Deeper Tech dives into the dark, gritty side of tech house. These meticulously crafted presets for Vital will instantly give you the perfect bassline sound.

Here are three production tips to help refine your house production chops and get you to the next level of music production.

Sound Pack Spotlight: Production Tips and Tricks

For Beginners:

Chord patches.

Create an easy one-shot chord patch by using the three oscillators within Vital. Set the first oscillator to its default pitch at 0, the second oscillator at +3 semitones up, and the third oscillator at +7 semitones up, as shown in the screenshot. The result is a minor chord that can be played as a synth. 

This type of one-shot chord patch is a timeless sound used for making progressions within house music, and it gives you that classic, old-school rave vibe. 

Try it with deep house basses 🪩

Next level: Intermediate

Resonance on filters.

For making deep, resonant tech house basslines, using filter resonance is key. In Vital, try setting a low-pass filter, then gradually increase the resonance to boost frequencies around the cutoff. You can also use the resonant slider on the right of the filter module to do this. You should see a peak within the filter slope, as indicated by the green arrow. 

This technique can add body and character to your bassline, creating a more dynamic sound that grabs attention without overpowering the mix. Play with filter movement by automating the cutoff frequency to add movement and subtle changes in texture throughout your track—perfect for adding that hypnotic, driving energy that tech house basses are known for.

Experiment with 808 presets 🎛️

For Advanced

Harmonic wavetables.

Create gritty, dirty, and metallic FM-style basses with harmonic wavetables. Vital offers a “Harmonic Series” wavetable to help you achieve this, but any wavetable that is similar can also be used. 

Activate one of the oscillators, load the Harmonic Series wavetable, and increase the wavetable slider to get a high-pitched, harmonic sine sound. Use your ears to determine how far you should move the wavetable. The increase in peaks and valleys within the wavetable means that more harmonics are being introduced in the sine wave, which in turn, creates that signature high-pitched harmonic sound that is used in house and dubstep basses. 

After that, add a good amount of hard or soft clipping distortion, and activate Vital’s multiband compressor to push the sound further and achieve grit, distortion, and punchiness. To reverse engineer a closer example of this, take a look at our “Piercer” preset that is included inside the pack.

Check out tech house presets for Serum 😎