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Gecko (Overdrive)

by Oliver Heldens
feat. Becky Hill

The hollow sound of this particular bass line is definitely reminiscent of a square wave to me, and if you look at the first 10 seconds of this track on a spectrum analyser you can see why: it’s mostly just the fundamental, third harmonic, and fifth harmonic which register on the display — a characteristic spectral signature of that wave shape. The sound is almost certainly being low-pass filtered in some way, though. An unadulterated square wave is a pretty buzzy-sounding thing, whereas what we have here is round and mellow, with precious little energy to speak of above 350Hz. In addition, a high-pass filter sweep kicks in briefly towards the end of the introduction (0:12-0:17) to create a transition into the verse vocal entry.

And when we get to 1:18, is the bass deliberately imitating a heartbeat to support the “feel the bass in my heart” lyric at 1:24? I’d like to think it’s intentional, but if so I reckon they might have missed a trick in keeping it steady throughout the section, because speeding it up would surely have assisted subliminally with building excitement into the following chorus at 1:49. One of the oldest tricks in horror-movie Foley, that…