Phase Plant · Reese & harmonics · Recreation

How to Make a Bass Like Mefjus’ “Hear Me” in Phase Plant

To make a bass in the style of Mefjus’ “Hear Me”, build it as two layers. A reese plays the root notes and gets pushed through EQ-before-distortion until it’s heavily saturated. A second layer of slightly detuned saws plays the upper harmony. Both go into one group that widens the top end and soft-clips everything together. Below is our own recreation in Phase Plant and Ableton Live, presented by Paulo from DNB Academy, with the settings from the screen and audio of every stage.

By DNB Academy · Updated 26 October 2026 · 10 min read · Phase Plant + Ableton Live, intermediate

This is a learning recreation inspired by the bass in “Hear Me”, not the original sound. It isn’t an exact copy; the point is what it teaches about saturation, harmony and layering. For every bass type in one place, see our drum and bass bass guide.

The full walkthrough with Paulo from DNB Academy: a reese and a harmonics layer inspired by “Hear Me”, built in Phase Plant and processed in Ableton Live. Each step below links to its moment in the video.

1.Plan it as two layers in one group

Rich, harmonic basses like this are easier to build in parts. One layer, a reese, plays the root note and gets saturated hard. A second layer plays the upper harmonics and the melody. Group processing, mostly distortion, then glues the two together.

In the session (watch at 1:09) there are two Phase Plant tracks, both routed into a group called Main Bass, where they’re saturated together. That’s the mindset for the whole sound: saturate a bass that plays the root, choose waveforms for the upper harmonics, and let group distortion turn them into one sound. Keeping the layers separate means you can decide exactly which harmonic comes from where.

2.Build the reese: two saws, a sine and filtered noise

The reese itself is deliberately simple: two saw waves detuned against each other, a sine sub, and a noise oscillator with its own filter. On its own it doesn’t sound like much; the processing does the work.

In Phase Plant (watch at 2:41), add two analog saw generators and detune them away from each other; on screen one sits at +0.20 and the other at −0.20. Add a sine for the sub (its level reads 200% on screen). Then add a noise generator with a filter after it. The order matters: it’s the order in which signals reach the output, and we only want to filter the noise, not everything. Bring the noise down to 0% for now; you can revisit it later. For more on the basic sound, see our reese bass guide.

3.Use EQ before distortion to shape the harmonics

Put an EQ in front of a heavy distortion. Boosting one harmonic and cutting the sub changes what the distortion receives, so it changes the texture of everything that comes out. The more drive you add after the EQ, the more the EQ matters.

Add a Distortion module, set it to Saturate and push the drive a lot (watch at 3:45). Before it, add a Slice EQ and boost the second harmonic while bringing down something like the sub (watch at 4:15). You’re changing how the signal coming into the distortion is laid out in terms of harmonics. Move that EQ boost around with the drive high and listen to how much the character changes.

4.Saturate three bands separately with Multipass

Instead of a third-party multiband distortion, the video rebuilds the idea inside Phase Plant’s Multipass: split the reese into low, mid and high bands and saturate each one differently.

Add Multipass and set two crossovers (watch at 4:56). The video copies the split it remembers from iZotope’s Trash 2: 160 Hz and 3.50 kHz. On screen the low band gets Faturator, and the mid and high bands each get a Distortion module on Overdrive. Then set the drive differently on each band, with a big change on the sub band. You can always move the crossovers later. Keeping everything inside Phase Plant was a choice, not a rule; any multiband distortion will do the same job.

After Multipass comes one more EQ that boosts a harmonic (the second harmonic again), followed by more saturation (watch at 6:00). Listen to how strong the very simple reese has become. From here, go back into that EQ and change things depending on how clean or distorted you want the reese.

5.Boost the sub into a soft clipper

The reese’s post-processing is an EQ that boosts the sub and reduces the highs, followed by a soft clipper. It isn’t mixing; the aim is to distort as much as possible before soft clipping, so the sub eats into the frequencies above it.

In Ableton (watch at 7:12), the chain after Phase Plant is EQ Eight then Saturator. The EQ boosts the low end and rolls off the highs; the video calls it a bit of a meme EQ, because you’re not supposed to treat a sound like that. The signal is already clipping into the plug-ins, and boosting the sub further makes it sound very saturated in a way that moves. The Saturator is on Analog Clip with Soft Clip on. Once it’s soft-clipped it becomes messy, but with a lot of movement, which is what you’re after.

Now tweak that EQ while it plays (watch at 8:51): every change gives you a different movement. You can also bring the EQ closer to normal and push the saturation harder instead. The video keeps it very saturated on purpose, because the harmonics layer will be distorted on top of it.

6.Let the harmony do half the work

Played with a plain saw, the upper line already sounds like the track. That’s down to the harmony: the top notes move from a fifth to two major thirds above the bass, which makes the sound design much simpler.

Here are the harmonics layer’s notes (watch at 10:21). The low line follows what the reese is doing, but the high line plays different intervals above it:

• E and B: the top note is the fifth of the bass note.
• F♯ and A♯: a major third.
• G and B: a major third again.

Going from a fifth to a major third to another major third while the line climbs almost chromatically adds a cool feel to the harmony. Credit to the track’s arrangement here: with a harmony like this, the layer needs far less processing to sound right. For more on intervals in basslines, see our neuro bass patterns guide.

7.Build the harmonics layer from detuned saws

Stack saw waves that create their own movement. Unison with a small detune gives a flanger-like wobble in the top end; a second saw detuned by only about 2 cents doubles down on it with a phasing effect. A sine underneath plays the bass.

In a second Phase Plant (watch at 11:43), start with a saw and turn on unison with 3 voices, then bring the detune down a little. Put a Slice EQ on it in Exact mode and you can see the high frequencies wobbling in a wavy pattern. To double down on that, add another saw and detune it very slightly: about 2 cents (−0.02 on screen) (watch at 12:46). Layered together they give a phasing, almost laser-like movement. You get a feel for this the more you play with phasing. Finally add a simple sine to play the bass.

Then process it inside Phase Plant (watch at 13:31): a 3-Band EQ boosts the mids, where the meat of the sound is, and a Distortion saturates it. Compare it with and without the mid boost. After that comes another EQ that boosts the lows and the highs a lot. Again, this isn’t mixing: you want as many harmonics as possible so the layer can be soft-clipped and layered with the reese. A Limiter at the end can work, but in the video it sounded a little too transparent, so the clipping happens in the DAW instead.

8.Saturate the harmonics before they meet the reese

Same idea as the reese: EQ before saturation. An EQ Eight boosts the lows and highs even more while everything is already clipping, then Ableton’s Saturator soft-clips the layer. The difference is subtle, but you hear it in the very high end.

The chain in Ableton (watch at 14:43) is EQ Eight, a second EQ Eight and Saturator on Analog Clip with Soft Clip on. The first EQ pushes the lows and highs, the Saturator clips it, and the extra EQ cleans up the top end. The result has one very strong harmonic, and you can hear the movement from the detuned saws.

9.Group, widen the top end and soft-clip everything

In the group, an EQ in mid/side mode boosts the highs, removes stereo information from the sub and boosts the sides. A widening rack adds chorus, stereo width and a noise layer on the highs only. Then everything is soft-clipped together once more.

On the Main Bass group (watch at 15:39), an EQ Eight in M/S mode boosts the highs (1.60 kHz, +14.3 dB on screen), takes the stereo out of the sub and boosts the sides. At first there’s nothing on the sides, so go back into Phase Plant, bring the spread up and add a chorus there (watch at 16:10). Now when you move the EQ around, you can hear why the sides get such a big boost.

Next is the widening rack used in many of our videos (watch at 16:42). It has three chains: the dry signal, a stereo chain with Chorus, Wider at 200% and a high-pass, and a high layer where the signal runs through Ableton’s Vocoder with a noise carrier, the formant boosted, then high-passed. On screen the stereo chain sits at −8.0 dB and the high layer at −6.8 dB under the dry signal. The stereo and noise layers stay up top, while the low end stays mono.

Finally everything is soft-clipped once more (watch at 17:33). That makes the bass a little wider and brighter, and clips the two layers into one sound.

It isn’t exactly the same as the original, but rebuilding it teaches a lot: the saturation workflow, thinking about harmony while you design, and how two layers interact. For where a bass like this sits among the styles, see the neurofunk section of our subgenres guide.

Common mistakes with saturated, layered basses

• Filtering everything. In the reese, the filter should only touch the noise. Check the routing order so the saws and sine pass the filter untouched.
• EQ after distortion only. The big tonal changes come from the EQ before the distortion. With the drive high, small boosts there change the whole texture.
• One distortion for all frequencies. Split the reese into bands so the sub, mids and highs can each be driven by a different amount.
• Detuning the second saw too far. The phasing in the harmonics layer comes from a very slight detune: about 2 cents in the video.
• Ignoring the harmony. If the upper line doesn’t sit on good intervals, no processing will fix it. Get the notes right first.
• Widening the sub. Keep stereo out of the low end in the group, and only widen the top.
• Treating it like a mix move. The extreme EQs here exist to feed distortion and clipping. Don’t copy them onto sounds you’re mixing.

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FAQ: making a bass like Mefjus’ “Hear Me”

Next steps

Start with the reese and the EQ-before-distortion trick; it’s useful on almost any bass. Then write a short upper line on good intervals and add the detuned saws. For another Mefjus-inspired sound, try our bass like Mefjus in Vital; for more bass types and when to use them, read our drum and bass bass guide.

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