Origins & Ingredients
If Future Bass had a family tree, EDM would be the mom, Dubstep would be the first cousin and Trap would be the second cousin with infinite sub-genres sprouting out. While Dubstep emerged out of the U.K. and Trap out of the American South, Future Bass emerged in the virtual hemisphere from underground producers on Soundcloud and Spotify. This is a tricky genre to pin down, but here’s a breakdown of the main ingredients.- Melodically focused
- Highly compressed vocals and vocal chops
- Drops and risers that morphed out of dubstep
- Sawtooth and square waves
- 808 sub-bass, snare rolls and hi-hats derived from trap
- Polyrhythms and triplets
- Arpeggiated chords
- Filter and volume modulation
- Stabby chords
- 100-160 BPM
- Layers and layers of sounds
The Big Tunes
2013: Disclosure, “You & Me” (Flume Remix)
With supersaws, stripped back drums and pitched vocal chops, Flume’s remix of “You & Me” set the tone for the future of Future Bass. Did we mention Flume uses Circle²? 😉2016: San Holo, “Light”
Influenced by the gigantic supersaw theatrics of EDM, San Holo applied the style to the Future Bass framework.2016: The Chainsmokers, “Closer” (feat. Halsey)
Sitting at No.1 for 12 weeks in 2016, “Closer” (co-written by Frederic Kennet of Louis the Child) proved the genre’s potential for crossover success.2017: Louis the Child, “Love is Alive” (feat. Elohim)
Chicago duo Louis the Child continued the genre’s evolution by stripping back the drums even more and layering melodies.Building a Future Bass Track
Percussion
You may find 808 and 909 samples in Future Bass, but you can forgo retro sounds entirely to bring your sound firmly into the future. Use snappy and clean claps, snares, hi-hats and finger snaps, that don’t sound distorted or industrial. The internet offers up plenty of Future Bass drum packs; Splice, Arcade, and Sounds.com are great places to start searching.
The first 32 bars of percussion
Synths
Future Bass leads often feature euphoric chord patterns played using supersaws. A supersaw is a patch made of several detuned sawtooth waves layered together.
The midi track showing the chord progression I used
Vocals
Chopping up a vocal and using it like an instrument is a hallmark of Future Bass. I grabbed a couple of one-shot vocals from a sample pack, chopped them up and put them in a sampler so I could play them on the keyboard, using glide so that the pitch of each note leads into the next. Then I just jammed out a melody over the chords!
The vocals used in the demo track (note the combination of audio and midi clips)
FX
Future Bass producers aren’t afraid to use FX like risers and impacts to make powerful drops and transitions. There are tons of FX packs out there, just dig around for the less obvious ones. Recognizing an FX one-shot you’ve heard a gazillion times before can be a vibe killer!
The drop FX
The Finished Demo Track
I expanded the idea into an arrangement, adding and removing some elements along the way to keep things interesting. And there we have it!
The finished arrangement