The Secret to Super-Wide Bass Sounds WITHOUT Phase Issues

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In this video, you'll discover how to produce super-wide bass sounds without phase issues by using my three-part bass layering technique. My name is Philip from Pick Yourself, and I've created this channel to help electronic music producers like you make meaningful progress with their music.
Producing wide bass sounds without messing up the phase in your low end is a real challenge. I get it. If you're not doing this correctly, your tracks might sound weak in clubs and festivals because most speaker systems are multi-mono instead of stereo.
Now, here's the deal. Many electronic music producers follow a flawed approach of adding tons of unison to their bass sounds and then flipping the mono bass switch on a plugin. What barely anyone knows: This doesn't solve the underlying problem, and in this video, I'm peeling back the curtain to show you exactly why that is.
To help you produce super-wide bass sounds that have perfect phase alignment in the low-end but still sound incredibly wide, I'm sharing with you my tried-and-tested bass layering technique.
In this tutorial, I'll guide you through each step and the principle work in any DAW, whether you're working with Ableton Live, FL Studio, Cubase, or Logic. We'll tackle the nitty-gritty details of layering bass sounds while avoiding phase issues in the low-end.
If you're into Techno, House, or EDM, this technique is one of the best ways to get that super wide bass sounds you hear in songs by artists like Anyma on labels like Afterlife.
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[@pickyourselfofficial]

FREE guide - The Finisher Framework: pickyourself.com/framework

[@rorykoehler9018]

One of the best producer KZbin channels. Your techniques and explanations are top. Thanks for making these

[@albinfreller4506]

Deine Tutorials sind der hammer. Du erklärst alles richtig nice und labberst nicht herum wie manch andere die sich gerne reden hören. Rezpekt weiter so :)

[@JustAddAsh]

Awesome stuff. I found you recently and your stuff is right up my street!

[@adv8nturenick]

Great content, really well explained for those of us that are learning. Thank you very much. 👍

[@veselin4504]

Heyyy, awesome tutorial :) Love the way you explain things

[@tjsoto2372]

I’ve been waiting for this video!! Thank you

[@pickyourselfofficial]

You’re welcome! I try to make most of my videos based on what you lovely people want to see & learn. So feel free to suggest topics :)

[@markyazzigreen8082]

Really like your approach here, well explained and satisfyingly deep enough into the subject. Nice 👌

[@pickyourselfofficial]

Awesome, glad you enjoyed it! 🚀

[@mosheahuvi]

man, your videos are the bast! i learn so much! thanks you

[@mosheahuvi]

This is very helpful! ❤ Thank you for your time!

[@raakam52]

Another great time spend with your video, keep up

[@pickyourselfofficial]

Thanks so much!

[@n000b51]

Clear explanations & sounds. Thanks for the demonstration & tips.

[@pickyourselfofficial]

You’re most welcome!

[@gbigbo_zjebeezjeboo]

Excellent explanation !

[@apoplexiamusic]

This is a solid approach, and from experience i can say it works for all genres that call for a super powerful bass sound. It works wonders on big reese basses, because you get a solid stable mono low end, a fat and crunchy mid layer and an airy and super wide top end and the sound works in mono even if it's a super complex sound.

[@Djolewatchtastife]

Gad damn the bass sounds insane after that reverb @23:00 🔥

[@Sasha_Sasha018]

Repetition is the mother of learning. Thank you 🖤

[@pickyourselfofficial]

🚀

[@VentureNW]

Great concise video! Thank you

[@pickyourselfofficial]

Thanks 🙌🏻💯

[@braamalberts6665]

Love your videos, challenging the accepted rules and theories and explained super well. for the sub bass I see stereo is still switched on in the limiter would switching it off to mono not make it even more stable?

[@AngeloSposato]

Simple and effective, thanks for sharing! 🎉

[@pickyourselfofficial]

You are so welcome! 💯🙌🏻

[@kineticstringwell844]

i love your videos brother some awesome tips which should help loads out like me . thankyou

[@pickyourselfofficial]

Thanks so much! This means a lot :)

[@jugobetrugo3419]

Amazing technique, also works perfectly for psytrance :) Thank you very much!

[@pickyourselfofficial]

Thanks so much, I really appreciate it :) Yes, you’re right! Perfect fit for fast psytrance bass as well.

[@oddontheboard6645]

now i got to know where the phase issues from. thanks bro.

[@pickyourselfofficial]

My pleasure

[@SoundFriendly]

Now I understand people like modular so much. By the time you get this all right, you are fed up with the bass and start something new. Technically, obviously you know what you are doing and share very valuable information. Thanks!

[@pickyourselfofficial]

Hahaha this resonates so much with me. There’s a lot of truth to this comment. Thanks to experience, it takes me about a minute or two to dial that stuff in (when I’m not explaining stuff) but it’s definitely harder if you’re doing it the first couple of times. And as a modular nerd myself I can confirm that it’s very liberating to just patch a couple of capable and get lost in that world.

[@stefanlorenz3192]

Could you elaborate why it is more simple modular and what would be an example? Sry i am not too experienced yet.

[@pickyourselfofficial]

@@stefanlorenz3192 yes. Absolutely! The thing with modular is that due to the limitations (compared to a DAW), you simply think differently. For example: To create a multi-layer bass with EQs, modulation, saturation, reverbs and a mixer, you could easily fill a mid-sized modular case. And that’s not even including drums, leads, etc. There might be some digital modules that allow you to do DAW-like stuff, but that’s often a menu-diving headache. So in real life, I personally love the natural limitations of a modular system because it makes you think in very creative ways on how to get the most out of it. I hope that helps :)

[@jimmydiamond-im5xs]

realy good explanation!=)

[@TrueSoundAcademy]

hello great tutorial.could say plz what is headphones are u using? Audeze mm-500?

[@kimmossige263]

Great video!! How would you do this with a bass guitar for indie rock songs? I'm thinking of triple bass and wide it out, but there's no unison on a mono recording of a bass guitar 🤔

[@tocompose]

Great bass video 😃

[@pickyourselfofficial]

Thank you, that means a lot!

[@JF_Auran_Music_OFC]

This is similar to my current process for bass. Is eq separation, different waveforms and saturation, and leaving the sub in the middle and opening each layer up gradually in the stereo field enough to avoid phase issues? Or should I still convert to audio and check there is no phase cancellation? At what frecuency would you say phase cancellation stops being a mayor problem? Thanks for your knowledge

[@TDiamond777]

im assuming if applied correctly along w/ the post processing you'd be able to do this w/ Serum and other Wavetables, Correct? it seems like it would translate just not sure

[@regisuh2929]

hey quick question, do you ever like to sidechain the different layers differently? for example applying a different amount of sidechain to each layer, or do you think that kind of lose the glue'd feel of the 3 layers. Thanks! love ur videoss

[@conduit-seoir]

So I added a doubler on the bass and it's still mono compatible in Stereotool but the sub now has a little stereo information, is a little okay or do you think the sub needs to be 100% mono?

[@garynicolson9341]

What headphones are do you use and are they any good for doing production?

[@adamswierczynski]

I like to take one low/low mid sound and add an effect rack with three chains. Using 2, even order bessel filters stacked to make perfect separation without phase issues to get low, mid, and top bass in one track. This way you can keep your harmonics consistent across the frequency spectrum while adding different effects on each chain, and the end sound is more glued together as a result.

[@henrywolf5332]

What plugins do this well in your experience?

[@farouthere6994]

i would add some mid/side volume attentuation as well on the mid and top layers, either with EQ-8, stereo mix settings or using a mid/side vst plugin as well.

[@pickyourselfofficial]

Definitely possible ;) just don’t overdo it, haha. I’ve made an EQ video that can help with that: kzbin.info/www/bejne/Y52uk3Srps6Mprcsi=ANa0nv2nwT_yfF8n

[@mavnghc]

Cheers Kev 🙂

[@pickyourselfofficial]

Not sure who Kev is but cheers ;)

[@morizanova]

Thanks for tips and tricks. And interesting you choose wavetable for top end . Do you have plan to share with us in future about which ableton stock synth best for ? Like maybe guitar- esque sounds or another type of sounds? Thanks again

[@pickyourselfofficial]

That’s a very interesting topic, thanks! I’ll put it on the list :)

[@a3igner]

BTW the LFO Tool for 50USD save yourself this money. Ableton Suite 11 has stock effect "Shaper" does exactly that.

[@rez9159]

Not exactly. The Shaper alone doesn't do anything more than controlling mapped parameters synced to BPM. You have to build racks based on shaper by yourself. When it comes to a simple ducking effect it is pretty easy, simply map Shaper to a Utility, set the range you want control, done. To build more complex stuff of the L.F.O. Tool like a frequency depending ducking effect with a crossover etc. is a little more complex. Absolutely possible, but maybe above what the average user wants to spend time with. You can recreate a lot even mote complex commercial plugins in Live, but it needs time. But there is another more important reason i recommend to build your own devices based on Lives Shaper. The L.F.O. Tool VST syncs to the DAWs transport instead of BPM (like most other time based effects like beat delay VSTs). Sadly Live is only compensating latency for those VSTs synced to BPM but not for those synced to transport (like L.F.O. Tool, Shalerbox etc. ) if you have plugin that introduces 65 ms latency sitting in front of L.F.O Tool, you have a problem i you aren't aware of it. With racks based on Abletons Shaper tool everything is in sync without workarounds like, setting an offset manually or use a midi clip as clock source etc.

[@a3igner]

@@rez9159 great answer. Thank you.

[@goyindi]

Gd shi' here brother. I don't know why but because you have like a pleasent but accessible universal euro/english accent it makes my uncultured Aussie brain feel like I'm in Berlin jus' chillin. lol. cheers Legend ;)

[@Sourbotrithy]

nice video

[@pickyourselfofficial]

Thanks so much! And congrats on your success, I see you’re making quite some waves with your music :)

[@a3igner]

Very good video. where is the video to doing this for a lead sound?

[@pickyourselfofficial]

Glad you like it! :) here’s the lead video: Steal This Simple Lead Synth Secret For ULTRA Wide Sounds (Mono-Compatible!) kzbin.info/www/bejne/e527hnqujamYkKs

[@THOMASTAYIMOEHL]

NIiiiice! danke! richtig geil!! wie heisst nochmal der Kopfhörer, den du hast?

[@pickyourselfofficial]

Das freut mich zu hören :) Das ist ein Audeze LCD-X Creators Edition. Brutal gut, besser als die meisten Studiomonitore im mittleren vierstelligen Bereich.

[@Vaeinoe]

You could also group each layer and the effects after them, then create two new chains in one of the groups, and move the other two into them By doing this you can control all layers with a single midi clip I like the neatness of having the layers function as a single midi instrument

[@pickyourselfofficial]

Yeah that's a great suggestion! I personally find it a bit more confusing like that but it's only because I originally come from a more "traditional" console-style workflow. But it's one of the great things about Ableton Live that it re-thinks these workflows.

[@goyindi]

wha...? You should start your own KZbin channel where you tell everybody how to do everything even better than best lol

[@markyazzigreen8082]

Just wondering, can't you do similar thing with multi band compression and low passed unison???

[@pickyourselfofficial]

Well, you probably won’t get the full benefit and it still doesn’t really solve the unison issue in the sub. But try it out and let us know :) Experiments like this are always wort it!

[@mavnghc]

What I’ve always wondered is, the notes of my basslines change, so won’t I need to eq each note separately and differently on seperate channels? Cutting at one frequency will work for one note but sounds rubbish when the note changes… any advice?

[@KFordmusic]

You could put as many eqs as you want on one channel and automate away. Device on and off for each note. If your bass is changing a lot or doing runs hopefully it repeats so you only have to do it a couple times 😂😂

[@jncar1]

Hi! I had a question. Is it a general rule of thumb to never have any kind of unison spread in the sub bass voice? Is there any situation where multiple slightly detuned voices in the bass register would work if they were dialed in in a way to make the cancellation effect really subtle? Thanks!

[@pickyourselfofficial]

As long as it’s intentional, there’s nothing wrong with it. I personally wouldn’t use stereo unison effects as this would almost certainly lead to issues in clubs. But there’s also a mono unsion (or phaser/ flanger style effects) which you can use as creative tools and they might sound fantastic. Same goes for slight detuning of oscillators. Yes’ you’re gonna end up with slightly less powerful subs but if it sounds good, it is good. Maybe the energy doesn’t always need to come from the sub.

[@jncar1]

@@pickyourselfofficial ok thank you! I feel like I hear that on some of Hans Zimmers ambient tracks, like the opening to “Wallace” from blade runner. At least that’s what I think it is… the sub bass is slowly beating back and forth a little bit

[@pixelcomet]

thanks for the edutainment

[@pickyourselfofficial]

You’re welcome :) I hope it leans more to the educational side of things :P At least that’s the goal, haha.

[@pixelcomet]

@@pickyourselfofficial hehe sure. I mean, this sort of education is entertainment by default^^. I like to learn different approacheas to things. A friend of mine visited the SAE and talks similar to you. I have a background too.

[@kalb683]

What would you say about the mono compatibility of Marino Canal - Independence? It's extremely wide

[@pickyourselfofficial]

Yep his stuff is super wide. But also mostly 150Hz and above so probably not too much of an issue in most cases. But I’ll have to listen to that specific track again.

[@MupprikSmurken]

Seems the people in the comments on that track like it a lot. But it honestly sounds pretty bad to my ears. especially that wide lead that sounds out of place. like its not part of the music and comes from somewhere else. In mono his lead and the vocals lose a lot of loudness. so i think he doesn't care about mono compatibility.

[@gravity00x]

the distortion is not because of the "ableton limiter" it is because low frequencies get distorted on any limiter, when you set the release below 60hz.

[@pickyourselfofficial]

How I wish that were true 😅 this little bit of gain reduction would be still super transparent on the Fabfilter, barely any artifacts. I was even trying it and decided to not include it in the video because it was too off-topic. But you know what? I’m simply gonna do a video on specifically that since it’s definitely relevant.

[@chieljansportel6400]

Probably it is the plug-in! You have these type of plug-ins with built in saturation! I know fruity limiter does! Also in ableton you have the setting oversampling somewhere it is somewhat hidden but I know there is! It helps a lot!

[@TraxtasyMedia]

This beginning reminds me of Summer dies by deadmau5

[@pickyourselfofficial]

Haha nice, I didn’t think of that :)

[@valoelios40]

Afterlife stuff does not really sound like proper "techno" to me... true techno is done by artists like Truncate, Mark Broom, Orion, Rene Wise, The Advent, Sleeparchive, Surgeaon, Luke Slater etc.

[@pickyourselfofficial]

Pretty much what the fans of “true” oldschool Detroit techno fans would say about the generation of Techno artist you mentioned 😂. I just think the whole discussion doesn’t add much benefit. Don’t get me wrong, I’m also MUCH more into the stuff you’ve mentioned but genres spread out and evolve over time. AND, like DVS1 said recently, this gives people a chance to discover the underground gems after being bored by the more mainstream stuff at some point. Much love from Berlin 🖤

[@Cytasis]

ha, ich wusste es war layering 😅

[@neutralfog]

What you hear on Afterlife is Melodic House and Melodic Techno. But not Techno.

[@pickyourselfofficial]

Haha we all knew that this comment was about to come. I’m personally more into the raw/ hypnotic type of Techno but I still respect most of the Afterlife artists for their work. And to me, melodic techno is (just like the new “hard techno”) a nice entry point to the more nuanced underground sub genres of Techno. DVS1 had an interesting take on that subject recently, can’t remember where I saw it but maybe someone can link to it here if they find it.

[@noahsiekmann4275]

Why does this matter? Also, who the hell cares?

[@ResonanceRebel]

Ouf, this is so complicated and timeconsuming. Can`t a Synth do all this? Like Zebra?

[@johnymst]

So the idea with 3 layers is fine but the way you EQ everything breaks my heart man. Never eq bass like that 😅

[@pietersmith7341]

So are you saying that the technique in this video should not be used?

[@johnymst]

@@pietersmith7341 yeah cutting the sub so steep is a big no no. Instead a softer curve or low self is better

[@connerogrady5035]

@@johnymstthank you . *shelf Anyways look up phase and eq phasing anyone who doesn’t know eq works by phasing the sound and a steep curve like that almost always leads to some phase cancellation 😢

[@vroteg]

Do whatever you what when you design your sound. Maybe when mixing it’s different. As one dickhead but great musician I know once said: if you think it’s is dangerous to put reverb on sub bass, use a helmet…

[@pickyourselfofficial]

I’m actually talking about that specific issue in another video: kzbin.info/www/bejne/Y52uk3Srps6Mprcsi=CTrzc5wYafL_gjYm But there’s a difference between EQ in sound design and EQ in the final mix. In the sound design phase (like shown here), all I want is to make the layers work well together. And by the way: for linear phase EQ you’d pay the price of pre-ringing artifacts. Low shelfs are often my preferred method but for shaping the low end on a mixbus or on the bass-heavy groups to make sure that at this point it doesn’t screw up the phase relationship. But most importantly: You’d definitely hear if there was a phase issue due to the shift introduced by the low cut ;) and since that isn’t the case, there’s not much to worry about. Final takeaway: In my opinion, there are too many “always do this” and “never do this” sources of information out there, especially on KZbin. That misses the nuance and leads people to conclusions that sound like “the truth”. Which probably isn’t always the case ;) Thanks for coming to my TED talk 😂

[@spenzasequenza]

…LFOs retriggering...

[@pickyourselfofficial]

You mean in Wavetable or the lfo tool? Retriggering can help if you want the lfo to act as an envelope. Not sure how the comment was meant but if you have a question just let me know!

[@You-ud2fp]

Ngl this sounds pretty bad lol When you added lfo tool and reverb with a tail wayyy too long it got even worse 💀 Instead of sidechaining, consider delaying the bass buss by about 8ms. This will allow the bass to become an extension of the kick! The best of both worlds. Also consider using an aux for your reverb over a return track for greater control after the fact. There is some good concepts here for beginners, but imo this video is too long and the end result just isn't good. I can also hear the noise floor of your interface when you talk.

[@urarau7325]

Im really not a hater, but this is the afterlife bass aproach??😅 This isnt even close to anything...total waste of time

[@urarau7325]

And yeah... this isnt bass at all, that midi patern and sound is for melodic techno stab kind of sound ...they would do the bass thing tottaly diferent.

[@pickyourselfofficial]

There are two types of (main) bass sounds in most contemporary melodic techno songs. The rhythmic, edgy bass stabs (like shown here) and the more dreamy, soft, arpeggiated bass sounds that often work as leads. I’m about to do a tutorial on those as well. If you were purely a hater I wouldn’t even reply but I think you’re coming from a good place and it’s more a difference in wording than anything else ;)

[@hydr0fire]

The Afterlife sound is characterized by extended breaks with epic leads appearing to play solo, but they are supported by a bass layer which this video has demonstrated well.

[@miguelmoreira5248]

facts