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Creating a Roland-style house bass with Aalto CM and Cream CM

1 It’s not mandatory to use vintage synth hardware to get big, bouncy basslines. In fact, you can get awesome results using the free Plugins included with every issue of Computer Music! Start by creating a MIDI track in your DAW, and load Madrona Labs’ Aalto CM on it. 2 In Aalto CM’s Complex Oscillator panel, turn the Shape knob down all the way to get a pure square wave. We want to use a modulator to control the filter cutoff frequency, so in the Filter panel, turn the Cutoff knob all the way down. 3 Next, drag from Envelope 2’s modulation output to the Cutoff knob’s modulation input. Turn the modulation amount up to full, and turn Envelope 2’s Release knob up to 0.7 or so. Play a note, and you’ll hear a familiar bouncy, Roland-esque square bass tone. 4 Now we’re going to arpeggiate the synth. Create a new MIDI track and put Kirnu Cream CM on it. Before Cream CM will play the synth, we need to route the MIDI. In Live, we do this by setting the

Input Type on the Aalto CM track to the Cream CM track, and the Input Channel to Cream CM, then set the monitoring mode to In. If you’re not sure how to do it in your DAW, consult its documentation. 5 If you activate the Cream CM track’s Arm Arrangement Recording and play a note, you’ll hear Aalto CM is triggered automatically. Create a MIDI clip on the Cream CM track, and sequence a chord over four bars, as we have here. On playback, this won’t sound too hot, but we can improve it with a little tweaking. 6 By default, Cream CM’s central panel is set to the Order page, which controls which order the notes fed into the instrument are played back in. Click the bottom row on each column to turn them all to Off. Now as you might imagine, no notes will be triggered on playback. 7 Now set a few of the columns to Random by clicking their top row. This will randomise which of the notes fed into Cream CM will be triggered on each of the steps. Selecting different rows allows you to select the Lowest, Highest, First or Last notes received by the plugin, or trigger the Previous note again. 8 Now Aalto CM is playing a bassline, you can automate its parameters to get an evolving sound. We suggest trying out the Filter Cutoff, Q, modulation amount, and Envelope 2 Release for starters!