

It might seem obvious, but an easy way to make your bass sound deeper is to play about with pitch, with surprisingly creative results. Then think about using the EQ plugins in your DAW – use a low-pass filter to bring out the lowest frequencies and a high-pass filter for a wide sound. Try duplicating your bass part into two tracks, panning each to the far left and right.

Although bass is typically panned in the dead centre for grounding, playing about with panning can lend spaciousness to the mix. Use panning to open up the sound of your bassline. Uneven levels from an enthusiastic bass player can be tamed with compression, too. Recording live bass? Amplified bass can sound muddy, so try using a touch of compression to counteract it.

Small variations in the MIDI, like a little run here and there, inject a bit of creativity, because even if you’re loving your solid, funky bass loop repetition gets boring fast. Keep things interesting for the listener by changing up your bassline, just slightly, every so often. To get you thinking about the best ways to use bass in your producing, here are seven ideas to help improve your bass sound. Whether you like to start off your music producing by writing a clever bassline to build the rest of the track around, or you prefer to add bass afterwards as solid grounding to compliment the rest of your instruments, bass is a fundamental part of any song. There’s nothing like a big clean bassline to create a groove. Want to create deep, fat, exciting basslines? Get inspired with these tips to improve the bass sound in your music production.
