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I am looking to create Dubstep Whomp's on logic epress 9! anyone know of a good and easy to understand tutorial?

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Hi and welcome to Audio.SE. What or who exactly is a Dubstep Whomp? Is this a particular sound or something? Can you provide an example? – Warrior Bob♦ Mar 10 '11 at 15:06
if you listen to lets say Skrillex, hey sexy lady. when it gets into the very intense section of the song, the huge bass parts. those are dubstep Whomp's. dubstep is a genre of techno. Whomp's is a sound that is generally in dubstep. www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMdXOqq3WL4 there is the link to one of Skrillex's songs. – user514 Mar 10 '11 at 15:22
Jasper, dubstep really isn't a subgenre of techno. Techno is 4/4, regular beats akin to straight up house music, approx 150bpm. Much use of arpeggios and heavy on the synths and light on the bass. Dubstep is an evolution of what was once 2-step garage (born of UK Garage) - it's ~140bpm but has a half-time feel to it, thanks to the drum sequencing. VERY bass heavy, particularly sub-100Hz. Many (including myself) say that dubstep's character is lent to it from the 'space between the beats' - not so much with very commercial "dubstep", e.g. Skrillex, but Loefah, Benga etc are great examples. – Christopher Woods Jul 22 '11 at 19:31
"Dubstep whomps" are typically a big meaty synth stab with automation on a lowpass filter - similar to how 'reese' basses are created. Lots of spectral information right up to 2kHz but lowpassed right out to give a big phat bass-heavy sound which can quickly be brought in by adjusting the LFO on a note event. The end result is similar to if you use your mouth and go "wwwwwwoooooooaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhh" - your mouth is lowpass filtering the sound your vocal cords are producing (which doesn't change). – Christopher Woods Jul 22 '11 at 19:36

1 Answer

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I believe what you're talking about is often referred to as a "wobble bass" and can be made in a variety of ways, for a variety of textures.

Choose a synthesizer plugin to start with - you don't need any particular one, but just needs to have a nice lowpass filter, and a low-frequency oscillator ("LFO") that can modulate the filter cutoff frequency.

The basic idea is:

  1. Get a really big oscillator sound somehow (presets can be good for this, or make your own)
  2. Set the filter to lowpass. Raise the resonance (sometimes called "peak") setting on your lowpass filter a little bit above zero.
  3. Set the LFO to modulate the filter cutoff frequency. Set the LFO depth to something huge, and the LFO rate to tempo sync, and something like 1/2 a measure. If necessary, set the LFO waveform to something with a slope.
  4. Play a big sustained note through it. It should be making a noise like "wob wob wob wob"

After that, it's all about customizing the sound to your taste. Try different waveforms, filters, LFO settings, whatever. Try changing the LFO rate as it's playing. Try adding vibrato if your synth does that. Make sure your filter is filtering the whole sound, and not letting any of the oscillators get through unfiltered.

The key element in the dubstep / drum and bass wobble is the moving filter cutoff. You can do this many ways, but the one I wrote up here is the one I've used. You could also, for example, change the cutoff rate by hand, if you want a particular pattern of filter movement.

If the terms here don't make sense, by all means look them up. They're fairly straightforward synthesizer terminology and apply to most synthesizers. Your plugin probably has a manual that describes how to use them.

One more thing - and I know it sounds silly - but search YouTube for "dubstep wobble bass". There are lots of tutorials out there, however I don't know of any for Logic in particular.

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It's worth noting that I can't get to Youtube at the moment to check the example given - so this answer is based on a general familiarity with the style as opposed to that specific song. I'll check back later and modify my answer if it turns out I'm mistaken. – Warrior Bob♦ Mar 10 '11 at 16:21
I'd probably go with the ES2 to do this in logic express. – Sam Mar 11 '11 at 0:24

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