Step by step

2. Searing sawtooth Reese

1 The sine bass from the previous tutorial will fill out the low end of a mix, but lacks midrange aggression. Let’s create a Reese with two identical sawtooth oscillators. Detuning the oscillators by equal amounts (- 25 cents and the other to +25 cents) creates that distinctive beating. Tweak the detune values to taste.

2 The wavering saws lack solidity in the low end, so lets’ fill out that area with Serum’s Sub oscillator. We’ll turn it on, choose the Rounded Sine waveform, and crank up its level until you get the desired bass weight under the main oscillators.

3 Next, to get our Reese notes gliding and bending, we’ll head to Serum’s Voicing panel and activate Mono and Legato. Now raise Portamento as you play overlapping notes on your MIDI keyboard to dial in the perfect amount of legato glide.

4 Kevin Saunderson’s famous Reese bass has been sampled and resampled to death, and if you listen to those original samples ripped from the record, you can hear a faint bed of sampler noise. Let’s replicate that grit inside Serum: turn the Noise oscillator on.

5 Serum’s noise oscillator is actually a small sampler full of sampled noise waveforms. We’ll choose the AC hum2 waveform to replicate system noise. If we activate Pitch Tracking, our noise sample will be pitched up and down with MIDI note input, as if it were baked into a sampled note.

6 Our core Reese bass is complete. From here, feel free to audition different waveforms for more distinctive results – but remember to keep the two oscillators set to the same waveform. This sound is also extremely mono and dry, so will need a touch of processing to bring out its character.