Tuning Your 808 and Sub Bass

The 808 takes its name from a drum machine released in the early 1980s, whose deep, sustained kick became a bass sound in its own right. Today, in trap, drill and a good part of rap and pop, what people call “the 808” is a deep bass, often close to a sine wave, that plays notes. The sub refers to the lowest zone of the spectrum, and by extension to the very round bass that fills it. This is where a lot of producers go wrong: they treat the 808 as a drum element, put it on a single note, and are surprised when the track sounds out of tune.

An 808 in tune, an 808 out of tune

First listen to an A minor chord, then an 808 on A, then the same 808 one semitone lower, on G♯. The last two buttons play a deep, round bass under the chord, first on A, then on G sharp.

On its own, the 808 on G♯ doesn't sound wrong: a note is never wrong by itself. The problem appears with the chord, and you mostly hear it as an uneasiness in the low end, a feeling that the track “doesn't hold together.” On a small speaker you'll barely notice it; on a club system it becomes obvious.

An 808 is a note

So an 808 sample has a pitch, like any piano note. This pitch is called its root note: it's the note the sample plays when you don't transpose it. Many packs put it in the file name. If not, load the sample into a tuner or a spectrum analyzer, and read the loudest note in the low end.

Once you know the root note, set up your sampler so it matches the right key. Playing A1 on the keyboard then really gives you an A, and you can write the 808 in the piano roll like any other bass. If the sample is slightly out of tune, somewhere between two notes, correct it with the fine-tune control in cents: one cent is one hundredth of a semitone.

Following the roots of the chords

Which note should the 808 play? The answer is the one from the previous lesson: most often, the root of the current chord. If your chords are Am, F, C, G, the 808 plays A, F, C, then G. It can also use the octave and the fifth, but in a register this low, any other note quickly adds confusion.

A common mistake is to leave the 808 on a single note for the whole loop while the chords change above it. It sounds right over one chord and clashes with some of the others. Sometimes that's intentional, as a pedal, a technique you saw in the part on chord progressions; but if it isn't a choice, it's a mistake. Here's an 808 line that follows the roots.

The rhythm of this line is simple, with long notes and a few re-triggers on offbeats. What matters here is that each note matches the chord sounding at the same moment. In a real track, you can give it a much choppier rhythm, as long as the pitches stay the same.

The glide: an 808 that slides

One distinctive feature of the 808 in trap and drill is the glide, also called slide or portamento: instead of jumping from one note to the next, the pitch slides continuously. Listen to an 808 rising from A1 to E2, its fifth, then the reverse descent, and finally a one-octave glide.

The glide doesn't erase the theory; it makes it more obvious. The starting note and the landing note should both belong to the chord, or at least to the scale, or you'll clearly hear the 808 landing off target. The safest jumps are the octave and the move from root to fifth, up or down, because both notes stay in the chord. A short glide usually sounds cleaner; too long, and the note seems to deflate.

Distortion and harmonics: being heard everywhere

Here's a problem every producer runs into: an 808 that's powerful on headphones nearly disappears on a phone or a laptop. The reason is physical. An 808 is close to a sine wave, a sound that contains almost nothing but its fundamental frequency, and an A1 vibrates at 55 hertz. Many small speakers reproduce frequencies below a hundred hertz or so very poorly.

The solution is to add harmonics, that is, frequencies that are multiples of the fundamental: 110, 165, 220 hertz and beyond for an A at 55 hertz. That's what distortion, or saturation, does. These harmonics come through on small speakers, and the brain rebuilds the low note from them, even when the fundamental itself is barely reproduced anymore. Listen to a pure sine wave, then a richer sound at the same pitch, close to what a saturated 808 gives you.

On a phone, the first version nearly disappears, while the second stays audible. Distortion comes at a price, though: it makes the 808 more aggressive, and the added harmonics climb into the other instruments' territory. Dose it by ear, checking on several systems. Remember too that the more you saturate, the more a wrong note stands out: harmonics make the 808's pitch much more precise to the ear.

The right register

Which octave should the 808 go in? Too low, below about forty hertz, the note becomes hard to perceive as a pitch, many systems don't reproduce it, and it eats up a large share of the available headroom for a result you can barely hear. Too high, above about a hundred hertz, it loses its weight and blends into the other basses and the body of the kick. In many tracks, the 808's fundamental sits between E1, about 41 hertz, and E2, about 82 hertz.

So what do you do when the line goes too low or too high? Transpose some notes by an octave. If your chords go from A to F, the 808 can play A1 then F1, about 44 hertz, or A1 then F2, about 87 hertz. It's up to you, depending on the energy you want, but keep the whole line in a consistent zone.

Try it in the workshop: go down note by note from E2 to E1, then lower still. Depending on your headphones or speakers, you'll feel the point where the note becomes simple pressure, with no clear pitch.

Tuning the kick

The kick has a pitch too. After the click of the attack, its body is a low note that drops quickly, and that note can be heard as a precise pitch. If the kick and the 808 hit together on two notes that don't agree, the low end gets blurry, with unpleasant beating. So if you can, tune the kick to the tonic of the track, to its fifth, or directly to the note of the 808.

To find a kick's note, the method is the same as for the 808: a tuner, a spectrum analyzer, or your ear, comparing it with a held note. Then transpose it by a few semitones at most, or its character changes. Listen to this trap pattern where the 808, tuned to A, hits at the same time as the kick.

Here, kick and 808 land together, and that's exactly when tuning them to each other matters most. If you hear the low end “rumble” or hollow out on every hit, the first thing to check is the kick's pitch compared with the 808's.

You now have the low end under control. The next lesson moves back up to the midrange, with arpeggios and sequences, those lines that set a simple chord in motion.