Ableton Forum

Hullo Chaps and Chapettes,
A wild shot here for a beginner:
How does one go about creating some atmosphere in a track?
I know there are infinite possibilities here but I'm just curious to see what will be posted so I can gather some tips.

Lots of evolving pads with reverb.

Now you see I've just spent all evening trying to do just this. I've ended up with a 9 minute track of ambient strings, reverb and pads. I wanted to try and make a proper ambient peice but it came out different to what I expected.

I suppose atmosphere can mean so many things anyway, from a synth playing a single subharmonic sound to create tension while other notes modulate (in the classical sense, not the fx) around. Long tailed reverbs can also create atmosphere, as can small room verbs.

Vibes and grooves create atmosphere, and the word itself just means "feeling" or "emotion" as far as I'm concerned

eggnchips wrote:How does one go about creating some atmosphere in a track?

The answer is in the question http://www.spectrasonics.net/instrument ... phere.html

Hi, Try taking a sustained chord on one track, copy that track so you have two tracks pan one hard left and one hard right (make sure the 2 tracks are mono) utility with its mono setting will force them to mono, now the track that is panned to the right alter the synth preset and automate various parameters, think evolving, automate filter cutoff, delay times, lfo speeds, envelope settings etc, don't be afraid to experiment.

Chris

coldrush wrote:Hi, Try taking a sustained chord on one track, copy that track so you have two tracks pan one hard left and one hard right (make sure the 2 tracks are mono) utility with its mono setting will force them to mono, now the track that is panned to the right alter the synth preset and automate various parameters, think evolving, automate filter cutoff, delay times, lfo speeds, envelope settings etc, don't be afraid to experiment.

Chris

Been meaning to do that for ages..Keep bloody forgetting.You have reminded me..Cheers

Yep yesterday night, i fired up Live and Wusikstation 4, did exactly that layers of doubled up parts panned to extremes and automated, funny atmosphere can be like making a track in its self, beautiful deep evolving textures, it's one part of making tracks i get lost in, love it!!

coldrush wrote:Hi, Try taking a sustained chord on one track, copy that track so you have two tracks pan one hard left and one hard right (make sure the 2 tracks are mono) utility with its mono setting will force them to mono, now the track that is panned to the right alter the synth preset and automate various parameters, think evolving, automate filter cutoff, delay times, lfo speeds, envelope settings etc, don't be afraid to experiment.

Chris

You just reminded me of stuff I used to do years back by splitting a signal and using a different LFO'd filter/fx on basically the same sound. The textures you can get by doing this can be incredible.

I remember years back I couldnt be bothered to fiddle with one of my outboard fx units so I just plugged a simple synth sound from the x5d into a couple of guitar pedals (nobels fuzz into an ibanez phaser) and got this lush, whooshey pad out of it.

Signal splitting and rack mixing units must really come in handy in terms of hardware, too.

Also if you have a dictaphone/personal recorder of some kind then thats great. Go out in the field and record everything. Industrial machinery has been sampled and looped after a day at work, or I used to record rain on the conservatory, bird song, etc. Reverse it, chop it, loop it.

Hey thanks chaps.
These are exactly the kind of tips I was looking for.
Any more would be greatly appreciated.

heres an idea, work out what you want your track to sound like... or start off with a layer and add complimentary layers... keep your eq and efx in check and you should have a rough track that you can tweak into something good...

hi

i often do stuff like use a field recording on one track of some space that ive recorded somewhere. woodland, lakeside areas, restaurant noises, street sounds, church ambience, anything. i make it last for the whole track but keep it low in the mix with a bit of reverb on a send. make it audible but only slightly so, maybe moreso at the beginning and end of the track but when other instruments come in i keep it there as a layer but let other sounds take over.

thats what i like anyway

I can also recommend getting out and about recording sounds. I often try and record nothing, just the ambient background sound of the place i am in,. filter and eq away and you have suddenly added loads of depth to your sound.

You can also do it the Henke way. Have a very limited number of audio and midi tracks and four sends that route to each other. mess with the settings and routings on your delay/reverb/whatever (but mostly those first two), just keep it in check as you can get nasty feedback sometimes.

the girl next door wrote:

eggnchips wrote:How does one go about creating some atmosphere in a track?

The answer is in the question http://www.spectrasonics.net/instrument ... phere.html

Damn. You beat me to it!

Be warned however, that this software STILL hasn't been updated to run on macintels...

Komplex wrote:heres an idea, work out what you want your track to sound like... or start off with a layer and add complimentary layers... keep your eq and efx in check and you should have a rough track that you can tweak into something good...

My god, you are a genius.