Mimofr 808 (2024)

FAQs

How to get the 808 bass sound? ›

For an 808 bass sound, you will want to choose a sawtooth or square wave oscillator. You can experiment with different oscillator types to find the sound that you like best. Once you have selected an oscillator type, you will need to adjust the envelope settings.

90% of what makes an excellent sounding 808 is selecting the best sample. Look for clean and punchy samples that have a consistent body. It will be easier to process and shape them to fit with other elements in the mix. Numerous sample packs offer a variety of 808 sounds to accommodate any genre.

To make your 808s hit hard and punch through the mix, emphasize the attack and decay phases of the amplitude envelope. Shorten the attack time for a sharp initial impact, giving your 808s a punchy quality. Adjust the decay time to find the right balance between sustain and a tight, defined sound.

An 808 kick, particularly when it has a long decay, effectively functions as a bass instrument. That's why tuning your 808s is so crucial. If the pitch of your 808 kick doesn't match the key of your song, it can create a dissonant effect, which may or may not be what you're going for.

However, the 808 gave the user control far outside the parameters of the analog bass drum thus creating an entirely new sound (Sigman). This sound, when amplified, created a loud “boom” which became a signature of booty-shakin' rhythms.

The ideal loudness level for an 808 in a mix can vary depending on the genre of music and the overall sound you're aiming for. The amount of headroom you should leave can vary depending on the specific context and desired outcome, but a general guideline is to aim for around 6 dB of headroom.

It became a cornerstone of the emerging electronic, dance and hip hop genres, popularized by early hits such as "Planet Rock" by Afrika Bambaataa and the Soulsonic Force and "Sexual Healing" by Marvin Gaye. The 808 was eventually used on more hit records than any other drum machine.

To sustain the low-end boom of the 808, layer the drum with a kick. The high end crispness of the kick drum will bring out the lows of the 808. Find a frequency and note that works for your track to maximize your 808. The hard part about this is finding the right mix so the two drums don't interfere with each other.

Unlike most drum machines at the time, the 808 gave musicians remarkable freedom: You weren't limited to pre-programmed rhythms or orchestrations, which meant you could fashion sounds and stack them on top of one another until you'd created something that had never been heard before.

Conceived in the wake of West's breakup with his then-fiancée Alexis Phifer and the death of his mother Donda West in 2007, 808s & Heartbreak marked a major artistic departure from his previous rap records.

Why are 808s called 808s? ›

Although some people refer to any song with deep sub-bass as an 808 track, the term is actually a reference to the Roland TR-808 drum machine, created by Ikutaro Kakehashi and first marketed by Roland in 1980.

The 808 kick sound is comprised of two distinct parts: the initial click and a sustained deep bass tone. The initial click was meant to emulate the attack sound of a real drum beater hitting the skin of the drum, and the sustained bass sound that followed the click was meant to emulate a decaying thump.

A modern technique for creating 808 bass lines is to use the 808 as a sub-bass oscillator. You can then write patterns that sound more like bass lines played on a synth and less like kick patterns. The unique timbre of the 808 bass drum comes from combining a sine wave oscillator, low pass filter, and VCA.

The 808 imitates acoustic percussion: the bass drum, snare, toms, conga, rimshot, claves, handclap, maraca, cowbell, cymbal and hi-hat (open and closed). Rather than playing samples, it generates sounds using analog synthesis; the TR in TR-808 stands for "transistor rhythm".