Atmosphere, ambience, etc.

[pulsewaves4stopsines]

I'm in the middle of a flash flood where I live, and the sound of the rain is insanely loud. Seeing how I've been trying to find new ideas for creating atmosphere in my tunes, I highly regret not having bought any kind of recorder for the sheer fact of how many thunder/rainstorms I've been having. Obviously, I'm sure sampling rainstorms for putting atmosphere in a track is probably cliche by now, but it got me thinking nonetheless.

I usually keep things minimal in my compositions and sound design, having few elements beyond bass, some drums, and a few melodies, and if I use a pad, I find myself going for something with an airy sound to it and using it more as a drone than for musical purposes. Something that will fill up the empty spaces that will still be low in the mix, just to kind of blend things together and add a sense of space, belonging and setting in my productions. Sometimes even some eq'd white noise through a chorus and phaser has been just what I'm looking for, but I'm having a hard time branching out and trying new ideas because I seem to get hung up on the same sounds and techniques, forgetting the box I've inadvertently put myself in. I enjoy experimenting with reverb, delay, the aforementioned white noise, and rain/ocean/nature sounds, but I'm finding I just keep winding up back at the same idea of processed "wind" or noise.


Rambling aside, what is atmosphere and ambience to you in music? How do you go about creating it?

[wub]

Record the sound of an empty room and lowpass that into the mix. Or do likewise with a really stretched out percussion hit. Paulstretch for the latter as it leaves less artifacts.

Occasionally I'll go all out and do something that is just ambience;

Soundcloud



This was a basic test track for experimenting with theta wave sounds.

Layers used;
- Sine wave @ 100hz, amp 1, panned hard left
- Sine wave @ 110hz, amp 1, panned hard right
- Sample of rainstorm

The sine waves were generated using Audacity, and the storm sample I got off SimplyNoise.com, a website I'd used previously for white/pink noise generation purposes to see how it affected my concentration levels whilst working.

[Echoi]

Paulstretch

Haven't used this in such a long time!! Such a great bit of kit to have.

[pulsewaves4stopsines]

Layers used;
- Sine wave @ 100hz, amp 1, panned hard left
- Sine wave @ 110hz, amp 1, panned hard right
- Sample of rainstorm

The sine waves were generated using Audacity, and the storm sample I got off SimplyNoise.com, a website I'd used previously for white/pink noise generation purposes to see how it affected my concentration levels whilst working.

Those sine waves... don't know why I didn't think about Paulstretch though. I've been either slowing down the speed of samples (needless to say, this creates too much bass to be practical for really stretching out a sound sometimes) or using a timestretcher that usually gives me unwanted artifacts. Thanks!

[fragments]

If you have the opportunity to record some machinery of any kind that is always fun to play with. Hell even your home's furnace or AC. I also like to stretch vinyl noise I've recorded, high pass it a bit, add various FX. Makes for nice "random" a rhythmic material. If you want something melodic, I'll often just take the raw wav file of a melodic part of my track and stretch that twice or four times as long, maybe re-pitch it an octave up, maybe high pass it, add various FX and then mix that in low.

[jaydot]

Always use rain in my more chilled tracks, low passed/panned/delayed/reverbed.

[Tektrix]

Big fan of using rain/water samples for atmosphere recently. Also like using percussive samples and loops stretched, filtered and swamped in delay reverb. I use Alchemy quite a lot for atmosphere these days because it's so flexible. Forgot about Paulstretch that's a great tool

[Think_Dubstep]

my friend CRoW Dubstep is really good at this. Ableton is perfect for messing around with ambient effects and sounds. He will record somthing in a room with a ton of reverb and then take the sound and cut it to audio. At this point hell reverse it, or time stretch it to make a real cool ambient effect. He made a sick ambient pack by just flicking a coke can and then messing with the initial audio sample. Really cool stuff!

[pulsewaves4stopsines]

Big fan of using rain/water samples for atmosphere recently. Also like using percussive samples and loops stretched, filtered and swamped in delay reverb. I use Alchemy quite a lot for atmosphere these days because it's so flexible. Forgot about Paulstretch that's a great tool

Absolutely love stretching percussive loops. You can get some crazy sounds this way, amirite?

Personally, I tend to use more delay than reverb lately. Once you've stretched a sound to a certain point, it starts to sound reverberated. I've found that eq'ing reverb to bring out harmonics can be nice, or layering pitch shifted reverb, but I've been getting interesting results on occasion by taking a sound and delaying it by 30-150 ms with the delay mostly wet and cranking the feedback.

Good ideas in here for sure. Thanks everyone.

[High_Plains_Drifter]

Big fan of using rain/water samples for atmosphere recently. Also like using percussive samples and loops stretched, filtered and swamped in delay reverb. I use Alchemy quite a lot for atmosphere these days because it's so flexible. Forgot about Paulstretch that's a great tool

Absolutely love stretching percussive loops. You can get some crazy sounds this way, amirite?

Personally, I tend to use more delay than reverb lately. Once you've stretched a sound to a certain point, it starts to sound reverberated. I've found that eq'ing reverb to bring out harmonics can be nice, or layering pitch shifted reverb, but I've been getting interesting results on occasion by taking a sound and delaying it by 30-150 ms with the delay mostly wet and cranking the feedback.

Good ideas in here for sure. Thanks everyone.

When you say EQ the reverb, how do you go about doing that? I've tried doing the same thing in fruity by just putting an EQ after the reverb on the reverb send but it seems to affect the source channel too.. Maybe i'm just being silly.

[AxeD]

Maybe a bit You can just EQ your return channel. Don't use the reverb as an insert effect,
but as a send.

[Add9]

I know I post about these plugins probably way too often, but for those of you with macs:

1. download michael norris spectral plugins (free)
2. make piano melody
3. bounce to audio, reverse
4. hit it with spectral shimmer on the highest fft setting
5. sit back and bask in the glory

Seriously, instant atmosphere. It's almost unfair how good it sounds. Try it and you will see what I mean.

[Banesy]

I know I post about these plugins probably way too often, but for those of you with macs:

1. download michael norris spectral plugins (free)
2. make piano melody
3. bounce to audio, reverse
4. hit it with spectral shimmer on the highest fft setting
5. sit back and bask in the glory

Seriously, instant atmosphere. It's almost unfair how good it sounds. Try it and you will see what I mean.

Sounds dreamy...I am going to give it a try. Thanks for explaining your process.

Umm....HOLY SHIT. Seriously...like...first try I have this shimmering fucking awesomeness that I want to make a track around. This is great man, thanks for sharing!

[Add9]

I know I post about these plugins probably way too often, but for those of you with macs:

1. download michael norris spectral plugins (free)
2. make piano melody
3. bounce to audio, reverse
4. hit it with spectral shimmer on the highest fft setting
5. sit back and bask in the glory

Seriously, instant atmosphere. It's almost unfair how good it sounds. Try it and you will see what I mean.

Sounds dreamy...I am going to give it a try. Thanks for explaining your process.

Umm....HOLY SHIT. Seriously...like...first try I have this shimmering fucking awesomeness that I want to make a track around. This is great man, thanks for sharing!

No problem dude, hope you make something dope with it!

[High_Plains_Drifter]

Quite jealous that you seem to have struck an ambient goldmine^^ Not on mac though.

[legend4ry]

fuck you mac users .

I really want those plugins!

[pulsewaves4stopsines]

I know I post about these plugins probably way too often, but for those of you with macs:

1. download michael norris spectral plugins (free)
2. make piano melody
3. bounce to audio, reverse
4. hit it with spectral shimmer on the highest fft setting
5. sit back and bask in the glory

Seriously, instant atmosphere. It's almost unfair how good it sounds. Try it and you will see what I mean.

Those are some serious plugins. I miss having a mac right about now, thanks for that
But I'm not about to buy a new computer anytime soon.

[High_Plains_Drifter]

What are people doing to create deep, evolving pads that really set the atmosphere?

[wub]

What are people doing to create deep, evolving pads that really set the atmosphere?

Automation and lots of it. Usually I'll put a quick pad patch into something like PoiZone or Toxic Biohazard, then load some effects onto the channel...filter/delay/reverb that sort of thing. Link a few of the parameters to my controller keyboard then play some long notes and record in the automation sweeps a few times until I'm happy with something.

Use that as a musical basis, add some keys or whatever over the top, then fill in the spaces with drums and bassline.

[Lucifa]

spooky skellingtons

atmosphere is the sum of the entirety of the track's parts. don't just chuck in metallic hits with long delays like those dungeon tracks used to, adds nothing besides making the track draaaggg.

repetition, tension, progression then resolve gives atmosphere, and thats more through song writing than any individual element.

timestretching samples is useful but beyond a point it just sounds like timestretching. always thought anything ran through paulstretch essentially ends up as the same every time.