Can I make a Reese bass for free online?

Yes. Veena is an AI DAW with a personal music producer built in. Describe the song you want and CoProducer builds it with you — beats, chords, melody, arrangement and mix — as real tracks you can edit, mix and export. Free, in your browser. Reese Bass is a preset on Veena's own synth, so you can ask CoProducer for a Reese line or draw one yourself.

What is a Reese bass?

A Reese bass is two sawtooth sounds tuned slightly apart, so they drift in and out of phase and a single held note swells and churns on its own. It takes its name from Reese, Kevin Saunderson's alias on the 1988 record Just Want Another Chance, and became the sound of drum and bass. In Veena it is the Reese Bass preset, with four knobs to shape the movement.

Why does my Reese bass sound muddy?

Usually because the Reese is also carrying the sub. Its detuned saws phase in the lowest octave, so the fundamental comes and goes. Put Sub Bass on a second track playing the same notes, then pull the Reese clip's 8-Band EQ low shelf down so the sine owns the bottom. In Veena, CoProducer can set up both tracks from one request.

Reese Bass: What It Is, How It Moves, 4 Lines to Play

A Reese bass is two detuned sawtooth waves beating against each other, so one held note swells, phases and growls on its own. It is the moving low end of drum and bass and jungle. Veena, a free AI DAW with a personal music producer built in, has a Reese Bass preset on its own synth, and CoProducer writes the lines. Four are written out below.

What makes a Reese bass move

Detune two identical saws by a few cents and they drift in and out of phase. When they line up, the note is loud and bright; when they cancel, it hollows out. That swell is the whole sound, and it happens by itself, with nobody turning a knob.

Veena's Reese Bass is built exactly that way. Two stacks of three saws each sit 25 cents either side of the note, 50 cents apart. On a low E, the one at 41.2 Hz, that makes the note swell about 1.2 times a second. Play an octave higher and it phases twice as fast, which is why Reese lines sound calmer low down and angrier up top.

Three more details finish it: a 24 dB ladder filter with a slow LFO drifting the cutoff, split-band drive that roughens the saws while the lowest band stays clean, and mono voicing with a 60 ms glide, so overlapping notes slide.

The name comes from Reese, Kevin Saunderson's alias on the 1988 Detroit record Just Want Another Chance. Jungle and drum and bass made it their own.

Four Reese lines to play

All four are in E minor at 174 BPM, except where noted. The note names are what you draw in Veena's piano roll; the synth basses sound an octave below the drawn note, so E2 is that 41.2 Hz E.

1. The hold

Bars	Note	Length
1–2	E2	Two bars
3	G2	One bar
4	F#2	One bar, stepping back down into E

Four notes in four bars. At 174 BPM two bars last about 2.8 seconds, long enough for the E to swell three times under the break. The Reese needs that time; its movement is the melody.

2. The slide riff

Note	Starts	Ends	What you hear
E2	Bar 1, beat 1	The "&" of 4	The root
G2	Beat 4	Bar 2, beat 3	A slide up a minor third
F#2	Bar 2, the "&" of 2	Beat 4	A slide down a half step
D2	The "&" of 3	End of bar 2	A slide down a third

Each note starts an 8th before the last one ends, and that overlap is the slide. The D2 ends exactly at the bar line, touching the next E2 without overlapping it, so the loop restarts with a fresh attack instead of a glide.

3. The stepper (172 BPM)

16ths   1   e   &   a   2   e   &   a   3   e   &   a   4   e   &   a
Kick    X   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   X   .   .   .   .   .
Snare   .   .   .   .   X   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   X   .   .   .
Bar 1   E2  —   —   E2  .   .   .   .   .   .   E2  —   .   .   G2  —
Bar 2   E2  —   —   E2  .   .   .   .   .   .   D2  —   .   .   B2  —

Short, punched notes that hit with the kick and stay out of the snare's way. Techstep and neuro run on riffs like this. The double hit on 1 and the "a" of 1 re-strikes because the notes touch rather than overlap, and B2 on the last 8th drops a fifth back into the next E2.

4. The dive into the drop

Hold E3 for the last bar of the build. Start E2 a 16th before the drop's downbeat, while the E3 is still held, and the Reese falls an octave into the drop. At the stock 60 ms the fall is a snap; raise Glide on the synth panel's LFO card to around 400 ms for a slow, heavy dive.

Get the Reese Bass sound in Veena

Go to daw.veena.studio, sign in with Google and paste:

Make a 174 BPM drum and bass track in E minor: a two-step break with the kick on 1 and the 'and' of 3 and the snare on 2 and 4, fast 16th hats; a Reese Bass line that holds E for two bars, then G for a bar and F sharp for a bar, with long notes that slide where they overlap; Sub Bass doubling the same notes on its own track; a Dark Pad in the intro. Intro 16 bars, drop 32, break 16 with the Reese alone, second drop 32.

CoProducer sets 174 BPM and E minor, writes the break, then the bass against it, and offers 3 takes of the Reese to choose from. The Sub Bass depends on the Reese, so it waits for your pick and follows the notes you actually kept.

The four knobs on every Reese Bass clip:

BRIGHTNESS: the filter cutoff, from a dark 200 Hz murmur to a 3 kHz snarl.
MOVEMENT: pushes the two stacks further apart, up to 40 cents each way. More detune, faster and wilder phasing.
BODY: how much of the low end stays clean under the drive.
EDGE: how hard the drive bites.

Why the separate Sub Bass? The Reese's own fundamental phases with everything else, so on a club system the low E comes and goes. Veena's Sub Bass is a pure sine that holds still. Keep both on the same drawn notes, then pull the Reese clip's 8-Band EQ low shelf down so the sine owns the bottom and the Reese owns the growl.

Prefer your own synth? Through the Veena Bridge helper app, a VST3 or AU synth on your computer plays the same MIDI.

Where a Reese goes wrong

Notes too short. A 16th never lasts long enough to phase. Hold the Reese, and let drums carry the rhythm.
No sub. Without the Sub Bass layer, the low end breathes in and out on big speakers.
Too much MOVEMENT. Past a point, the phasing turns into a wobble and the note sounds out of tune.
Too many notes. Two to four notes per phrase. The sound is doing the work.

For more low-end patterns at 174 BPM, see drum and bass bassline grooves and how to make drum and bass. The Reese started in Detroit, and its techno cousins are in techno bassline patterns. The bassline generator writes new Reese lines against whatever drums you have, and the chord progression generator gives them a darker harmony to follow.

Reese Bass