Ableton Forum

Hi all,

Curious about your methods for how you lay on the main background chord/drone for an ambient/drone piece and have it gradually change/pulsate.....even though the pulsing may not have much motion?

How do the pros do this?
Is it done post recording?
I assume some tweak knobs during?

I want to keep it simple.

I use synths from Native on my Native keyboard.

Thanks

I've recently started resampling sounds already in the track, reverb sends, delay sends, anything really then putting that into sampler, messing with the pitch, start/end points, loops, then putting that through more effects. I find sounds created like this really mix well with the track as they are originally from the track, even if they don't sound like it.

McAnix wrote:I've recently started resampling sounds already in the track, reverb sends, delay sends, anything really then putting that into sampler, messing with the pitch, start/end points, loops, then putting that through more effects. I find sounds created like this really mix well with the track as they are originally from the track, even if they don't sound like it.

Cool! How do you resample? Using what? (I have never done that)

Create an audio track, set it's input to Resampling, record enable the track. Then find the sounds/ tracks that you want to sample from your project, solo those and hit record. Whatever is being played will get sampled to the resampling track. You can get crazy creative with it, you resample the whole track and can also use that for making creative breaks etc. I really like soloing the reverb send and sampling that, perfect for drones.

Omnisphere!

Modulation and automation, which you can apply to almost anything, programmed or manual. There are no real rules here, it's pretty much what you can come up with, and what works in a specific situation. In general, you can use subtle modulations of different parameters, with different timings and intervals to generate non-repetitive and slowly evolving changes.

One thing that works particularly well for drones and soundscapes is granular processing, and adding modulation to this processing. Combine that with a smart pick of material to process, and you'll be able to generate really nice (not just interesting ) material pretty quickly.

jestermgee wrote:Omnisphere!

Yup, tons of great soundsources, and as of version 2.5, 4 layers

I just hope they'll skip on including 4 layer granular presets, that will fry my system

NI reaktor

NI Molekular. You can throw any synth in this multi-FX. With Metaverb set to biggest size and all those spectral effects you automatically generate drones/ambient-style music.

There is this as well: https://www.ableton.com/en/blog/drone-tutorials/

And this one: https://www.ableton.com/en/blog/generat ... i-devices/

Mike

I feel compelled to mention Angstrom's technique of using insert effects with Ableton's looper to generate beautiful drones with slowly varying pulsations. It takes a little work to get it set up, but the results are golden. He gives step by step instructions and a demo video on his website.

https://angstromnoises.com/ableton-tuto ... eedback-2/

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Moose