Help me figure out these awesome bass parts

How would I go about getting the bass feel you can hear on Radiohead's "All I Need (prominently about 30 seconds in) and (to my ears) sounds similar to the one heard in Boards of Canada's "Roygbiv"?

I'm using Logic 9. I really like these two bass parts, but I can't really identify what it is about the tone or rhythm that I like so much, but I know I especially like those two and that style. So help me break it down, what's going on here?

I'd love to use something like this in a song, so tips on instruments to use, or places to get samples with a similar feel to this.

Thanks!

posted by ejfox (2 comments total)

The tone is very basic analog synth. The first one has a bit of square wave in it, the second is a bit more sawtooth I think. Then there's a bit of distortion on top of that and maybe a little bit of portamento. The ES-1 in logic should have lots of this stuff. Try putting it through one of the logic guitar amp sims to dirty it up. Then you can add a bit of ping pong delay, maybe some chorus, some reverb etc.

Those kind of bass lines often start out as basically a random bunch of notes and note lengths, strange as it may seem. Once you loop a four beat sequence of random notes it often starts to reveal a rhythm and a melody which you can play with. Reason has a nice step sequencer which makes this stuff really easy. I've always found step sequencing in Logic really hard though.
posted by unSane at 6:18 PM on October 27, 2010

The square long patch in the EXS24 could work as another good starting point for tweaking.
posted by umbú at 11:47 AM on October 28, 2010