The sound of the Roland TR-808 has long been a staple in hip hop and pop music. Nowadays, you’ll hear 808 basses-either sampled or synth-emulated ones-in many music genres, but most commonly in the Trap subgenre of hip-hop and the newer EDM version of Trap. Because it was so tonal, people started sampling it and using it as a bass sound. One of the most characteristic sounds from the TR-808 was its kick drum, which consisted of a hard transient followed by a sustaining tonal part that reached into the sub-frequencies.
However, its tones-often played from a sampler rather than an actual TR-808-caught on with producers and eventually became iconic in hip hop and pop production. The unit wasn’t initially popular, and Roland discontinued it after a few years. It started with the Roland TR-808 drum machine, which was introduced in 1980.
If you’re not familiar with the genesis of the 808 bass sound. Jimmy doubles the bass line with an 808-like sound generated by Future Audio Workshop’s Sublab. He doesn’t want it to get in the way of the existing kick drum track. As he plays along, he says that he wants to reduce that transient part. The sound he dials up in Sublab is typical of an 808 bass sound in that it’s got a percussive transient beginning and then a sustaining tone. Not only does Jimmy’s layered part add to the thickness on the bottom of the bass, but it also gives it an 808 vibe, as well. The existing bass in “Light Shine Through” is a sawtooth-wave drone bass that ill Factor programmed using Ableton’s Wavetable synth back in Episode 2 of this series. It’s a virtual instrument that lets you dial up 808 sounds and other contemporary sub-bass tones and import your own samples. The sound Jimmy uses is from a plugin called Sublab by Future Audio Workshop. Manually layering a MIDI part on an audio track and matching it precisely isn’t always easy. How low can you go? In this excerpt from " Start To Finish - Ill Factor Episode 14: Mixing with Jimmy Douglass Part 4,” Jimmy takes a synth bass part and manually doubles it with a MIDI 808 bass sound that goes even lower in the sub-bass range.
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