Tips for creating ambience?

[lavalamp360]

Hello everyone,

I am currently working on chilled/laidback/ambient remix and am having some trouble trying to create that vibe. It sounds pretty goo d so far, it's just that I'm not sure what to add as it consists of only a vocal, string arp, synth bass, and a texture layer at the moment.

Also, ambience general. Share all your knowledge for everyone on creating ambience.

[ehbes]

Low pass pads
Drown in reverb
Duplicate and widen
Tape saturation
Delay

[+3]

Drown in reverb
Tape saturation
Delay

Literally This.

[mthrfnk]

vinyl crackle

[Hircine]

sound generators on reaktor + resonators + reverb + delay + saturation + bandpass filtering

[Comfi]

White noise sweeps with heavy effects. Flange reverb delay ect. Low volume. Don't make loud enough so that you can hear it with the rest of the elements, but loud enough that it makes your track fuller sounding. Use this quite a lot in any type of music. Just fills in the frequency gaps but not in an overpowering way.

[bRRRz]

loads of reverb, delay, slight phasing/flanging, white noise, lowpass, envelope with long attack, etc.

[Tordal]

maybe u wanna add some field recordings such as rain, thunder, birds twittering, wind blowing, or sandstorms. depends on the mood ur aiming to create.
u even dont have to record them urself (although that would be the most original choice), but u can download them from sites like sample swap.

[hasezwei]

blurring the line between tonality and noise is where it's at.
keep shit dynamic both volume and frequency-wise, choose a scale so you know what melodies will work with it.

and resample, resample, resample. make a long-ass ambience, then bounce that and layer it with the original but pitched up an octave, then duplicate that but highpass and distort one, turn that down, bounce that, layer again with one of the previous versions which you ran through a guitar amp simulator et cetera et cetera.

and remember to automate frickin everything, starting with your sound source and then your fx chains. simple long sweeps work best.

thats one way of doing it and i swear you'll feel like painting a landscape while doing it. it's unbelieveably relaxing.

[hasezwei]

oh and the masters of ambience for me at the mo are machine code
they're more into odd harmonics and frequency shifters though, but even if you dont like the timbres the way they use ambience in their tunes should be inspiring to every producer.


hd, headphones, you know the drill.

its important to listen from start to finish, when you skip the metamorphosis effect won't work.
to me this stuff is electronic music at it's best. beats and bass for the body and tons of ever so slightly changing stuff floating on top of it like clouds to completely get lost in.

[benjam]

Had few heads over the other night and we ended up recording a few hours of dubfx style vocals/atmos. Set up a mixer channel with a few long reverbs/delays/phaser etc and ran a mic through it, then we just put a mix or two on and hum/sang/spat over it. Got a few hours worth of material to mess about with now

[wub]

Had few heads over the other night and we ended up recording a few hours of dubfx style vocals/atmos. Set up a mixer channel with a few long reverbs/delays/phaser etc and ran a mic through it, then we just put a mix or two on and hum/sang/spat over it. Got a few hours worth of material to mess about with now

Nice work, I did something like this the day with a long effects chain, a vst and repeatedly hitting randomize on the preset list

[SHOWSTOPPA]

Post fader reverb send