Alright, so today I wanted to mess around with making a “superstitious bass” sound, you know, the one from that famous Stevie Wonder song? I’ve been listening to it a lot lately, and I just had this urge to try and recreate it myself.
First, I grabbed my trusty old synthesizer. It’s nothing fancy, just a basic one I’ve had for years, but it gets the job done. I turned it on and started fiddling with the knobs. No real plan, just experimenting with different settings.
I knew I needed a sawtooth wave to start with, so I selected that on the oscillator. Then I messed with the filter cutoff and resonance a bit, trying to get that signature, slightly “wobbly” sound. It wasn’t quite right, though, too harsh.
So I lowered the cutoff some more, and that’s when I started to hear something closer to the original. It still needed something, though. So I added a bit of attack to the envelope. make is sound like sliding. yeah! That’s it!
- Select sawtooth wave.
- Adjust filter cutoff and resonance.
- Lower the cutoff further.
- Added a bit of attack.
I kept tweaking the filter and the envelope, going back and forth, until it was sounding pretty good. I mean, it’s not exactly like the original, my instruments are different from the original. But you know, for a quick jam session, it’s definitely close enough!
It’s so cool how just by twisting a few knobs and experimenting, you can come up with something that sounds so iconic. Makes me want to try recreating other classic sounds now!
