How To Create A Killer Dubstep Reece Sound - Secrets Revealed.

Dubstep, techno and drum and bass engineers will at some point need a heavy Reece bass for there new dance floor track. The Reece bass is a classic 'dirty bass' sound. From the more subtle terrorist Reece to the hardcore alien girl Reece they all have one thing in common. The saw tooth wave.

So to start off with, get a multi oscillator synthesizer (ideally 3 or 4 oscillators) like the albino, logic's ES2, Massive etc. Set all oscillators to the saw tooth. There are many harmonic frequencies in the saw tooth, The normal waves ramps upward and then falls. There are also sawtooth waves where the wave ramps down and then rises sharply. Commonly known as a reverse sawtooth. As signals, the two variations of the sawtooth sound the same until paired together.

Once you have got your multi oscillator synth running with 3 oscillators, the next step in the process is to detune one or 2 of the oscillators by around +/- 25cents, this is essential for drum and bass and dubstep. It gives the Reece a very deep edgy sound, rather than just a flat buzzing sound.

After setting up your initial saw tooth with De-turning, (this is essentially the basis of the Reece) - You can go ahead and start producing and shaping the noise for your type of music, dubstep or drum and bass. Here are some of the main parameters you can use:

Filter Envelopes:
A nice way to get a movement on the Reece bass is to add envelope to the filter section, Reece bass sounds are extremely responsive to filters and using a high pass you can get a very nice sounding lead, or use a low pass and get a very fat bass. try using about 20% of filter attack for dubstep and 30% for drum and bass.

Phaser:
Because of the harmonic phases all ready occurring due to the multiple oscillation, adding a phase plug in can and does work very well. It's better to use a sparse amount of phase to subtly enhance the sound rather than extreme amounts

Flange:
The flange process can add a nice bit of subtle metallic rasp to the sound, this is very pleasing effect for that big warehouse dubstep sound.

Echo:
The delay effect can make a Reece sound wicked! Try using a delay just before the drop.

Reverb:
Again subtle uses of reverb can act very aggressively on your noise, Guitar amp reverbs tend to work well with Reece bass and also come packed with distortion for extra bite.

Other processes that add madness to your Reece include: Distortion, compression, LFO and auto filters work especially well with dubstep.

In summary, it is best to process your Reece sound a lot for dubstep and drum and bass programming. It is a very well used sound, so to make it stand out you will have to be creative with your sound programming skills - Filters act in the biggest way and reverb is essential!

By: Oliver Brown