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What Gravity said.

Also get Absynth + the DVD tutorial, have a few days off and lock yourself in the studio.

daft tnuc wrote:What Gravity said.

Also get Absynth + the DVD tutorial, have a few days off and lock yourself in the studio.

more days off?:)

Try getting some game sound packs and pitch that shit down for murky pad type sounds. Even better make your own pad, resample i, pitch it down add reverb etc... and your there. Also use dissident tones, atonal stuff, and minor chords

do you have a midi controller? one of my favorite ways of coming up with cool sounding pads is to use a synth with lots of FM options like zebra. I then set up the joystick or modwheels or knobs to control a bunch of things at once. like controlling FM depth while also slighty detuning the modulator. things that are constantly changing in pitch are great. Use your pitch bend controller and play the pad in real time with all these performance gestures, and you are sure to get lots of interesting source material to then refine.

If I want to write dark shit, I put on a gas mask.

Bit crush, distort, reverse.
Big spacey echos on big short breakdowns.
Deep growly detuned saws.
Textural details like bugs and crowds and static on the top in short glitchy bursts.

What is dark to you?
Get a vibe on the inside and roll with it.

decklyn wrote: What is dark to you?
Get a vibe on the inside and roll with it.

that Skream link in my first post.

Prob one of the darkest sounds I have heard in Dubstep.

Distortion makes too much high end stuff appear. It may sound harsh, but not dark imo.

serox wrote:

jsills wrote:dissonance and tension arent just created by using a specific synth patch or effect, they enhance it. playing in minor keys and playing a chord progressing that builds tension are going to be important. augmented and diminished chords can give you this sound. as far as writing disonnant synth sounds i like to automate unison and detune to build tension. for example ill start with a string pad and play the root note for 8 bars and i will increase the unison or detune to make it sound like its going out of key over the 8 bars. pretty simple but effective. but yea, some music theory will help here.

dissonance means to play chords that are not consonance, right?

What is unison ?

Dissonance is where tones together sound a bit ugly and create tension like two notes one semitone apart played together.

games like resident evil create dark atmospheres and background noises, sample some sfx off a game or a film like that and then play with the samples and vibe off it

absynth can get you some really dark pads , i think its for movie music and effects also

resampling

Ableton's Grain Delay is great to detune and darken sounds !

With an X - Y parameter control it is real easy to get creative with automation and make deep and complex dark pads.

Try it out!

serox wrote: What is unison ?

sorry took me forever to find this post again. had to steal this from wiki cuz i couldnt put it better myself. Unison "On synthesizers- the term unison is used to describe two or more oscillators that are slightly detuned in correspondence to each other, which makes the sound fatter."

so basically stacking oscilators and setting them slightly out of tune. for a build up where i want tension, lets say i have as droning saw on 2 oscilators, ill then automate the detune on one oscilator so it goes more and more out of tune. sounds like a scene from a horror movie.

futures_untold wrote:Play minor scales. (More on music theory here ---> http://www.dubstepforum.com/music-theor ... 54823.html )

Arrange your stuff sparsely.

Add lots of reverb.

Low pass filter to achieve a darker sound.

Use ear candy/incidental FX. Make sure that they are twisted, like the sounds of little boys wimpering, scraping metal and psycho beasts growling and breathing heavily...

Pitch shift all vocals down two octaves lower than they are naturally.

If you do all that, even Chuck Norris will run away like a ninny!

Dude, we need to meet up on aim one day so that we can have a chat about sound design.

I don't do aim or msn or any of that boollox, but you can always get me through the DSF PM system if you have any questions

futures_untold wrote:I don't do aim or msn or any of that boollox, but you can always get me through the DSF PM system if you have any questions

I'll hold you to it.

crytek wrote:

futures_untold wrote:I don't do aim or msn or any of that boollox, but you can always get me through the DSF PM system if you have any questions

I'll hold you to it.

Can you make it a group message plz ? Would like to take part and hopefully bring one thing or two to the table.

serox, was thinking about this thread today, and also thinking about massive re another thread. Worked up a patch that can go light to dark, with a twist of one knob. Will post up the patch and sound samples when I'm ambulatory. If you don't see something soon, bug me.

But the basic gist is two oscillator wavetable synth, the one osc that is making the sound interesting is then ring modulated with a modulation oscillator, one semitone higher. In the bass range this patch just goes dark without getting too metallic.

I recall that you don't have massive, but a few minutes of knob twiddling on massive made a pretty usable sound, bro bro.

Get raw material from field recording, pitchdown/timestretch and do what Futures suggested, that's a great way to get nice background sounds that fit in well.

If like me you don't have the gear to make proper sampling and would be too lazy to do it anyway, have a look at this thread.

one word: WATERPHONE

lol but really, look around at some rare instruments, make your own. shit you can make a digeridoo type of thing with some giant PVC, and a stick. take some big pieces of thin metal, drill holes in them, use wire to string them up to a tree, and clank them together, record and add reverb. make your own spring reverb in between the two pieces of metal with the pvc tube as a resonator (metal preferred for spookiness really). circuitbend a toy and add a pot to the timer to pitch it way down (and bug the hell out of people playing it constantly =). glitch out your sega genesis by removing the cartridge while its loading and insert another one. record your dishwasher and mutate it with plugins til it sounds like a monstertruck/chainsaw (dont steal this idea i havent done it yet!). get into reaktor and just start putting modules together not knowing what the hell youre doing. check freesound.org, download like 500 samples and layer only the creepiest shit together in interesting ways (least inventive). build your own homemade analog/digital synth out of chips (CMOS 4000 series!!!!!!!!!) and pots etc (check out lunetta forums on electro-music.com). or just detune some square waves in massive and be like everyone else..

..you can make anything dark with the right timbres and textures. like someone said earlier, dissonance is everything. invent your own spooky digitally if not physically. mashup as many plugins as you can use on an element of your track youre not happy with but dont want to just delete. timestretching, distortion channels, pitching down, combo plugins, etc. Pluggo is awesome sometimes for completely changing a sound. and of course, a good tasteful reverb/dly can make a nonscary sound MUCH more edgey, just don't overdo it/overuse it. god knows i do sometimes.