By the end: the complete rolling-bass patch — two layers, every number dialed in — the same recipe our shipped basslines are built from. This is one recipe. The Handbook is the whole kitchen: 69 pages, 11 chapters + FAQ + glossary.
A rolling bass is not one sound. It’s two sounds with opposite jobs — a sub that carries weight and never moves, and a top that carries movement and never holds the weight. Build them as separate layers, even inside one patch, because every rule from here on applies to one layer and not the other.
Step 1
Sub: pure sine, one octave down, level ~70 — weight only. Top: saw, one octave down, unison 3, detune ~0.18 — movement only. Split them mentally even inside one patch, because they follow different rules from here on.
Step 2
Lowpass at ~350 Hz, resonance ~18% — and the part that makes it roll: Envelope 2 routed to the cutoff at +0.45, with a fast decay. The envelope opens on every hit and closes before the next one. Park the cutoff instead, and the same pattern goes flat in one bar, no matter how good the rhythm is — a static filter is a dead bassline.
Step 3
Env 2 is the pluck: fast attack, a 0.22 decay, sustain at 0.30. Env 1 is the amp, shaped to match the pattern’s tightness — notes are one 16th long, and the envelope is why each one reads as a separate hit.
Step 4
Set the oscillator to retrigger its phase on every note — in Serum that’s RAND 0. With random phase, every hit starts at a different point in the waveform and the punch becomes a coin flip: we measured a 7.62 dB swing between identical hits at RAND 100, and 0.00 dB at RAND 0 — 40 identical root hits, one variable changed. Retriggered, every hit lands the same.
Step 5
Light distortion on the saw: drive ~22, wet ~55%. The sub stays clean, always. Saturation on the sub doesn’t add aggression; it deletes weight — that’s glue, not weight, and it lives on the top layer only.
Check your work
Loop the patch under a plain four-on-the-floor kick with a pattern that stays off the kick steps (the rolling bassline tutorial has the exact one). The kick should sound untouched while the bass rolls underneath. If the kick shrinks when the bass enters, check in order: phase retriggering on, sub mono, no distortion on the sub.
This recipe is the sound underneath the rolling bassline tutorial, and it ships as finished basslines in RIPPER BASSLINES Vol. 1. The full parameter layer — designing sound from scratch, chapter 05B — is in the Handbook:
Go deeper
The complete visual guide to tech house production — 69 pages, built to be looked at, not just read. Chapter 05 is free if you want to see the standard first.
Tutorial · Next
You have the sound — now build the pattern it deserves, note for note.
Start the tutorialHow-To · Related
This recipe obeys all five laws. Run the diagnostic on your other patches and hear which ones break them.
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