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How do you make your pads?

Posted: Tue Aug 12, 2014 9:34 pm
by jaydot
Well personally my DAW has some nice preset pads-but I often like to experiment by trying to replicate them

My favourite kind of pad is the long-attack, detuned sine waved reverbed and chorused pad, gives it a really floaty effect when low passed at about 150.

You?

Re: How do you make your pads?

Posted: Tue Aug 12, 2014 10:24 pm
by NinjaEdit
Similar thing but PWM. With a hint of vibrato.

Re: How do you make your pads?

Posted: Tue Aug 12, 2014 10:57 pm
by fragments
Just what ever tickles my fancy in Alchemy really....or if I'm doing hardware I use about 3-4 channels hard-ish panned channels on my E-Mu Proteus sent through some kind of delay or reverb.

Re: How do you make your pads?

Posted: Wed Aug 13, 2014 2:54 am
by bennyfroobs
i sample space noises

Re: How do you make your pads?

Posted: Wed Aug 13, 2014 11:17 am
by Wick Effect
I usually just make a basic sound and then I bandpass it. Then put a lot of reverb on it and maybe some chorus etc.

Re: How do you make your pads?

Posted: Wed Aug 13, 2014 11:20 am
by wub
Wick Effect wrote:I usually just make a basic sound and then I bandpass it. Then put a lot of reverb on it and maybe some chorus etc.
This.

Anything is a pad if you want it to be. Once made a pad out a very stretched snare.

Re: How do you make your pads?

Posted: Wed Aug 13, 2014 1:01 pm
by pulsewaves4stopsines
wub wrote:
Wick Effect wrote:I usually just make a basic sound and then I bandpass it. Then put a lot of reverb on it and maybe some chorus etc.
This.

Anything is a pad if you want it to be. Once made a pad out a very stretched snare.
Try stretching tablas. With the different tones you can get, you can layer a few together to make some interesting sounds. Just thought I'd say, since I just got done messing around with tabla samples.

Re: How do you make your pads?

Posted: Wed Aug 13, 2014 5:48 pm
by jaydot
Must try making pads with a hardware synth sometime

Re: How do you make your pads?

Posted: Wed Aug 13, 2014 5:55 pm
by fragments
jaydot wrote:Must try making pads with a hardware synth sometime

Its not really different...unless you do live takes of knob twisting on the synth or FX units. But for me that is the best reason to own hardware these days.recording live knob tweaks is way easier and more fun than drawing complex automation curves. Besides you can get a lot more happy mistakes and "uneven" parameter values. Automation is pretty exact.

Re: How do you make your pads?

Posted: Thu Aug 14, 2014 5:35 am
by mks
9th chord.

Re: How do you make your pads?

Posted: Thu Aug 14, 2014 2:57 pm
by kaili
i use alchemy also mainly, layer different sample sources with it then process em with bare reverb and chorus etc

Re: How do you make your pads?

Posted: Thu Aug 14, 2014 4:07 pm
by DrGatineau
All different ways. As wub said anything can be a pad. I like to record cool percussions sounds with lots of reverb and then reverse it, and put the two together to make a pad. You can tell the swamp 81 crew does this with 808 cowbells a lot, but you can do it with any sample. add some delay and other effects as well.

also i must confess i really like to use presets from absynth because i have no fuckin idea how that synth works but it has sick pad presets. then i do a lot of processing and maybe edit some stuff in-synth if i can figure out how lol. really should learn how to use that synth cause it can make some beautiful, complex sounds.

Re: How do you make your pads?

Posted: Thu Aug 14, 2014 4:37 pm
by Electric_Head
Pads are everywhere and everything.
If you know how to manipulate a sound with effects; the sky is the limit.

I lowpass, add reverb, pitch it down, stretch it out, add side chaining, drown it in more reverb, eq, saturate and drive it through a similar process again, flangers, filters, phasers, etc.

Pile the shit on there.
Pads are so much fun to make.

Re: How do you make your pads?

Posted: Sun Aug 17, 2014 7:26 pm
by jaydot
Aye arguably better than making bass. In facr helll they ARE better than making bass,

Re: How do you make your pads?

Posted: Sun Aug 17, 2014 7:53 pm
by skins345669
bennyfroobs wrote:i sample space noises
sick.

Really depends on what kind of pad you want. One I'm a big fan of at the moment is white noise through a resonator to whatever chord you like, band pass then mess with it to give it depth and space in the usual ways.

Made a pretty nice sonar beep with a 625hz tone with a bit of white noise on the top, bandpass, heavy chorus, then reverb into oblivion.

Re: How do you make your pads?

Posted: Sun Aug 17, 2014 8:47 pm
by legend4ry
I bought Rev and Omnisphere,

:W:

Re: How do you make your pads?

Posted: Mon Aug 18, 2014 7:33 am
by Electric_Head
legend4ry wrote:I bought Rev and Omnisphere,

:W:
I bought Geosonics, you want pads? Oh lord, this has got pads.

Re: How do you make your pads?

Posted: Mon Aug 18, 2014 5:13 pm
by audiowaves
Personally I use a long attack and some sort of lowpass/bandpass, chorus, reverb and all that basic stuff.
I recently saw a tutorial by Nigel Good which was quite interesting. He recorded his own voice (or used a vocal sample, not sure), put it through a granuliser and layered it in absynth. It was pretty good sounding, trying to find the link atm.

here it is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMPW42fncXk

Re: How do you make your pads?

Posted: Wed Aug 20, 2014 5:53 pm
by jaydot
manudiao wrote:Personally I use a long attack and some sort of lowpass/bandpass, chorus, reverb and all that basic stuff.
I recently saw a tutorial by Nigel Good which was quite interesting. He recorded his own voice (or used a vocal sample, not sure), put it through a granuliser and layered it in absynth. It was pretty good sounding, trying to find the link atm.

here it is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMPW42fncXk
Long attack is essential yeah

Re: How do you make your pads?

Posted: Wed Aug 20, 2014 7:06 pm
by hirszu
Distance did a tutorial on pads (NI Massive). All the basic stuff that will get anyone started