Welcome to this intermediate Ableton Live 12 lesson on building a subsine widen bass treatment for Soul Pride style jungle and oldskool DnB vibes.

In this session, we’re going to create a bass sound that does two jobs at once. The sub stays solid, mono, and focused, while the upper bass opens out into a wider, more atmospheric oldskool character. That’s the classic move. You get the weight for the system, but you also get that smoked-out stereo pressure that makes jungle and rollers feel big without turning the low end into a mess.

And that balance matters a lot in drum and bass. Bass is not just sound design here. It’s groove, arrangement, and mix discipline all in one. If you widen everything, the whole track can fall apart in mono. If you keep everything too narrow, it can feel flat and underpowered. So our goal is simple: keep the sub disciplined, then let the upper bass carry the attitude.

First, before you reach for any devices, write a simple MIDI phrase. Keep it short. Two bars is perfect to start with, and four bars is fine if you want a little more movement. Don’t overplay it. Oldskool DnB bass often hits harder because it leaves space. A few strong notes, placed well, can do way more than a busy pattern.

A good starting rule is to use maybe one to three notes per bar. Leave room around the snare. Try a root note, then maybe a fifth or an octave as a response. And if you’ve already got breakbeats in the session, loop those first and phrase the bass around the break accents. That push-pull between drums and bass is a huge part of the jungle feel.

Now let’s build the sound properly. Put your bass on an Instrument Rack and split it into two chains. One chain will be your sub. The other chain will be your widened mid bass.

For the sub chain, keep it pure. Use Operator, Wavetable, or whatever clean synth source you like, and choose a sine or very clean triangle-style tone. Keep it monophonic if needed. No fancy movement here. Short attack, smooth but not too long release, and the filter basically open or out of the way. The sub’s job is physical weight, not character.

For the mid bass chain, that’s where the fun starts. Use a richer waveform, like a saw or pulse-based sound, or even another Operator patch with more harmonic content. This chain can have detune, a bit of motion, and more aggressive processing. This is the part that’s going to feel wide, gritty, and animated.

Now we need to set the crossover properly. This is really important. Use EQ Eight to split the job between the two chains. On the sub, low-pass it somewhere around 90 to 120 hertz. On the mid bass, high-pass around 90 to 140 hertz. The exact point depends on the key and the sound, but the rule stays the same: the sub should not be widened, and the widened layer should not be carrying real sub weight.

A really solid starting point is around 100 hertz for the sub cut and 110 to 130 hertz for the mid layer. If the bass feels muddy, raise the cutoff a bit. If it starts feeling thin, bring it back down. And here’s a useful coaching note: set that split based on the note you use most often, not just by eye. A patch can behave very differently on a low root note compared with a note an octave up.

Next, let’s make the upper layer feel wide and oldskool. On the mid bass chain, add some controlled saturation, some chorus-style width, and maybe a little filter movement. Saturator is a great first stop. A few dB of drive can make the harmonics speak on smaller systems. Then use Chorus-Ensemble in moderation. You do not want this to become a washed-out stereo pad. We’re aiming for thickness and motion, not softness.

A good starter chain is Saturator with around 2 to 6 dB of drive, Chorus-Ensemble with a modest mix, maybe around 10 to 25 percent, and Utility to widen the mid chain only, maybe around 120 to 160 percent. If you want extra grime, add Auto Filter or very subtle Phaser-Flanger, but keep everything controlled. If the bass starts losing punch when the width rises, that’s a sign the stereo processing is doing too much. Back it off and keep the movement tighter.

What we’re really building here is a texture, not a whole bass by itself. If you solo the widen layer and it sounds like the complete bass, it’s probably carrying too much responsibility. The sub should still make sense on its own. That’s a really good reality check.

Now let’s add movement. A good DnB bassline breathes. It should not stay exactly the same all the way through the drop. Use automation or clip envelopes to make the width, filter, or drive change over time. For example, keep the mid bass width around 120 percent in the first eight bars of the drop, then push it up to 150 or 160 percent for a switch-up later in the phrase. Then bring it back down again.

You can also automate the filter cutoff so each note opens a bit and then closes. That gives the bass a talking, almost vocal shape, which works really nicely over chopped breaks. Another good trick is to automate distortion instead of leaving it fixed. Push the drive on a few key notes or one section, then pull it back. That makes the bass feel like it’s performing rather than just sitting there.

Now let’s make it musical with the rhythm. Bass in jungle and oldskool DnB usually works best when it interacts with the break instead of stepping all over it. Try hitting a note just before the snare, then leaving a gap on the snare itself if the drum pattern is busy. You can answer the break with a short response note after the snare, then maybe hold a longer note at the end of the phrase to glue the loop together.

A very classic call-and-response shape is this: a low root note in bar one, a short reply note after that, then a higher octave or fifth movement in bar two. In bar three and four, repeat it with a slight variation or a small cut. Keep it simple enough that the drums can breathe. Sometimes the hardest bassline is the one that knows when to stop.

Once the pattern is working, check the mix. This is where a lot of bass sounds either become usable or fall apart. Put a Utility on the master or bass bus and check mono compatibility. If the bass disappears in mono, the widen layer is doing too much of the heavy lifting. In that case, strengthen the sub, narrow the stereo image, or reduce the phase-heavy effects.

Keep an eye on levels too. You want the sub to feel strong without peaking aggressively. If the kick and sub are fighting, shorten the kick tail or use a very light sidechain compression on the bass. In DnB, sidechain should be subtle. We want clarity, not a pumping effect. Fast attack, fairly quick release, just enough to let the drum transient speak.

A really useful intermediate move is to resample the bass once you’ve got something strong. Record four or eight bars of the bass as audio, then edit the best parts. This gives you more control. You can trim tails, reverse a hit, chop a phrase, or freeze a movement that sounded especially good. In jungle and darker rollers, resampling turns sound design into arrangement material. That’s a big step forward.

You can even slice that resampled audio into Simpler and build a more hands-on performance version. Or use a small Beat Repeat or stutter fill at the end of an eight-bar section. A tiny reversed bass hit into a transition can hit really hard. You’re starting to treat the bass like part of the arrangement, not just a sound.

And that brings us to the bigger picture. Don’t just loop the bass forever. Shape it into a track. A practical structure might be an intro with filtered breaks and teasing sub hits, then a first drop with the sub and widened bass in moderate form, then a switch-up where you increase the width or add a higher octave reply, then a second drop with extra drive or a second variation, and finally an outro that strips back to drums and sub for easy DJ mixing.

That DJ-friendly arrangement side is crucial in DnB. The bassline can be amazing, but if the intro and outro are too cluttered, the tune becomes harder to use in a set. Leave room for mixing. Give the track somewhere to breathe.

A few common mistakes to avoid here. First, do not widen the sub. Keep true sub mono. Second, don’t overdo distortion before filtering. Shape the harmonics you want, then clean up the sound with EQ. Third, don’t make the bassline fight the snare and break. If the drums are busy, simplify the rhythm. Fourth, don’t leave the same exact texture running for sixteen bars with no changes. Even a small automation move can stop the loop from feeling static.

If you want the bass to feel darker and more authentic, there are a few extra pro moves worth trying. Add subtle pitch movement only on the mid layer. Drive the mid bass into Saturator, then clean it up with EQ Eight. Keep the bass bus lightly compressed, not crushed. Try a short filtered reverb send on just one bass hit per phrase to create depth without washing out the groove. And always check the track quietly as well as loudly. If the bass still feels strong at low volume, your sub and harmonics are probably balanced well.

Here’s a quick practice exercise you can do right away. Build a two-bar MIDI clip at 172 BPM. Write a root-note bassline with only three to five notes total. Split it into a sub chain and a mid bass chain. Keep the sub mono and low-pass it around 100 hertz. High-pass the mid layer around 120 hertz, then add Saturator and Chorus-Ensemble. Automate the width from 120 to 150 percent on the second bar. Then play it against a jungle break or an amen-style loop. Make one version with more space, and another with a slightly busier response note.

The goal is not to finish a full track in one pass. The goal is to hear how sub weight, widened harmonics, and rhythmic spacing create that oldskool DnB pressure.

So remember the core idea: keep the sub mono, widen only the upper bass, and let the rhythm work with the drums. Split the bass into sub and mid layers. Use EQ Eight and Utility to manage the crossover and width. Add saturation, chorus, and filter movement carefully. Phrase the bass around the break. Automate width and tone for movement. And resample when you find a sound that really speaks.

If you get that balance right, your bass will feel bigger, darker, and more authentic, while still translating on club systems, headphones, and in mono. That’s the kind of foundation that gives jungle and oldskool DnB its real power.