How To Create 1Touch – Jealous Style Bass

In this tutorial I will show you how you can create 1Touch – Jealous type of noisy, fat & wide bass line. I gotta say I’m not really into this “re-create the sound of producer X” -type of things, but this is so common type of bass in trance and progressive trance that I decided to make this tutorial.

Download FL Studio Project Files For 1Touch Jealous Style Bass

Here’s a sound example. First the original bassline by 1Touch from the song “Jealous”:

And here’s the re-creation:

As you can hear it’s not exactly the same, but something close to it.

This is how you create it:

First thing to do is to start a new FL Studio project, set the tempo 128bpm, pick a kick drum, drop it to an empty Sampler channel, create a simple 4-to-the-floor beat pattern and assign the kick to a free mixer track (if you feel like it, boost the kick drums low end using the mixer track eq).

Next, load a 3xOsc to the project (in total we will need three 3xOsc’s for this project which we are going to layer together).

Choose saw wave as the oscillator shape for each three oscillators, set the coarse tune -24 semitones for each and turn the Osc 1 fine tune to -12 cents and Osc 2 fine tune to +12 cents. This will create that detuned saw sound which is exactly what we need.

Assign the 3xOsc to a free mixer track (rename the track something like ‘wide bass’ and pick some color for the track) and drop these effects to it’s effect slot – in a following order – to make it sound fatter and wider:

• Soundgoodizer (leave it to it’s default settings)
• Fruity Phaser (load a preset ‘MoogIt2’)
• Fruity Flanger (choose preset ‘Doubling’)
• Fruity Stereo Enhancer (set the ‘Phase offset’ parameter to aroung 77ms left or right)

Next, load second instance of 3xOsc to the project. We are going to create a sharper saw bass with this to add some ‘bite’ to the sound.

Choose saw as the oscillator types for each tree osc’s and adjust the coarse tune to -24 semitones for each and assign the 3xOsc to a free mixer track (rename it to ‘sharp bass’ or something and I recommend to choose same track color as with the ‘wide bass’ to keep your tracks organized).

Drop a Soundgoodizer to it’s effect slot and leave it to it’s default settings.

Now, head to the Step Sequencer and add Layer channel to the project. Layer channel is a handy tool. It allows us to layer several instruments together and control their note data all at once via MIDI keyboard or by Piano Roll.

To create a layer, open the Layer channel settings, right click the Channel selectors on the channels you want to layer (‘wide bass’ and ‘sharp bass’ in this case) and press ‘Set children’. Also, turn the Layer channel volume to 100% to avoid it decreasing the original volume level of the layered channels.

Now, if you select the Layer channel you can play both instances of 3xOsc’s at once.

Ok. The ‘sharp bass’ is coming through a bit too loud so head to the Mixer view and drop it’s volume level a bit – to -6dB or something.

Also, use the mixer track eq to boost the 2-3kHz area to make the  ‘sharp bass’ sound more apparent.

Next, load the third instance of 3xOsc. This will be for the white noise, so choose noise as the oscillator shape for each three oscillators and assign it to free mixer track and rename it to ‘noise’ or something similar.

Now, head back to the Step sequencer, open the Layer channel, select all three instances of 3xOsc’s by using the Channel selectors and press ‘Set children’. Now we have layered all the three units of 3xOsc’s together.

However, the volume level of the noise needs to be dropped a little, so head to the Mixer and drop the level to -4.5dB or something. Also, the noise could be a bit brighter (to my taste at least) so use the mixer track eq to boost the area of 5kHz and above a little.

Ok. Let’s create a bass sequence similar to 1Touch so head to the Playlist, add a new pattern and open the Piano Roll -view of the Layer channel and create a following sequence:

If you listen the composition, it doesnt’ sound right yet. The bassline is drowning the kick drum and there’s no ‘pumping’ at all so we need to fix that using sidechain compression. We are going to sidechain the kick to each three 3xOsc sounds to let it ‘dip’ the bass every time it triggers.

So. Head to the Mixer, select the kick mixer track and right click the send switch on the ‘wide bass’ track and choose ‘Sidechain to this track’.

Add Fruity Limiter to the ‘wide bass’ effect slot and set it as follows:

(Depending on the kick you’re using, experiment with the Release parameter to control how fast the sound will ‘recover’ from the ‘dip’).

Repeat the process for ‘sharp bass’ and ‘noise’ tracks as well.

Here’s the Fruity Limiter settings for ‘sharp bass’:

And for the ‘noise’:

(We could’ve also used only one Fruity Limiter to create the sidechain compression by routing and grouping the mixer tracks, but using separate process for each gives a better control over the sound).

Alright. Now we  have the ‘pumping’ going on.

Next, we need to do some routing. We are going to route the ‘wide bass’ and ‘sharp bass’ to one empty mixer track as we are going to add a special effect (in a style of 1Touch) that affects to both sounds.

In the Mixer, select the ‘wide bass’ track and right click on the send switch on a empty mixer track and choose ‘Route to this track only’.

Repeat the process for the ‘sharp bass’ as well.

I suggest renaming the route track to something like  ‘wide b + sharp b route’ and selecting a same color as you used in the ‘wide bass’ and ‘sharp bass’ mixer tracks. If you’re doing lot of routing and grouping, using colors will help you to keep things organized.

Now, route the ‘wide b + sharp b route’ track and ‘noise’ track further, to a new free mixer track. This is because we are going to use effect that affects ALL three sounds.

Rename the track to something descriptive like ‘before master’ or something.

All of the three sounds are now routed to this track and from here to Master track. Now, using this track drop the volume level a bit (to bring out the kick drum even better) and boost the 3.6kHz area and above to add more presence to the whole group of sounds.

Now, let’s try to re-produce the nyances in that 1Touch bassline via Fruity Free Filter and automation so add Free Filter to the ‘before master’ track and (using low pass filter) drop the Q level a bit and set the Frequency to around 5kHz.  Create automation clip for the Free Filter mix level controller. This is what we use to turn the filter on and off and create a frequency ‘dip’ to the bassline like you can hear in the original song.

Go the the Playlist and edit the Fruity Free Filter mix level envelope like this:

Check the results:

Next, let’s try to re-create the other nuances in the example bassline as well. I dont know the exact method, but using Flanger effect and couple of automation envelopes comes close.

So, head to the ‘wide b + sharp b route’ mixer track and add Fruity Flanger to the effect slot. Remember that this is the track where we routed the two bass sounds so the Flanger effect will affect only these two.

Use the following settings in the Flanger:

Create automation clip for the Fruity Flanger mix level controller and the Depth parameter that is in the Flanger.

Head to the Playlist and edit the envelopes like shown in the pic:

As you can see, I’m using kinda soft ‘curve’ to open up (and closing) the mix level. This is just to avoid those cracks and pops that may occur with this kind of Fruity Flanger settings as it may happen if the curves are too sharp.

Alright, we are done and check the end results:

Remember this: APPLY this knowledge to create something of your own – don’t use the exact same bassline as it is already created by 1Touch.

Check the video below: