oh, and P.S. – Pendulum used be straight-up UK DNB before they got all mainstream-commercial-sounding. That’s why they have Bass roots.

Other aspect why Pendulum sounds so pumped up is that they counter all that great bass sound with perfect 200-250mhz snares and a lot of hi-freq cymbals. That propels the surge that bass kickstart. Make sure your hihats are transparent enough and add some subtle filter automation to it to add the subtle groove. You can’t go wrong if you have more than few closed and open hats, just placed them so in your arrangement. And of course you can still slice some good all DnB loops with high pass on it, Pendulum still does it even if they are not pure DnB anymore

Pendulum plays tight on 2.5K-5K frequencies and that’s cymbals and distortion. Distortion,noise or “guitars” are really important to get the energy constant. BTW they dont use real guitars they use synths for that as well:)

As far as the bass goes you can use simple utility bass as bass color just like its says in the write up its all about the arrangement and when to trigger that utility bass, it takes a lot of practice but also alot of know how in mastering process because that heavy sound comes out during mastering stage most of the time. So you have to know what you can expect from your bass once it gets to parallel compression stage together with kick.

On a sidenote you will never sound like Pendulum and that’s a good thing, really. But you can spice it up a bit and just like Ian Shepherd said above try introducing strong and weak kicks. Let the strong kick start of your beat and then let snare shine and then let the cymbals take over the rest of the flow and repeat. Break it down with either Dubstep beat if you want to go melodic to tone it down or some heavy metal double beat if you want to build up.

Once you master it you will come to conclusion that Pendulum is really about engineering and sequencing while chord progressions are really boring and melody plays second fiddle to that great bass and cymbals. Melody in their songs comes from vocals only and everything else is just a filler really. Any other time they got some good melody and energetic chord progression was when they sampled Dune in Propane Nightmares and no wonder that’s their best single to date. DJ Fresh got something similar with Hot Right Now.

That’s enough theory let’s go and practice now

Thanks, glad you like the site ! And, nice remix

The reason you can’t hear the bass on small speakers is that it’s almost all sub. Few hi-fi speakers reproduce anything useful below 50Hz, and many roll off from 80Hz down.

Try putting a high-cut filter over the mix and sweeping it up. With 12 dB/octave it removes the low note at 50Hz, and by 80Hz the top note is greatly reduced. At 100Hz both notes have gone, and so has most of the kick drum.

Now, I’m not saying it’s necessarily a problem – if you want that warm, deep feel these are the kinds of sounds you need.

But, you could experiment with adding some higher harmonics into the sounds – even just a little of the first harmonic (an octave up) can help. Pendulum have several higher-frequency sounds doubling the synth bass, which also helps, but this may not work for your mix.

For the kick, I’d be tempted to blend in another sound, more in that “heartbeat” 100Hz area, so that on speakers that don’t reproduce very low frequencies you can still feel it. Again, just a very little may do the trick.

Or, you could just tell people to listen to it on decent speakers ;-p

Hope something there helps,

Cheers,

Ian

First of all, great site you have, i learned already so much in the little time i’ve been following your site! I always wanted to make deep bass sounds, but find it difficult to do, especially to make them deep, wide and articulated at the same time.
Listen for example to my latest track (http://soundcloud.com/benignbastard/willitsflowersintostardustb9bmesmerized).
I spent a lot of time to that bass and when listening to it at home, it seems fine, but i cannot hear it on small speakers (Creative type). Is there anyway i can make it still audible on little speakers?
Thanks

Wow, that’s unlocked many a mystery, thank you.

I’m a D&B & Dubstep producer just venturing into the murky world of sound engineering. So really I am learning about music all over again.

Thanks again, great site!!

The dynamic range is very limited, though – when the beats kick in it’s barely louder than the intro, and there’s heavy pumping on lots of it. This brings the average level right up without massive distortion, but for my money reduces the impact potential of the beats.

Pendulum is also very controlled, but listen to what happens at 28 seconds in – the beat lifts in level so it really hits you – that’s the “ambush” effect. There’s none of that in the Noisia track – when the beats hit it actually seems to take a step back, which I think is a shame.

Noisia Exodus.. Video by Alexander Lehman
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDS872M9Y9c

Both track and video are amazing compositions.