Ableton Forum

I dislike presets, and have moved on to making mostly my own sound in ableton, via operator, analog or mashing the shit out of stuff with sampler.

but I always get stuck on making good atmospheric pads... I can't get things to sound "right".

anyone know of any good tutorials or would like to share some tips for making pads?

thanks!

yeah, start with the presets!

also operator works great for subtractive synthesis, especially if you change the filter mode to svf or ladder. you can set up a sweet subtractive patch then start subtly adding harmonics with the fm. operator is a beast.

and don't fear the presets! you paid for them, good stuff to learn from.

help -> all lessons -> creating pad sounds

that covers operator.

I'm totally with you there. Bass, various leads and keys, percussion, etc I can manage, but I really struggle with pads. They never seem to work for me. Best I can usually do is find a preset and start tweaking.

I'd love to hear some interesting tips.

I think that my biggest problem for this is learning how to use pads properly. How prominent do I want them, how quiet can I get away with having them. They often times cover a wide frequency. Tis almost similar to carving specific frequencies out of white noise. Feedback pads might be fun too? (I'm all caffeinated up at the moment) But yeah, volume, and whether or not I should be using a chord or individual notes. Or spreading the notes out more. Also whether or not I want a consistent pad sound or have it accent sections where it fades in and out at opportune moments.

ya, pads in general I dont have a sweet clue about composing with now that you say that. i know they should be there, but how?

Do you know of any good examples of pad usage that you admire in any popular music?

pad tips:

-use single long notes, moving very slowly. look for 'pedal tones', i.e., notes that work over several chord changes and sustain those.

-if after you do that the pad still sounds too thin, try adding some fairly wide interval(s) to fill out the sound. you might sustain an octave rather than a single note for example. try even wider intervals than an octave. it often won't sound very good to play "interesting" intervals or close intervals on a pad. you'll know right away if you try it. since pads usually have a long release and long attack, you usually have to choose relatively innocuous notes or intervals to sustain on them.

-decide on a role for the pad in the arrangement, that will tell you how loud and prominent it should be. if it's a leading role, a key element in the sound of the arrangement, then obviously it's going to be louder and it might for example be a harsher sound. if it's a background role, you're using it just to create atmosphere and a sense of space behind the other instruments, then tuck it down low.

-if it has frequency content that doesn't help it play its role, then carve that out with EQ. if for example it has some low rumble on top of the whooshy stuff that really makes it what it is, then high pass that rumbly stuff out. if it has some harsh whine that is fighting with another instrument, pull that whine down or notch it out. if it has too much high frequency content it might fight with vocals and background vocals, in which case you can low pass that stuff out or shelve it down. don't be afraid to eq the pad radically to get just the part of the sound you want; pads often have a really broad spectrum.

-if you want it primarily to create space, try creating two tracks of the same pad with some differences (like a minor detuning of one, or a slightly different patch with slightly different modulations, etc.) and pan them hard left and right to get the pad out of the middle of the mix

-the pad should have enough movement in the sound itself (via modulation) that it stays interesting and alive, but if there's so much movement that it's calling attention to itself all the time (like filters opening and closing that grab your attention), then it's probably moving too much.

hth,

-Luddy

thanks, those are very helpful tips!!

luddy wrote:pad tips:

-use single long notes, moving very slowly. look for 'pedal tones', i.e., notes that work over several chord changes and sustain those.

-if after you do that the pad still sounds too thin, try adding some fairly wide interval(s) to fill out the sound. you might sustain an octave rather than a single note for example. try even wider intervals than an octave. it often won't sound very good to play "interesting" intervals or close intervals on a pad. you'll know right away if you try it. since pads usually have a long release and long attack, you usually have to choose relatively innocuous notes or intervals to sustain on them.

-decide on a role for the pad in the arrangement, that will tell you how loud and prominent it should be. if it's a leading role, a key element in the sound of the arrangement, then obviously it's going to be louder and it might for example be a harsher sound. if it's a background role, you're using it just to create atmosphere and a sense of space behind the other instruments, then tuck it down low.

-if it has frequency content that doesn't help it play its role, then carve that out with EQ. if for example it has some low rumble on top of the whooshy stuff that really makes it what it is, then high pass that rumbly stuff out. if it has some harsh whine that is fighting with another instrument, pull that whine down or notch it out. if it has too much high frequency content it might fight with vocals and background vocals, in which case you can low pass that stuff out or shelve it down. don't be afraid to eq the pad radically to get just the part of the sound you want; pads often have a really broad spectrum.

-if you want it primarily to create space, try creating two tracks of the same pad with some differences (like a minor detuning of one, or a slightly different patch with slightly different modulations, etc.) and pan them hard left and right to get the pad out of the middle of the mix

-the pad should have enough movement in the sound itself (via modulation) that it stays interesting and alive, but if there's so much movement that it's calling attention to itself all the time (like filters opening and closing that grab your attention), then it's probably moving too much.

hth,

-Luddy

super solid answer.

with all the shit that people complain about on this forum, answers like these are why this remains an amazing place for music information.

Something I like to do with pad sounds is add a delay with quite a bit of feedback. The idea behind it is that changes in the pad's pitch and modulation get smudged over time. It works specially well to make your pad note changes feel more gradual than what long attack/decay can give you. Filter Delay is very good for this.

Great tips by luddy and rbmonosylabik!

Arrangement is perhaps the biggest issue when creating pads. In common pratice, pads function as a "sound carpet", and it's just that: it should have a nice pattern to be interesting enough, but if it moves too much, all of the sounds on top of the carpet will tumble and fall over.
If you want to use more than one note, try fifths, fourths or sixths, and if you have chord changes, try to make the pad notes move as little as possible. Open the filters of the pad only if you want to draw attention to it, e.g. as part of a build-up.
Experiment with all kinds of different ways to make your pads sound stable yet interesting. There are many ways to do this with Live alone, Operator's LFOs aside. As rbmonosylabik suggested, you can use delay, but you could also use Auto Pan as a Tremolo effect (with Phase set to 0° or 360°) to make anything from warbling to chopped up.

Sound-wise, I often work starting from a simple Operator preset. With a little research, you can find free preset banks for Operator.
Pick some you like that have quite different sound qualities, remove any LFO movements and FX and name them accordingly, e.g. "Pad warm", "Pad cold", "Pad Bells", "Pad Strings" or whatever. You should then have a databank of simple pad presets you can start with when choosing to add a pad to a track.

Cheers from Hamburg.

For me a a little bit of modulation by using FM with a fixed frequency (=LFO) gets it, operators limitation is the one LFO, so perhaps you could use a max4live LFO, too.
I use the one LFO often in sync mode, so I have to find another solution. Take the depeche dope preset as an example for an osc with fixed frequency.

But there are no rules....

ckluxen2 wrote:For me a a little bit of modulation by using FM with a fixed frequency (=LFO) gets it, operators limitation is the one LFO, so perhaps you could use a max4live LFO, too.
I use the one LFO often in sync mode, so I have to find another solution. Take the depeche dope preset as an example for an osc with fixed frequency.

But there are no rules....

Actually every osc in Operator can act as a LFO, you just have to enable fixed frequency and lower the multiplier

Can I post combinator patches directly in this forums?