Creating a trance-style rolling bassline

PRODUCTION EXPO 2014: The trance genre now incorporates diverse influences from house, progressive and techno, but the traditional bubbling trance bassline continues to be a favourite of the genre's top producers.

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Here we've concentrated on layering the right parts and getting them to sit together. To take this technique further, it helps to group your layers and 'gel' them together so they sound more like one single sound source.

Some subtle buss compression, saturation, reverb and/or sidechaining can all help merge the layers together naturally. Parallel processing works well here too. Remember that less is more, though.

Bypass the effects to make sure they're improving your overall sound and not just boosting the levels!

For more videos like this check out Computer Music issue 199.