Synthesis Tutorial: Reese Bass

Introduction

In this sound synthesis tutorial, we will be synthesizing the well known and used “Reese Bass”. The Reese bass has become a staple of electronic music genres such as dubstep, and drum N bass and has its origins in Detroit House music of the 1980s. The genre-defining sound of the Reese Bass was created by Kevin Saunderson aka “Reese” and first heard on his 1988 jungle classic “Just Another Chance”. The bass sound on Just Another Chance was created on a Casio CZ-5000 using simple subtractive synthesis and a basic understanding of psychoacoustics.

Although the Reese bass is an easy enough sound to create, its impact and usefulness cannot be overstated. Even though the Reese Bass is commonly referred to as a sound, it’s actually more of an “effect”. That is a Reese Bass can be created using any two interfering tones, meaning it has no distinctive sound quality, instead it has a distinctive “feel”. The contrasting possibilities of sounds produced by the Reese Bass can be made clear by listening to and comparing songs like the smooth Reese Bass used on “Just Another Chance” by Reese and the screaming sawtooth Reese Bass on “Messiah” by Konflict. Both these songs make use of the same type of bass synth, yet they have heavily opposing sounds. How is this? This is because the producers of these songs chose to use different waveforms (tones) to make their sounds, but created them by applying the same psychoacoustic theory and method.

The wobble effect of a Reese Bass is the result of a well known psychoacoustic phenomenon called beat frequency, otherwise known as phasing. Beat frequency is simply a wave interference pattern that naturally occurs when two sounds with similar frequencies interfere with one another. When the two frequencies are played together we as humans perceive that there are periods where the volume is louder (where crests and crests or troughs and troughs line up) and periods where there is less volume (where troughs and crests line up). This phasing in and out between the two waveforms results in what we hear as a “wobble” effect. In short, a Reese Bass is the result of micro-detuning two or more oscillators on a synthesizer, so that they are slightly out of phase with one another.

Before we begin it should be said that although we are using ES2 this type of synth sound can be created with any other synthesizer, so long as your synthesizer has at least two oscillators. It should also be said that the sound becomes less of a wobble and more of a buzz/growl when more harmonic waveforms are used, but enough with the physics lesson lets get started…

Step 1

Start by inserting a software instrument track, then insert logic pros ES2 synthesizer. Leave the pre-set as is.

Step 2

We won’t be using the modulation router, so you can go ahead and switch off all the targets and sources. Our source of modulation will be natural frequency modulation.

 Before

 After

Step 3

Next change the synth setting from “Poly” to “Mono” this will give your instrument a sound and playability that is more like that of a monophonic instrument (like a voice) and less like that of a polyphonic instrument (like a piano).

While you're at it make sure that “Unison” is also selected. This will help to thicken up our final sound. You can also change the number of voices at this point. I chose to leave the voices at 8.

Before

 After

Step 4

Next go over to the left side of ES2 and max out the “Analogue” knob by turning it all the way on. This will give your synth a more detuned/hardware sound by creating more pitch drift between notes. You can play around with this setting, but in this case a higher value is more effective for the type of synth we’re trying to create.

If you want a cleaner sound, you can leave the “Analogue” setting at zero.

                                                                                 

                                                  Before                   

                                               

                                                  

                                                   After

Step 5

Below the “Analogue” dial you will see a drop down box with the letters “CBD” which stand for constant beat detuning, click the box and set it to 50%. This increases the similarity between pitch drift of low and high notes.

This is again a matter of taste so you can leave this box “Off” if you prefer.

 

Step 6

Next, we move on to deciding the tone our synth will produce. Choose one of the four basic waveforms for each of the oscillators, depending on the sound you want it to produce. Do you want smooth bass? Or a harsh lead?

We only need two oscillators for this, but I will be using all three. Remember sine waves for smoother tones with no harmonics and sawtooth waves for harsh bright tones with harmonics.

In this example, we will be using a sawtooth wave in oscillator 1, another sawtooth in oscillator 2 and a square tooth wave in oscillator 3.

Step 7

Now we will create our interfering waveforms. This stage is the most important, as it’s what gives the synth its special sound. The synths distinctive sound quality is the result of detuning two oscillators so that they produce wave signals with slightly different frequencies (pitches), this results in beating or phasing of the two signals.

To detune our synth we will need to change the cents(c) value on our oscillator “pitch” knobs. To do this click and drag up or down over the cent (c) value to change it. Be sure to change two of your pitch knob values to opposite numbers. If you're only using two oscillators then your oscillators should have cent values that are very close in difference or exactly the same. This opposite detuning of the waveforms is the centre piece of a Reese Bass and is what gives it its distinctive sound.

In this case, I set +10 cents on the pitch for oscillator 1, and -10 on the pitch for oscillator 2. This will help create interference and the Reese sound we’re going for.

Having a third oscillator with a different pitch value to the first two will add to this effect, by providing a third signal for the other oscillators to interfere with over time. In this case, I left the pitch for oscillator 3 at -3 cents. But you could set it at 0 if you prefer.

You can play around with different cent values and hear the effect the change has on the sound of the synth.

Step 8

At this stage, you can play around with your blend triangle and see what sort of oscillator mix you prefer.  You can also play around with the filter cutoff and see if you like a brighter or darker sound.

In this case, I went for a balanced mix between all three oscillators, while I kept the filter cutoff completely open. Thereby giving me a bright brittle tone in my final sound. You can also play around with the ADSR settings in ENV 3 to help mould your sound. However this isn't instrumental to the final sound, but ADSR manipulation can make for more interesting sounds.

You can see what the entire ES2 overview looks like in the screenshot below. Be sure to compare it to the beginning image screenshot setting if you got lost anywhere along the way. Once you’re finished be sure to save your new synth instrument for future use.

Conclusion

This marks the end of this tutorial. As stated before it’s a fairly easy synth sound to create. In this tutorial we used sawtooth waves to create our sound, which resulted in a brittle hard hitting synth lead sound. If you want a more accurate representation of the “Reese sound” simply change your saws to sine waves and the wobble will be a lot more obvious. As always I hope this tutorial was helpful and until next time…