Tutorial: Distortion & Complex Bass Design (Patreon)

Published:
2021-03-25 13:30:41
Edited:
2025-09-25 21:11:35
Imported:
2026-06
Tags:

Comments

Ben

Hey Will. There is a really throaty, moist bass that you use in tracks like Chalk It Out (1:00-1:10). It's definitely my favorite KS bass - was wondering if you could shed some light on this! Is it a single track similar to the above tutorial; i.e., multiple parallel effects? Or is it layered with some type of foley or a specific distortion? It's such a cool, strange sound because it has such a guttural character but not over the top.

Danny Roth

Apparently tantrum is sold out, weird for a vst

Liquid L

that intro is gold

Feddie

It's taken me 3 hours to get through the first 10 minutes of this

Feddie

Trash 2 and Tantrum both discontinued.. lol

Serf Flerpers

for the past 3 years ive tried going through this tutorial maybe 2 or 3 times a year and every time once it gets to around the 35 min mark my bass stops doing the thing. anytime i try automating that resonated eq into all the saturation and distortion it just sounds like garbage

BASSdrop0700

Neutron 4 has the Trash distortion now

Feddie

Yo thanks! I have that so I’ll check it

BASSdrop0700

disregard my previous comment about Neutron 4 having trash. Not the same...

BASSdrop0700

actually disregard my comment about disregarding my comment. It's under the "Exciter" module within Neutron. Has a cool x/y grid too.

Carlos

filters look activated in Operator but they aren't really activated, right?

Andy

I giggled at that... but now I've started working through it I can see why. Gee Wiz! It's totally awesome though. I'm hoping once I make the patch, to replace the distortion units with others I more commonly use to 'compare' all the different versions I can make

Andy

HAHA! That literally just happened to me (and it takes a LOT longer than 35min to 'get' to 35min in the tutorial). Sometimes I just wanna throw the laptop out the window like a frisbee. Still - the patches do sound sick before that. Who knows... Glad it wasn't just me

GATE.wav

I saw that too. My guess is the sustain of the filter envelope is at 100.

SamL

🤯 been in the back of my mind to join this patreon and wow what have i been doing. i knew something like this existed here and yea wow...

Auto Focus

How do they get the bass to sound so full? I follow all the steps and mine still sounds thin in comparison. Maybe it's a difference in volume.

Ethan

44:45 “gonna label some stuff cus this’ll get quite complicated… AT SOME POINT”

Ethan

Such a legend

Ethan

The thinness can come from so many points in the process, like if u have auto warp on and any of the bounces u do aren’t unwarped before putting them in the sampler, or if any of the cutoffs from the splits are too far apart or automated to be so, genuinely so tricky

Ethan

Took me way too long to figure that out lol

Ethan

He is just so rapid with it but taking super long or leaving it to do another day probably helps, scared to automate it now ha

Ethan

Could also use kiloheartz phase distortion for similar-ish results

kentower

Howdy! Awesome tutorial, after 4h I am at Minute 23 :D. I am on ableton 12 and for me with the LFO I hear the automation but I dont see the bell curves move. Does anyone know what I mean and have a solution to it? I mean it works but its hard to see, would like to have it was possible.

Raghav Wagh

top centre on lfo where it says 'mod' , click that, it will change it to 'remote' and you will see the curves moving.

Aro Domingos

Is this sort of bass design possible using vital ? Im not a big fan of operator so would be nice to know I could redo this on vital :)

breebump

There is FM within Vital. There are two big knobs next to the wavetableposition the first one is for the spectrum effects and the second one is for the frequency modulation. You have to choose the oscillator doing the frequency modulation first, of course.

ERK.

Making the envelope sustain 0db in Operator fixed it for me.

OpticIlluzhion

I was under the assumption that if you were to reveal how you do your sound design it would lead to lots of copycats. I now realize that very few people would be truly able to copy this without years of prior experience in bass sound design, and that those who would be able to do not need this tutorial

WuzdiP

Lots of people can make all kind of sounds, they could give away every secret and every preset and sample, but your favorite producers soul and talent is not in in their sound design, its in the arrangement of the track and the note intervals they tend to choose. You could 100% spend all your time mastering/surpassing Koan Sound design fairly quickly, but then not be able to arrange them tastefully. Its a balancing act.

Dominic Newman

What im confused about is, isnt the gain from a utility placed before a saturator and the gain knob on the saturator the same thing?

Hugh Wheaton

And on EQ8, which comes before and is there specifically for normalizing bumped EQ bands... My guess is just that everyone learns things differently and it's probably just a quirk.

Domi Tsunami

and to think this is what they were doing 5 years ago LOL

Johan-Luc Labuschaigne

Just when I think that we have reached the end of the video KOAN Sound: "I'll add some more variation in" Me: BRAAAAAAAA!!!

Kataraxia

This is actually so useful thank you so much !!!

Shring

OMG YES!

Shru-ti

Really hope Intros are a thing from now, LOVED IT ! !

joe riley

just wonderful !

Avoision

Joining your Patreon was the best idea I had all lockdown.

Diego

legendary

Rodolfo Tschöpe

OMFG, I'M STUNNED. Best tutorial i've ever seen i'm my life.

Alex Cullen

These tutorials are crazy good, my brain hurts

Dimitris

This is the dad of distortion

Tyler Bell

Wow, that'sssss... A lot to take in...

Jack.Lion

best tutorial ever going to have to practice

Stickybuds

Will, the level of mastery displayed in this video is amazing. How you can keep track of all the different chains and parameters that effect each other almost made my head explode at some points. The concepts you go over show what's possible when you invest the time, it's inspiring, much respect and thanks.

Weekend Astronaut

*Entire cities ablaze, planes falling from the sky like meteorites, screams of agony echoing civilization's last breath* "Let's see what else we can do"

bezio

Racks on racks on racks. Utility before distortion...wtf have I been doing with my life. So appreciative to see this level of detail on your iterative process, thank you!

Zsombor Deményi

Even has time for the epic intro to the video 😃 i’m done

Zsombor Deményi

If this was a youtube video it would break the internet

Foreigna

Love this so much! Learning from true masters :D

SYNCHRO

always knew u guys were using the tape mode in scream 4 lol thats my goto too

John Bach

Man I was like tearing my hair out wondering what they were doing in the 2010s...

Safko (James)

This was one of the BEST tutorials I've seen. Super helpful! Thank you so much!

K+Lab

Woah learnt so much, super inspiring, I like how aggressive you are with the EQs and never thought to use a utility to control the mayhem. Had a go processing my analog synths this way and got some cool results, thanks!

Kaya Gulten

This is amazing! Much love for sharing these tricks!!

Martin Koťátko

Alright. That's it. I'm gonna watch this every day before going to sleep. :D

Nuan Sonar

WHOOO indeed hahaha I fuckin' love you guys

Gypsyndicate

Unbelievably game changing. Thankyou so much.

Trevor

my cpu frowning as i watch this

alexg

Noticed you have a limiter at the end of the chain on the original sound, is that always at the end of your chain when making these kinds of sounds?

Bruno Poynton

This is so fucking coooooooooool!! Thanks

FBWOT

This tutorial is incredible, thank you so much !

AeonVoyage

Holy hell this is a god-tier tutorial, thank you so much

Shanic

one of the most insigntfull things i've ever seen thank you so much

Ian McKenna

This is a great video, but I got stuck for like half an hour on the technique of adding a reverb tail and using the gate to get rid of the artifacts, because no matter what I did to adjust the reverb and/or the level of the reverb chain, the reverb tail was louder than the sampler signal, so the gate had to kill the whole sound in order to kill the tail. I dunno how that happened. Drove me nuts, so I just said 'fuck it' and got rid of the reverb.

Saka

thanks for this, gents !

KALICODA

Was the reverb in a chain, or on the entire track? If it was on one of the chains, it likely would have been easier to control

KALICODA

I would really like to see some more abstract sound design FM synthesis techniques on the next tutorial.

Ian McKenna

Chain. It was really weird. No matter what I did, even bringing the reverb chain volume down to near -infinity, it was somehow compressing it beyond the peak volume of the reese. Never seen that before. No matter, I still got real sick sounds out of it, if not quite as skullcracking as the ones they made. Practice makes... better. :)

KYEN

this video broke my brain, holy smokes!!

Lisquander

This tutorial taught me more in an hour than I learned in months of school 🥴 I tried using the multiple and gate from trash 2 on those upper particles and it worked really interestingly!! Lol

Martian Moon

Any chance you could share your Operator default patch? I'm only 3 mins in and I can't get my distorted white noise + sine patch to sound anything like yours (sounds awful) I noticed there are some weird things going on in the default Ableton operator patch though, & I think that may have something to do with it. I tried attentively copying every knob, value & parameter, but it's just... not working. Thanks for putting this together though, excited to continue it once I figure this out lol

Eric Abraham

I had the same issue, check your sustain values because that seemed to be the problem with mine, oh and on the first osc their settings are a little different than the rest.

bogdan shilov

After hearing Maruda Sudden Death Yakz use Reason foe their sound design and now seeing you guys use it and how it actually works Im SO interested in it. Love the modular/analog approach! Im learning ableton AND reason in this one this is incredible content thank you!!

Sam Wright

One thing I noticed what that my original bounced sample was much quieter than theirs. My bounced sample had a lot more dynamic range whereas their's look almost flat - maxed out on volume. I couldn't figure out why mine was quieter but I maximized my sample and then that fixed this reverb issue. I was running into the same problem.

Ward Yaworski

That Valhalla rack you use, do each of those chains have an instance of valhalla on them?

Sam Wright

I notice that there is all kinds of clipping going on on various devices. is that not really a problem unless the track itself isn't clipping? Since we have the limiter.

Martian Moon

Thanks for the tip I already spotted and upped the sustain, but I did find a couple other minor things that were different & updated my default patch accordingly (I'd left velocity sensitivity at 50% whereas he has it at 0) However it's still not quite there, it seems to be something in the filter settings Would reallllllllllllly appreciate if the KOAN boys could drop that simple stock preset 🤓

JJ Lyon

I think one of them is completely dry then he automates the one with the Valhalla on 100% wet as a wet/dry control!

JJ Lyon

Yeah the limiter prevents any clipping on the channel as its the last thing in the chain :)

Ward Yaworski

I went back and watched again and caught that! thank you though, there are a couple instances they do that

Robot Pants

nevermind. It's an envelope assigned to the pitch. ... I think.

martin colegate

probably the best tutorial i ever watched. thanks, guys...

Bob Gibson

wow this is amazing, thanks!

Bob Gibson

after watching the whole thing, I vote for this as best tutorial of all time, all catagories

Peter Vogl

Got pretty lost near the end but I'll watch and work with it a few more times. I think I'm probably not alone there.....quite the chain(s)....Thanks guys I am eating this stuff up.

Peter Vogl

Don't know if anyone has suggested this but for many of these videos an Ableton project to study with the processing you are showing would help tremendously. It's easy to let stuff slip by...I work through these with Ableton after watching it once and find I miss many small things along the way. Studying the musical examples of how you applied the techniques would be awesome. Not asking for your actual tunes just the examples you create for these vids. Thanks again.

Shru-ti

That would be pretty cool, especially this project .

Sayka Sound

Thank you for sharing 🔮

MZRY

This has to be one of the more insightful tutorials I have ever watched for any type of bass music,. Clearly explained and demonstrated on a subject that is purely experimental. Thanks a lot for sharing this information it is definitely a more advanced tutorial but opens up endless possibilities in the realm of Automation and DIstortion. I managed to get Tantru on sale when i first watched and its a really interest tool coupled with the likes of Trash and Outputs Therma and Portal too. :D You Guys are Sick Thanks Again!!!

Ben bagley

is that a simpler or a sampler on the first re sample? you say its a sampler but its labeled simpler :'( cant get those sexual pitch bends

Leon sleator

This is so amazing!!! Sometime you should make a tutorial for how to make your more mellow and subdued wobbly basses (like in the song Fuego). I am very curious how you make them

Brandon Bowers

"I'll try distorting it because why not" sound design in a nutshell

Brandon Bowers

yeah the end turned my brain to mush. These guys are actually wizards

Ncrypt

Absolutely mind blowing stuff. Thank you!

Peter Vogl

Some info for folks inclined to try Tantrum as seen in this video...currently it appears to crash Ableton, Bitwig, and Logic on Mac/Big Sur. I am using an intel chip so this is not a M1 thing. So far I'm having some difficulty getting information about this from them. When I get a coherent response I will post that.

Evan Christian

Dont sleep on the gains. i love the level of control , i feel the power!

Andy Pletch

so after all that do you run a clean sub channel?

jpz

would love to know the answer to this!

Anonymous
>>65004597

From what I understand they do not run a sub under this, instead they just treat the sub frequencies carefully enough through the multiband EQing process that it is not necessary.

sEPHROs

incredible

Richard Carter

Yeah man I'm struggling with the same thing. I'm trying to make a rack similar to the macro rack but am struggling because I is noob.

Richard Carter

This is so awesome, however I may have to bill Koan Sound for a new pair of trousers. Only problem I'm encountering (apart from shitting my pants) is with the macro rack, anyone know how to create something like that? Any videos online or anywhere I can download something similar? Any help much appreciated. Cheers and keep up the awesome tutorials!

Nate

2 minutes in and my mind is already blown. Fuggetaboutit

koansound

Apologies for missing this! In the Filter section turn Freq/Key to 0%, and use 12db slope with filter at 18.5khz

PeacefulJeff

I gotta say this is incredible. thank you so much

Spencer Heaslip

Thank you so much. So innovative and creative. Use of distortion is incredible!

Martin Haugen

you just have to make a group of the plugins, just mark the plugins you want to make macros with, and hit cmd+G. This puts all the plugins in a group, and to the far left you see a sidebar. Click the icon on top(icon is a macro) and voila

Richard Carter

Cheers mate, have since worked out how to do this and now can see how much of a nooby question I asked haha

Tamir Livneh

this is insane, I have never seen someone have this much control over their bass, most people just resample once its gets too messy. sick as fuck.

Diego

can anyone explain the reasoning behind pitching the midi up 31 steps, instead of 36? 13:40

Raghav Wagh

Its to bring it back to 'C'. Bass is strongest on 'F' so they designed it on 'F' to get clean and beefed tones and the brought it 'C' so that they can play whatever key want to from the midi.

Diego

Raghav--thank you. That makes perfect sense. Cheers

Jas McHugh

the gain staging into the distortion is a huge tip. Thanks!

Michael Lein

Having an issue with my Pitch after the final resample. When i pitch up or down on the midi the tone changes but it doesn't really have an effect on the distortions. I set Transposition to a macro knob from Simpler and got this result. When I switch to sampler the transposition works with the distortions, but i cant map that to a knob for automations. Any idea?

Jesse Brown

Exactly what i was looking for bro thank you so much!

IDG Music

i'm really REALLY late to this, but their first tutorial did cover the rack, and also taught a more basic bass sound which is a quick and dirty solution :) oh yeah, and it's a simpler