A couple of years ago Techno made a great comeback in the electronic music scene 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 next 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 making of the mentioned bass lead, we have chosen 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 chose 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, set the waveform of the oscillator 2 between saw and triangle and increase the volume of the oscillator 2 up to around 70%. Now let’s hear how that sounds.
~Sequence 1 – 1
Adding LFO
Next interesting thing would be to add a bit of LFO to this sound in order 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 actually hear the LFO performing once the sequence is playing. This is how our sequence sounds now.
~Sequence 1 – 2
To introduce even more richness to the sound, it would be good to incorporate the 3rd oscillator. Furthermore, let’s set the volume at around 40%. Lastly, we’ll select the clear saw wave waveform and hear is 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
Feel free to download the project here.
