Pad Tutorials

[futures_untold]

The following threads discuss how to achieve good pad sounds.

Ambient pad tutorials

Pad tips

Atmospherics...

Pads

Timestretching pads

Drones

How to make pads more sinister

Tips of making dark sounds for Dubstep

Any tips on distorting Pads?

There's too much melody in my pads

When to use pads?

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VST instruments for making pads

Making Pads in NI Massive

Atmospheric pads VST?

VST for pads?

Pad VSTs?

Any good pad VSTs?

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More links to pad tutorials from other websites can be added below (such as Youtube etc).

Thanks

Pat

[DjTrainWreck]

Thank you

[Freshman]

Thanks for collecting these links!

[deadly_habit]

should cross reference these with drones

[futures_untold]

should cross reference these with drones

Actually, not much came up with the search for drones...

Perhaps you have some links of you own to add to the thread?

[silentk]

Fantastic thread, been getting into these kind of pad techniques a lot recently

[christthetiger]

futures always comin through!

[48k]

Pad's are always a last thought at the moment, thanks for collecting these together!

[upstateface]

Futures I love you.

[legend4ry]

oh noes, this topic has one of my newbie threads in it

[moki]

Nice!

I've been makeing heavy fm sounds lately and putting lots of reverb and resonators on them and am happy with the crazy moving pads they become.

Thanks for the tuts, allways down to see how people go about this sheeiit.

[grooki]

wow. THanks! FP is always helping people out

[Ghost and Machine]

Id like to know more about the frequency info you guys use for pads.

Do you usually just High Pass you pads around a particular frequency (where abouts?)
I dont like to cut out the lower freq/textures as the pad ends up sounding too tinny/thin/high
but it may just have to be done for dubstep?

should a high pass above the kick + thin-but-large cuts for snare/hats/mid bass be applied?

[futures_untold]

Personally, I like my pads to not interfere with the kick & bass, so I do high pass filter 'em.

But if there are no other bass sounds playing while the pad is playing, I let it get bassy too.

Why wouldn't you want to fill up the full frequency spectrum if it isn't going to ruin the song in any way??

[hifi]

big up for this

[bigfootspartan]

Id like to know more about the frequency info you guys use for pads.

Do you usually just High Pass you pads around a particular frequency (where abouts?)
I dont like to cut out the lower freq/textures as the pad ends up sounding too tinny/thin/high
but it may just have to be done for dubstep?

should a high pass above the kick + thin-but-large cuts for snare/hats/mid bass be applied?

Listen to the pads within the mix. Quite a bit of the time I'll find certain frequencies of the pad are inaudible within the mix, although when you play the pad by itself it'll sound really thin. If you cant hear certain frequencies within the mix get rid of em since they'll just add interference and crossover into your other channels.

[Estondo]

How would one go about making a nice ambient floating pad for the intro in say a Thor in reason, and perhaps in a combinator for more versatility/Effects, I've really been having trouble with Pads, i know how to do it with The NN-XT using like Choir and String samples, but I'd like to make one starting from scratch to give it my own sound, any help is much appreciated, and also some explanation of how one would properly use pads would be helpful as well, cheers

[futures_untold]

First, read all the posts linked in the first post of this thread.

Then, if you're still having trouble, describe what you've done to achieve your aim already.

Briefly, pads consist of long ADSR attack and release times (and often multistage envelopes), lots of slow moving automation on any parameter that changes the sound in some way and some reverb, phasers, chorussing or delay.

[Echoi]

Top thread F.U. I always seem to struggle to make interesting pads.

[futures_untold]

I always seem to struggle to make interesting pads.

Not sure why bru, pads are (imo) probably the easiest sound out there to make because of the range of methids for making them!

Perhaps the best tip is to modulate or automate multiple paramet changes which change the sound, thus to the listener the sound is mutating and evolving constantly in various ways. For example, one could modulate the wavetable position on a wavetable synth, FM depth amount, filter cutoff frequency and speed of modulation on a chorus/flanger/phaser.

I also like to modulate my LFO speeds so that the rate of change of my modulated parameters itsaelf changes over time!