Pulsating bassline with 80s vibes
In her song „Stupid Love”, Lady Gaga proves once again the hit potential of charming eighties synth sounds paired with crisp disco beats and her unmistakable vocals. A bass sound is used, which can be heard in a similar form in many synthwave tracks. We will show you how to reprogram this with Synapse Audio DUNE 3 [1].
You don‘t necessarily need the infamous Korg PolySix in hardware or software to recreate the distinctive Unison bass sound from “Stupid Love”. Flexible virtual-analog synthesizers are capable of the powerful sound as well, such as DUNE 3 here. After initializing the synth settings, set the polyphony to mono at the top right. Click on ARP1 in the Common section and increase Length to 100% in the ARP-1 window. Now you can play a sixteenth bassline with one finger. In the Mixer section, move the OSC2 control all the way up and select the
Ramp Down waveform for oscillator 1. The Unison mode is essential for the broad and floating sound you want. Increase Density to 6 in order to layer six sawtooth waves and set Detune to 32% and Spread to 100%. We tune oscillator 2 an octave lower. Here we also use the Ramp Down waveform and increase the Density to 6 and the Spread to 100%. Detune receives the value 0%. For even more fatness, we increase the Amt value in the Unison Voices section to 8. Adjust Detune and Spread as shown. Now it is time to tame the overtone-rich sound. To do this, select the TR Lowpass 24 dB mode for filter 1 and set Cutoff to 22 and Env Amt to 59% and Ktrk to 16%. We adjust the filter and amp envelopes as shown. A high pass with a cutoff value of 30% is used as a second filter. In the Lady Gaga hit, the bass was sent through a phaser for a livelier and more distinctive sound. Thanks to the good sounding phaser effect of DUNE 3, this is also no problem for the synthesizer. Now all that‘s missing is a subtle plate reverb and a pumping sidechain rhythm, which the plugin Cableguys Kickstart [2] contributes.