Adding contrary motion with sub drops

As your riser climbs, creating a deep sound which falls in pitch at the same time creates powerful ‘opposite’ motion. Enter the sub drop If you’re looking for rib-shaking drama, nothing quite matches the potential of the sub drop. This is the musical equivalent of that lurch you feel as a rollercoaster completes its opening climb and begins its plunge down the first ramp, putting your heart in your mouth and your stomach somewhere near your throat. Sub Drops can be used in isolation, but they’re often most effective as a ‘contrary motion balance’ to provide downwards movement as risers climb in the opposite direction. Through the following three steps, we’ll discover how to personalise a sub drop, creating exact movement by adjusting pitchbend range, and Filter and Amplifier parameters to tease the sound into the mix with just the right amount of drama. Choosing a bass sound you like is the most important way to start.

We start by building a basic riser from three separate elements. The first is a Synth Riser from NI’s Rise & Hit library, which builds over four bars. Next comes a sampled white noise sweep which peaks at the beginning of Bar 6. Finally, there’s a deep...

We use Razor to create our sub drop, with a bass preset called Punch In The Balls. We’re increasing pitchbend to 24, to span two octaves. We program a bass note to last for two bars and a 1/4 note ‘extra’ at Bar 6. Then we draw a pitch ramp to create a...

We make extra tweaks to the sub drop sound, lengthening the Attack Time of the amp envelope so the sound ‘fades in’ a little more, whilst also reducing Filter Envelope modulation of the Filter cutoff, so that the sound bites less when it’s first heard.