How to make a Phat dubstep Reece lead line - Secrets Revealed.
Dubstep, techno and drum and bass engineers will at some point need a heavy Reece bass for there next dance floor track. The Reece bass is the classic dirty bass sound. From the more subtle terrorist Reece to the hardcore alien girl Reece they all have a similarity. The saw tooth wave.
So to start off with, get a multi oscillator synthesizer (ideally 3 or 4 oscillators) for example the native massive, ES2 by Logic or reasons maelstrom. Set all oscillators to the saw tooth. There are many harmonic frequencies in the saw tooth, The normal waves ramps upward and then drops sharply. There are also sawtooth waves where the wave ramps down and then rises sharply. Commonly known as a reverse sawtooth. As audio signals, the two orientations of sawtooth wave sound identical 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 very effective for drum and bass and dubstep. This gives the Reece a very dark edgy sound, rather than just a buzzy electro kind of 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 twisting and shaping the sound for your specific genre, dubstep or drum and bass. Here are some of the main parameters you can use:
ASDR on the filter
A interesting method to get a movement on the Reece bass is to add envelope to the filter section, Reece bass noises are extremely sensitive to filters and utilizing a high pass filter you can get a very driven sounding lead, or use a low pass and get a very nice bass. try using around 20% of filter attack for dubstep and 30% for drum and bass.
Phase
Because of the harmonic phases all ready occurring due to the multiple oscillation, adding a phase plug in can and does work pretty good. I find a subtle amount works better than lashings of phase
Flanger
The flange effect 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 sound, Guitar amp reverbs tend to work well with Reece bass and also come packed with distortion for extra bite.
Other effects 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 lead very heavily for dubstep and drum and bass music production. 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 king!
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