Ableton Forum

Hi!

I'm wondering if any of you guys have some good tips on how to make cool little background sounds for electronic music? By that I mean those different little 2-3 second sounds that most EDM artist use underneath their melodies, just to spice the song up.

I'm not looking for any particular sound, but more some inspiration/tutorials/tips on how to make different sounds. I tried to search on YouTube, but since I'm not too specific it wasn't so easy to find. I have tried playing around with operator and maybe add some delay effects etc., which can give some interesting results. But it's always nice to get tips from others!

Cheers!

Strange question

You just make them.
I mean not to be to blunt, but the thing about those little unique sounds is that they are, well (somewhat) unique.

By that I don't mean difficult to make, I mean you let your imagination run wild until you cook something interesting, then bounce it and move on.

But yes start with a synth (or sample, doesn't really matter) then pile all the effects on one after the other, play with automation lanes etc pp.....

To make it short: Be creative and have some fun

TomKern wrote:Strange question

I know, hehe

That's what I've been doing now. But since Ableton is such a huge program, it's always great with some tips and inputs from the more experienced users

I'm just different I guess, but I wouldn't want others to tell me what unique sounds I should make. It would just limit everything to very well traveled paths.

I get it somewhat when asking for specific sounds, or general conventions one may not be aware of.

But sound designs for incidentals? That's like asking for what melodies I should write.

But best of luck on you endeavor

Christian_R wrote: I'm wondering if any of you guys have some good tips on how to make cool little background sounds for electronic music? By that I mean those different little 2-3 second sounds that most EDM artist use underneath their melodies, just to spice the song up.

That is quite confusing. What is EDM for you? For me it's simply "bad music genre without any substance". For you it might mean something else.

How are we supposed to know what you think are "cool" sounds?

2-3 second "sounds", i e not chords, nor melodies and drums neither?

Some stuff I did:

• Sampled some machine noise from a sci-fi movie and used Live warping to make a rhythm out of it
• Sampled some dialogue and mangled it with glitch techniques into something more otherworldly.
• Re-used a non-room sample in Convolution Reverb, sent a melody phrase into it pre-treated with filters and a longer delay that make the repeat sound like an unrelated response and not like the original at all.
• Experimental delays with feedback and dynamic filters
• gated longer samples with noise or whatever that is running but only sound when some other instrument sounds and is gated out otherwise.

All of that seems to involve some kind of sampling for some reason.
The only positive response I've got for this was the mangled dialogue, but I cater to my own taste first (No-one complained about the rest so…).

Spread your creative wings and fly!

Making these little bits is probably the most fun I have making music tbh. Play a game of "let's see if we can break Ableton" by just piling on FX or loading up something in Sampler and making the loop so granular it goes into tonal territory - or do both, etc.

You never know, you may just end up making something really useful nobody has thought of before, something you can call your signature. Best of luck on your quest.

use slow and fast automations, lfo`s and fx in a musical way.
stack them or put some samples onto a drumrack, play them in a meanigfull manner
and glue them togehter via fx like delay, reverb, ect.. then hack the result thru
glitch or muff wiggler or effectrix... something like this^^

maybe this gibberish talking of us - sounds kind of wyred for somebody how hoped for more clear and direct step-by-step information.
found this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dAp-z6wVQvc

Tagor wrote:maybe this gibberish talking of us - sounds kind of wyred for somebody how hoped for more

Gibberish you say?!

Cool electronic background sounds?

Play something cool on something electronic and put it in the background.

Thanks for the tips! I'm playing around a bit now with some basic sound and effects, just to see where it gets me

But then another question came up: are there any good audio effect packs out there I should download, or can you get most done with the standard audio effects that's already in Ableton?