OK, so your looking to get some tasty wobble bass for your dubstep productions. Ill be going over a few different ways to get that pulsing shimmer bass, and let me tell you its not just about the LFO as you might think.
So the Low Frequency Oscillator is one way of achieving a Underground dubstep wobble lead but you can get a very similar and more stable effect by using the envelopes on the filter on your synth. How this works is simple, you get your starting sound (probably a 2 oscillator square wave, slightly detuned, low pass filter etc). Then you set one of your envelopes to trigger the filter cut off, setting the attack in time with the music. This means when you play a note it will start with the filter cut off in a low position and then quickly open the filter exactly like how an LFO would would work but you just get the first open woooow sound rather than a wooowoooowoooow sound like with a Low Frequency Oscillator. When this method is played with a quick note pattern (short often notes) it sound very similar to an LFO.
The Low Frequency Oscillator. This control is probably the main source you will turn to to get your speaker bass wobbling like a true dubstep don. You have the following controls:
Rate: Controls how slow or fast the cut off frequency is modulated. You can either opt for a in time setting or free setting were you control the timings by hand. There are many advantages, but ultimately its up to you. The most common rate for dubstep is the 1/8 or 1/4 settings. A good way to get a cranking variation for dubstep is to have two synths one with a ¼ setting and one with a 1/8 setting and having different rates played per key, so first and second note would be ¼ and the 3rd note a 1/8 setting. This just shuffles things up a bit and keep the track fresh.
Amp: This effectively sets the amount of Low Frequency Oscillatorused, a low setting will mean the cutoff will tmove less further up to max amp, and a max amp will mean the filter opens all the way and all the way back to the initial position. The automation of this setting can bring plenty of nastiness and joy to a track, perfect for your dub stepping adventures .
Delay: The delay effect is the time before the Low Frequency Oscillator kicks in after the note is stick. Can be used to create very sonicly pleasing sounds combined with other effects.
Sync to note on: Essential this means the LFO will reset on every key press, if its off then playing a different note will make the Low Frequency Oscillator continue oscillating at its current rate and the note change.
Further, you can combine the two effects having a filter envelope for the first part of the sound and then using the Low Frequency Oscillator triggered 0.5 a second later using the 'delay' setting on the Low Frequency Oscillator (if you have one). This gives a kind of stuttered leap in to each note, done right its sound very very Crazy indeed especially for dubstep production.
The main thing to remember when engineering music is subtle movements of each slider works way better than drastic switches from right to left. All the advanced subtleness of extreme sound creation lies in the finding of the sweet spots of each setting. These are rarely at either end so be gentle with your machines and you will be rewarded with unique and pleasing (or dis-pleasing if thats your preference) patches and sounds
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