Bottoms Up

Finally this blog gets to live up to its title–sort of. After much trial and error and some inspiration from the Skull Snaps, I got a little more boom to go with my baps, word to Halle Berry.

About a month ago I was harassing Khrysis, producer for the Away Team, Little Brother, Boot Camp, et al. about how he got such good bass for this track “The HuckaBuck” that he did for Sean Price. I specifically asked him if he played the bassline or not and he simply replied, “na, the song already had a lot of bass and I just did a whole lot of filtering. It’s about knowing your equipment.” Coincidentally, I had just finished reading the Beatminerz section in Brian Coleman’s book Check The Technique, where Evil Dee discussed how he filtered the low end out of jazz records to get that vintage Enta Da Stage sound. Since then I have been messing with the Low Pass filters in both Audition and Fruity Loops, but haven’t been able to achieve similar results…until now.

I have been laboring over various samples from the Skull Snaps for about a month, in particular “Didn’t I do It To Ya,” and haven’t been able to get it to do what I wanted. I finally went to another song “Having You Around” that had some nice clean horns without drums to compete with. After creating my segments I could hear the beat screaming for a bassline, so I cloned the channels with the breaks and tweaked the LP filter, [turning Mod X all the way down and leaving Mod Y in the middle] and achieved a nice, sub-sonic copy of the break I chopped. Success! I did raise the level just a bit so that it didn’t get drowned out.

It may seem like a small thing to the accomplished producer but this is a major milestone for me. Producing in the digital realm already robs you of that analog warmth so anything that brings me closer to the sound is a step in the right direction. I know that I still have a long way to go before I can replicate the bass in something like Slum Village’s “Players” but that’s my benchmark. Keep bouncin…

p.s. Shout out to Serena Williams for the low end inspiration