How to Make a Rolling Techno Bassline Work With Your Kick
Table of Contents
A rolling Techno bassline works with the kick when its rhythm, note length, envelope and repeated-note behavior leave a clear impact while maintaining movement between the hits. Build the sound inside the real pattern, then balance and control it with the kick playing.
1. Write the pulse before polishing the patch
Use a simple sound to establish the rhythm. Short repeated notes can create the rolling motion, but their spacing must work with the kick and tempo.
Keep the kick playing while you adjust:
- note position;
- note length;
- octave and key;
- the gap between one note and the next.
If the rhythm does not work with a basic patch, another distortion or compression stage will not fix it.
2. Build the sound inside the pattern
The Apollo Peak Time project develops the Serum sound while the repeated MIDI pattern is playing.
The Apollo project develops the bass patch while hearing it in the rhythm it needs to perform.
Read the course transcript
Alright so for this chapter I'm going to be going over how to make a rolling bassline. These are really useful for not only adding tonality to our drop but also adding a ton of rhythm and groove. It's almost going to act like an extension of the drums and work really well with the kick to create like a nice gallop. So the first thing we're going to do we're going to make a new MIDI track and we're going to title this bassline. Then let's go ahead we're going to hit command G
to group the bassline track and we're just going to title the group bass and let's go ahead and make it like this light purplish color. Then let's go back to our MIDI track and we're going to open up a Serum. For now let's just leave the Serum preset as is and we're just going to close this and start writing our bassline. So typically with a rolling bassline you want to find out what key your song is in and then you would make sixteenth notes across the root note of that key.
So for us our song is an A sharp minor. So what we're going to do is we're going to make an eight bar MIDI clip and we're going to go to A sharp and we're just going to type in a bunch of 16th notes and duplicate them across. So now we have eight bars of 16th notes and if we play it sounds like this. So a little trick that I also like to do is I'm going to select all of these notes by hitting command A. I'm going to zoom in
and I'm just going to hold command and drag the end of these notes to shorten them. I typically like to make these notes a little shorter than a 16th note but a little longer than a 32nd note and if we press play it just adds a little bit of separation between the notes and and that can really affect the groove dramatically so you can just dial this in however you want. So this is essentially the MIDI for the bassline. We can add some variation later which we probably will but this
is enough for us to now start sound designing our bass. So let's go back into Serum and the bassline I actually used when I wrote the original song was this preset in our Elysium techno Serum presets called Tenebrae. And that sounds great but we're going to remake this patch from scratch because it's really not that hard to do and I just want to show you like the building blocks of a sound like this.
Treat the visible patch as one project example. The useful method is to hear how the oscillator, filter and envelopes react to the final rhythm.
Ask:
- Does each note speak quickly enough?
- Does the tail leave room for the next note?
- Does the tone remain clear beside the kick?
- Does the sound stay stable across several repeats?
3. Shape note length and envelope together
MIDI length and the synth envelope both control space. A very short MIDI note can still create a long bass tail if the envelope releases slowly. A short envelope can make a long MIDI note feel disconnected.
Adjust one at a time while the groove plays. Preserve enough body for the bass to feel intentional, but do not let every note overlap the next kick.
The right times depend on tempo, pattern and source. There is no universal rolling-bass envelope.
4. Separate kick impact from bass movement
Name the roles:
- the kick provides the main pulse and impact;
- the bass provides tonal and rhythmic movement around the hit.
Set levels before heavy sidechain. If the bass needs to be very loud to be heard, change its tone, register or rhythm rather than forcing the fader.
Check the deepest range. Decide whether the kick or bass owns it. For the complete relationship, read Why Your Techno Low End Sounds Muddy.
5. Use sidechain only for the space the kick needs
Turn sidechain off and listen to the overlap. Turn it on and adjust the timing until the kick becomes clearer without destroying the roll.
Check several patterns, not only one bar. A curve that works for quarter-note kicks may feel wrong when the kick changes in a buildup.
Do not copy the attack, release or ratio from another project. Match the envelope to the actual kick and bass.
6. Check repeated-note consistency
Some multi-voice synth patches begin each note at a different phase. The variation can add life, but it can also make the low end feel random.
In the Apollo project, the bass is identified as inconsistent, frozen to audio and rebuilt from selected notes that repeat more predictably.
We identify random phase changes, freeze the instrument and reconstruct a repeatable bass pattern beside the kick.
Read the course transcript
Okay, so the first thing that I'm hearing is the low end just feels really inconsistent, and this could be because of a number of reasons. But what I'm thinking it is is it's this bassline because the kick that we're playing, it's the same kick sample happening every single time. So that should sound really consistent. So what I'm thinking it is is the bassline that's really inconsistent. And there's a few reasons why this could be happening. So one reason could be is this is an audio. This is MIDI and we're playing
this bassline from a Serum preset. So if we open up the Serum preset, you can see on oscillator A, we're playing three different voices. They're all detuned and the phase is random. So this means that every single time a MIDI note is triggered, it's going to sound different because because of the different phase on each of the voices. So you're going to get a really inconsistent sound. There's going to be a lot of phasing. So whenever I'm making bass lines and Serum, I always like to freeze and flatten them so
I can reconstruct the bassline using audio. So I get a really consistent sound. So that's what I'm going to do. So first, I'm going to duplicate this bassline track because we want to have a copy of the original and I'll turn this off. And then what I'm going to do is delete this EQ because I don't want to do like a low cut and then flatten it. If anything, I can flatten it, then put the EQ back on. So I'm going to right click, hit freeze and flatten track. So if
we look at our waveform, we can see it's very inconsistent. And what I mean by that is each note looks different from the next. I don't mind each note sounding different from the next, but this note is different from this note, which is different from this note and that note. There's no like larger pattern at play. So basically, it just sounds very random. It sounds very messy. What I want to do is find my favorite individual notes and reconstruct a pattern that repeats and is consistent. So I'm just going to
listen through this bassline. I like this little chunk right here. So maybe I can copy and paste this to the beginning and let's just make a one bar pattern using these four notes that I copied. And we can zoom in and just make sure each note is faded. And this is the level of detail you can't really do in MIDI. It's just a lot harder. It's way easier and way more visual doing an audio. So let's duplicate this across one bar. We'll highlight, hit command L, and let's listen to what
this sounds like with our kick. It sounds really repetitive and consistent. And that's exactly what we want, because this is the driving force of our low end along with the kick. That's why I rendered the kick out to an audio file. So the kick would be exactly the same every time. And then we need to do the same with the bassline. So I really like this one bar pattern. And then what we'll do is we can copy this EQ from our MIDI track back over to our audio. So now if
we play it with the kick. Really consistent and steady. And that's exactly what we want.
This is one solution, not a rule. Before flattening:
- listen for a real repeated-note problem;
- inspect the synth's phase and voice settings;
- save the MIDI version;
- render the part;
- choose notes that sound and look consistent;
- rebuild the pattern with fades and the original MIDI as a guide.
The goal is a repeatable groove, not a perfectly identical waveform.
7. Process the bass in context
Use EQ, saturation or compression only after the rhythm and note starts work.
Possible jobs include:
- removing deep energy that belongs to the kick;
- adding harmonics so the bass remains audible on smaller speakers;
- controlling one uneven note;
- shaping the low mids around another important part.
Bypass at a matched level. A brighter or louder bass can seem better while taking too much space from the track.
Rolling-bass checklist
- The rhythm works with a simple sound.
- Note length and envelope fit the tempo.
- The kick and bass have different roles.
- Sidechain creates only the needed opening.
- Repeated notes are consistent enough.
- Processing is chosen for a named problem.
- The bass works across more than one section.
Continue with the complete production system
The Everything Bundle currently includes Techno and Hard Techno sounds, MIDI, Serum presets, Ableton tools, project files and a 58-lesson Techno masterclass. Confirm the current contents and compatibility on the product page. Diablo 3 is separate.
