Everyone’s heard it, or a derivative of it and a lot of people love the sound of the classic “Reese” bass. The reese bass and derivatives thereof have been around for so long now that they are almost as much of a cliché as the 303 acid sound. Yet this doesn’t stop us loving that deep deep warp and wobble in our Drum & Bass and Electro house tracks.

In this tutorial I’ll show you a way to recreate a bass with very similar characteristics to the classic reese but with a bit of “wobble control” so you can vary the sound to your own liking.

First right click and create a Thor in the rack. Now create 3 Analogue Oscillators, Leave them all set to sawtooth. Now lower Osc 1 & 2 to octave 3 and Osc 3 to octave 2. detune the second oscillator by about +15 to 20 cents and detune Osc 3 by about -20 cents. Now Route Osc 1 & 2 to Filter 1 and Osc 3 to Filter 2.

Both Filter 1 & 2 should be set to Low Pass.

Filter 1s settings are Frequency = 380 or so, Res = 60, Env Amount = 35, Velocity Amount=90
Filter 2s settings are Frequency = 40 or so, Res = 0, Env Amount = 35, Velocity Amount=90

Set the shaper coming out of filter 1 on. Settings soft clip drive = 0.

Filter Envelope settings should be A=0, D=4.5, S=-7.6 dB, R= 3 ms.
Amp Envelope settings should be A=0, D=4.5, S=-7 dB, R= 2.3 s.

Finally set Polyphony to 1 and Keyboard mode to “Mono Legato”

Initial Setup - Click to enlarge

This should sound something like this.

Now to add some basic “wobble” in to the sound. First set LFO 2 to about 1/2 way up (2.5 Hz or so) and leave waveform = sine.

Ok so here’s the clever bit. Go to the modulation matrix and set the following routings up

Source = LFO2, Amount =100, Destination = Filter 1 Freq, Amount 70, Scale = Rotary 2
Source = LFO2, Amount =100, Destination = Filter 2 Freq, Amount 80, Scale = Rotary 2
Source = Rotary 2, Amount = 55, Destination = LFO2

So now we have both Filters being influenced by the LFO2 output. But turning the Rotary 2 control not only influences the amount of modulation sent to the filters but also the speed of that oscillation. So now when you tweak rotary 2 you get an intensity and speed change to the wobble.

You’ll notice as an optional extra I’ve also routed the Rotary 1 output to the Shaper Drive so as to allow me to tweak distortion amount and also a negative amount to the Filter 3 frequency (A fully open low pass) to cut off the top end of the sound as it gets more distorted to make for a “smother” sound. Both of these final tweaks are optional extras and not actually needed to get a traditional “reese” sound.

Routing Setup

Finally add a Comp 01 compressor (Settings: ratio = 100, Threshold = 25, Attack = 127, Release =25) to even out volume fluctuations and a MClass Equaliser set to “Low cut” to remove the less than 30Hz rumble .

Compression & Low Cut EQ

You should have a noise something like this now.

Playing with the two rotaries during playback should afford you some interesting sounds, a few examples of which you can hear below.