Free Ableton Operator Presets: Sub Basses

Welcome to my Ableton Operator preset pack, which is free to download. It includes some dark and detuned menacing sub bass presets and an Ableton Rack to tweak to taste.

Here’s a preview of the presets over a kick drum (it’s really low sub bass so you might need headphones!)…

See also: Ableton Operator Tutorial, Ableton Operator Presets, our other free Ableton Presets and Racks, and presets for VSTs. Also: Free Ableton Wavetable Drum n Bass Reese Presets.

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A Video Of How To Use The Sub Bass Rack….

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What the Macros Do:

Here’s what the macros do to shape the sound of your sub bass.

Osc-B Level: the volume of the Oscillator B, which is similar to Oscillator A but tuned up a bit so bringing this in will detuned and phatten the sound.
Osc-C Level: the volume of the Oscillator C – an octave down from A. This will make the low end heavier.
Osc-D Level: the volume of the Oscillator D, an octave up from A. This will add to the high end of the sub bass.
Filter Feq: The filter cutoff.
Filter Drive: Adds drive distortion.
Shaper Drive: Shaper drive distortion.
Shaper Mix: The amount of the Shaper.
Pitch Env: The Pitch envelope amount for that pitch-diving sub sound.

A run down of the Ableton Operator Presets…

These are some fairly dark sub bass presets with FM and detuning on some of them for thick and dark basses. There’s also a rack with macros so you can control the levels of all oscillators, the filter, various saturations, and the pitch envelope.

Here’s a run down of the sub bass rack…

There’s 2 Pitch units that each pitch the sound down an octave (as it’s a bass patch), and most people browser patches at c3. You can switch them off if you don’t need them. I use these in racks a lot, so if you have a midi clip that is too high, you can just switch these on duplicate them to drop the pitch an octave without re-drawing in any notes.

This patch uses just Ableton Operator in a rack, with Marcos set up for playability. I set the routing so it is the horizontal ‘tetris’ routing, which means no FM between the Oscillators. They all just route to the filter, like an analog synth. I’m using all Sine waves, some deliberately detuned a bit for a nastier, wobbly, sub bass.

I add lots of Distortion at the filter – using both Filter Drive and Shaper settings.

If you want you can add more effects, I would add a Drum Buss unit as it is really good for processing bass.

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