Dirt
Bass · Lesson 4 of 4 · BS4
The 4th step of the bass track in PatchPond's subtractive synthesis curriculum. Foundations; the filter is the star — and this lesson is where you meet saturation / gain staging for the first time.
▸What you'll learn
Pushing a vintage amplifier past the point where the speaker behaves politely.
Drive pushes the signal harder than the next stage cleanly handles, and the resulting clipping or saturation generates new harmonics — making the sound thicker, dirtier, or outright distorted. A small amount adds warmth and presence; a lot turns a clean bass into a reese or a guitar-like growl. Read more →
▸Built on
A dimmer switch for treble, with a side knob that lets the dimmer ring like a struck wine glass.
A low-pass filter lets low frequencies through and gradually cuts everything above a chosen cutoff frequency. Full definition →
First taught in BS3 Open the filter
Build this lesson live in the PatchPond studio. Web MIDI in, on-screen keyboard otherwise. The patch you make here loads back into iOS later on — same patch format.
Open in studio →▸In this track
Previous ← BS3 Open the filter