Growl Bass Design in Ableton 9

So lately I'm been trying to get FM8 down because as you know, it's a monster. It's been quite a challenge honestly. I've been scouring the internet for formant based growl bass tutorials. My attempts at even replicating what they're doing seems like constant failure on my part. They seem to be using Ableton 8, and I've of course moved on to 9. Is there something different about the versions that I'm not savvy to?

 

Maybe you can post a link of the tutorial you're talking about and
if you're using the 32- or 64bit version of Live 9 and FM8.

If you have just FM8 on a track in Live (and the parameters are only tweaked in FM8), it shouldn't make a difference using Live 8 or 9.

 

http://youtu.be/0Ob9hYNUOEg. I'm using the 32 bit version of both. I hadn't thought about using the 64 bit version. This seems like a very basic tutorial, but as soon I go to modulate the Z filter it falls apart.

 

Assuming you're not running Live 9.0.3 (which was only available for a few days, but some people got it unannounced via auto update) there is nothing different between Live 8 or Live 9 (or 32-bit vs. 64-bit) that would affect your ability to work in 3rd party plugins, or how they would sound.

Live 9.0.3 introduced some terrible problems with plugins (which I experienced first-hand), but the 9.0.4 beta fixes them.

And for the record I've made several attempts to master FM8 in the past but always walked away discouraged. For my part, classic subtractive synthesis is so burned into my brain that I think it's just hard for me to readjust to the FM mindset. I'll make another go at it someday, because I know FM8's capable of good things.

 

Before I had Ableton I was using FL Studio. I found that Sytrus is capable of very easy growl basse creation. I recently even purchased the stand alone version of Sytrus, but I really want to be able to use FM8. I guess I'll have to keep at it.

 

At about 1:40 in the tutorial, FM8 and the compressor are grouped into an instrument rack.
Then basically the parameters (of Z, etc...) are getting mapped to the same "Macro Control Knob 1" and the min/max-values of them are adjusted.

So I suggest you might also have a look into Live's instrument racks and how to map the macro control knobs.

By the way, one thing which can easily be overlooked in FM8:
The operators (A-Z) can be activated/deactivated with a right-mouse-click in the matrix (in the Expert-tab) So if the character in the 'operator-box' is white -> the operator is active.

 

With FM8 you can also work the classical subtractive way.
Start with 2 ops (E and F), going through the filter (Z).