Let's make better music, Together! - Making tight trap 808's

Note: I'm trying out a new format that I think will prove to be more engaging for both you and me. Please tell me how you feel about this format in comparison to the old one.

Hello Steemians!

You ever sit down to make a trap beat, only to realize that your 808's sound flat and lifeless? Well today I'm here to help you get your 808's tight and powerful, like yoga pants.

What makes things sound fat?

So if we want to learn how to make our 808's powerful, we should start with some basic theory on mighty sounds.
What makes a sound sound big?
I find that having something sound big means it's using all of it's delegated space in the mix. This means having fewer elements in the frequency range you want to sound boomin, to give the main one more space or blending them together with the help of EQ.

Let me show you what I mean. Here we have a rather basic fl keys piano playing some chords and a simple melody.

It's playing a lot but it doesn't sound particularly full. Now the mid-ranges (somewhere between 500hz and 4khz) need different strategies too make them sound fat, but we can use the concept for the basses. See in mid-ranges it's much easier to stack different instruments playing the sound, because resonance and artifacts aren't such a big deal in these ranges. We could stack up a bunch of different instruments playing the same thing:

or make a copy of the piano and pan them in opposite directions of each other and giving one of them a slight delay to make the piano sound fuller.

Well this is great for pianos, but how do we use this to get fat yet tight 808's that hit harder than Francis Ngannou on steroids? I'll show you :)

Dat Bass Tho

So to demonstrate some techniques to make sick ass baselines, I've made the most uninspired generic trap beat in existence:

The synths are presets in Sytrus(clavi and brittle pi) and the bass is in this free 808 pack.
I've applied a sidechain to the kick as well, which I have made a small tutorial about over here.

So I mean you know this sounds pretty OK and all, but damn that bass seems weak, like it's getting punched in the face by everything else.

The first and most important thing, is to separate your 808 from your other instruments in the frequency department. You gotta give that bugger a little breathing room in order for him to shine. I've done this by applying a low pass filter to the bass that cuts around 450hz and a high pass filter to the other instruments, which also cuts at around 450hz. You can read more about high and low pass filters here.

Next I turned that thing to mono. See since the 808 is playing alone anyways, if it's trying to fill room it loses power. This is what makes it sound tight.
Turning this knob all the way to the right, is how you can put the track into mono in FL.

Damn this sounds much better already. The bass has a purpose now and no ones getting in his way. He is focused on what he needs to do.
So now I'm gonna go over some techniques to get him to sound nice and juicy, like a thanksgiving dinner.

Distortion

Distortion is pretty lit, because it gives the bass a more present high end. Getting that tight bass is about keeping bass frequencies, while also growing the 200-500 hz frequencies. Distortion fits this role quite well, generally filling that frequency range with distorted hissing.

Here are a few examples of distortion, each using different fl native plug-in

Fruity Waveshaper:

Fruity Fast Dist

Fruity Blood Overdrive

None of these effects have that many setting to play around with and I believe in giving people a learning process, so I want you to play around with the plug-in settings yourself and see what you like. Generally speaking these plug-ins do more or less the same thing, so find one that you like and go for it!

Note: Make sure to cut out frequencies that mesh with your instruments post distortion!

Double-Up on it

Another thing you can do, is making a copy of your 808 and putting it an octave higher. If you are doing this I recommend splitting the basses into a low and high bass like with the instruments and bass in the beginning. You'll end up with something like this

    Low Bass 20-200hz
    High Bass 200-500hz
    Other Instruments 500hz+

Note that these are spitball numbers and you should find the settings that are right for your 808 and instruments.

Keep in mind that the lower bass can be kept in mono and you can have the higher bass be at a different stereo separation setting, creating some interesting subtleties in the bass.

I'd also recommend trying to mix and match between distortion, layering and generally just moving your bass between octaves. With some leveling and arrangement, here's a short beat made from the loop.

I hope this helped you make some sick sounding 808's and if you think there's anything I could add or change about this article, please tell! Have a great day and until next time...

LET'S MAKE SOME AWESOME MUSIC