Skip to content

PRO TIP Block youtube.com at the DNS level — Pi-hole, NextDNS or your hosts file — but allow youtube-nocookie.com and i.ytimg.com. These tutorials keep playing; the rabbit hole does not.

Learning without distractions

How to make the bass and lead sounds from Billie Eilish ‘Bad Guy’ on DRC

10.7K views on YouTube

ATTENTION: All Pre-Gain values for DRC in this video need to be lowered by 0.250.
This is because this tutorial was made with an older version of DRC which had a different tuning on the saturation stage. We have corrected the values in the Ableton session.

Download the Ableton project from this video:
https://www.imaginando.pt/uploads/goodies/tutorials/billie-eilish-bad-guy-project.zip

DRC Polyphonic Synthesizer:
DRC on App Store – https://apps.apple.com/pt/app/drc-polyphonic-synthesizer/id973055710
DRC on Google Play – https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.imaginando.drc&hl=pt_PT
DRC for Desktop – https://www.imaginando.pt/products/drc/downloads
DRC Product Page – https://www.imaginando.pt/products/drc

K7D – Tape Delay:
K7D on App Store – https://apps.apple.com/us/app/k7d-tape-delay/id1460245991
K7D for Desktop – https://www.imaginando.pt/products/k7d/downloads
K7D Product Page – https://www.imaginando.pt/products/k7d

Connect with us:
Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/imaginando.net
Twitter – https://www.twitter.com/imaginando_pt
Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/imaginando_pt
Soundcloud – https://www.soundcloud.com/imaginando

Our creative hardware projects:
Laser harp – https://www.imaginando.pt/projects/harpa-laser
Turning Vintage furniture into a cranked synthesizer – https://www.imaginando.pt/projects/digital-music-box

Get in touch:
Contact us – https://www.imaginando.pt/contact-us

Back in 2001, the relationship between the music industry and the internet was very much in its infancy. Still feeling the effects of an uninvited guest called Napster turning up and ruining the party, the music industry concentrated on defending optical media consumption rather than contemplating a digital, disc-less future together.

Before the revolution of web 2.0 made content sharing accessible to the masses, music promotion was also a very different game; a world not yet obsessed with aggressive monetization of online attention and trading our ‘likes’ as currency.

Fast forward to today and now anyone can have their fifteen minutes of fame, using a whole host of creative online platforms, reaching a truly global audience in an instant. One such artist to skyrocket into our consciousness via the power of the internet is American singer-songwriter Billie Eilish

For an artist who only started releasing music in 2015, she already has some impressive statistics under her belt. The music video for her track ‘Bad Guy’ was published on YouTube 22nd March 2019, and in less than six months it has received a staggering 522 million views. On Spotify Bad Guy has a total of 787 million plays, and currently aged just 17 years old, Billie is the only artist born after the year 2000 to achieve a number 1 hit single in the US chart.

Today we show you how to recreate the bass and lead sounds from the phenomenally popular ‘Bad Guy’ by Billie Eilish with DRC.

Being bad has never felt so good,
Team Imaginando