How to Make a Rich Sounding Techno Bass Lead

Techno made a remarkable comeback in the electronic music scene a few years ago with some interesting sound innovations from German producers. For example, Stephan Bodzin started incorporating Moog synthesizers in his tracks, made a personal stamp, and gained immense popularity. In the following tutorial, we will try to recreate one of his signature sounds using software and guide you through the process step by step.  

Stephan Bodzin Bass Lead

For the sake of this tutorial and the making of the mentioned bass lead, we have chosen a synth called Diva, made by U-he company. You can use this one or many other digital emulations of the famous Moog synthesizer in order to achieve the desired sound. As usual, we will start by placing a fresh instance of the VST synth on the newly created MIDI channel within the SoundBridge: DAW.  

Minimoog Emulation

So, for a clean start, we will go to the template folder within patches and choose a "Minimoog" preset. Let's hear this progression.

~Sequence -Init Preset  

VCF Multimode

By switching the available filter mode to "VCF Multimode," we are getting closer to that Moog-like filter style. This can be done by clicking on the little arrow below the filter section of the Diva. We will be setting the "Detune" parameter within the oscillator section to -5, setting the waveform of oscillator 2 between saw and triangle, and increasing the volume of the oscillator 2 up to around 70%. Now, let's hear how that sounds.

~Sequence 1 - 1  

Adding an LFO

The next exciting thing would be adding a bit of LFO to this sound to create movement. This would be done by clicking on "ENV 2" within the filter section and from the drop-down menu to select LFO 1. Furthermore, the rate of the LFO will be controlled by the LFO section. You can find it in the bottom left corner of the interface. Here, we will set the sync to 1/16 and slightly pull the "Depth Mod" parameter to hear the LFO performing once the sequence is playing. This is how our arrangement sounds now.

~Sequence 1 - 2

It would be good to incorporate the 3rd oscillator to introduce even more richness to the sound. Furthermore, let's set the volume at around 40%. Lastly, we'll select the clear saw wave waveform and hear how it sounds.

~Sequence 1 - 3

In order to finalize our sequence, we will introduce a smaller amount of plate reverb and delay, which can be found as built-in effects within Diva.

~Sequence 1 - 4