bassline

bassline part

Figure 23 summary

• time and feedback for delay fx

sequencer, synth and delay

Again a top level wrapper for a bassline part. This arrangement should be familiar by now, you can encapsulate the sequencer, synth, effects and mixer channel all in the same place. Delay effects are set to twice the global period with a 60 percent feedback amount. This instrument will be controlled by fader 3.

Figure 23: I1-bassline

I1-bassline.pd

bass sequence

Figure 24 summary

• 16 beats to a bar
• 2 part sequence
• add in occasional suboctave
• get the current chord
• pick the first two notes

musical interpretation

In some senses bass is the most important part of a composition since it roots everything else, but it doesn't have to be added first. Exactly how you choose to flesh out a compositional idea is entirely personal so my reasons for choosing part patterns and order would not be your choice. Follow along and then rip the patch apart and do it your way with what you learn.

notes and pattern

Each chord in the score consists of 8 notes, the first two are important because they set the root and primary interval of the whole harmony. A bassline that alternates between these two notes is interesting with big chords because it gives two different interpretations. The three chords chosen are in tension, we can move between any two of them and the effect is moving towards concordance, but like steps in an Escher drawing it never gets there, there is no cadence so the progression remains forever unresolved. The bass line, and crucially the first and 13th beat marks a flip between either of the first two notes. This change of feel is enough to keep the piece ticking along and producing interesting new variations. Having occasional suboctave bass notes gives it a dark and dramatic feel, but the timbre of the high bass notes is bright and light enough to leave the total effect ambiguous.

select and float box

The familiar technique of unpacking some values to float boxes and using the bang messages from selects is used. Note values 1 and 2 of the chord are unpacked, the second being copied to another float box for the suboctave. Beats 2 and 10 of the time sequence are given a probability of 50 percent.

Figure 24: I2-bass-seq

I2-bass-seq.pd

wrapper for cosynth bass sound

Figure 25 summary

parameter substitution

In this wrapper you can see we have used an abstraction for a synth called [z-3cosynth], and a message that holds all the parameters for a certain sound except the note number, which is substituted in. For synths that receive all their parameters on each note, note time initialised, we can use a message as a patch template and substitute new parameters on the fly by substitution. An alternative is to have each control with its own independent inlet. There are pros and cons to both methods in terms of flexibility and the amount of data sent on each note (and hence stored somewhere when sequencing). Don't worry about the contents of [z-3cosynth] at this point, it is a synth with 3 cosines, and all we need to know is that the parameters in the message give us a nice fat analogue bass sound.

Figure 25: I3-bass-synth

I3-bass-synth.pd

filterdelay

Figure 26 summary

• slow moving saw lfo
• sweeps frequency up
• L-R delay

another effect

Can you spot the important difference between this and the last effect? The filter comes after the delay now. Reordering of effects units makes a big difference to the overall result. This time I've added a [lop~] to the [phasor~] so that when it flies back to zero there isn't a very sudden change in cutoff. For this effect an extra inlet is included to vary filter resonance.

Figure 26: I4-filterdelay

I4-filterdelay.pd

play the bass line

Figure 27 summary

bass line sound

Maybe there is a hint of Korg CS or Yamaha MS about this sound, or the Korg Monopoly with 4 oscillators. Richness comes from clipping 3 closely detuned cosine generators to highlight their intermodulation. With filter-delay echoing each note the result is a more blended and continuous bass backing.

Figure 27: I5-bassline

I5-bassline-play.pd I5-bassline-play.ogg