Atmospherics

[ketamine]

Everyone's got a weakness.

Mine is swoosh noises. Airy sshhh's leading in / out of things. Background-ey pads during the intros / breakdowns. What should be the easiest part, I find most difficult and my tunes sound very dry. Problem is, I'm a perfectionist--so maybe I am doing it right, only my obsessive mind says its not good enough. Or maybe I'm flat out naive this area and am missing something basic. Never hurts to humble yourself and ask.

Tips?
What have you found to be effective?
What sort of instruments / sounds are typically used to produce airy backnoise?

[k_k]

I use white noise run through some choice effects for swooshy-ness my weakness is burial type pad noises these can really fill out a mix

[teqh]

Ive always used heaps of different reverbs at once, and ive always found panning to be a very effective way of creating space, which I assume what you mean by airy noises

For pads, I found its easy for them to get too busy and sound shit, so ive always stuck to alternating between 2 or 3 notes, keeping it simple is the key to atmospherics IMO

Reversing cymbal hits as well, then chopping off the actual physical sound and keeping the build up is pretty useful as well

Have a look through your preset library as well and find some atmospheric synths you like there and have a look at how they're structured, that helped me!

Just my two cents but bare in mind ive only been producing for like 4 months lol!

[djake]

time streching + reverb

i use any sound and strech the fuk out of it, wack on some reverb, strech it some more add some effect, little bit of delay (usally a stereo delay to make it sound bigger)

[skeletor]

Timestretch+Reverse+Reverb+Bus Compression

mmmm