How to Make Epic Soundscapes (without timestretch)

[hankerins]

The other thread didn't really cover anything besides timestretching, so ITT lets share soundscape/ambiance techniques that people may not know about.

My personal favorite is Convolution/Impulse Reverb. This is where you 'multiply' two sounds together so that the frequencies they share are amplified and the frequencies they don't share are eliminated. Impulse Reverb works this way using 'impulses' which are basically spectral maps of a space, but instead of an impulse you can load in any sound - piano chord, orchestra sample, running water, whatever - and whatever sound you send to that Impulse Reverb will blend with it to make a cool, albeit unpredictable, ambient sound. ProTools has the IR reverb plug-in for this, in Logic its Space Designer, and in other systems it may just be called Convolution.

Whose got more tips?

[sixth sense]

layering

[legend4ry]

Fully wet reverb on long-simple pads is nice, then adding random hits of metal-objects gives great character.

[legend4ry]

Fully wet reverb on long-simple pads is nice, then adding random hits of metal-objects gives great character.

[JemGrover]

Sporadic, pitched down tambourines (gotta go at least 2/3 octaves) and then drown them in reverb. Again, 100% wet, sounds good.

[hankerins]

layering

no, really?

[amphibian]

Absynth 5 - and it's aetheriser function. Take any sound, apply some attributes, click morph. Instant epic soundscape. You have two settings - the amount it will morph, and its random factor. You get totally unpredictable results, but some soundscapes that come out of that feature alone are freakin' ridiculously good.

[Sharmaji]

+1 for gigantic reverbs.

also, find a filter that lets you really tweak the resonance and cutoff-- get a super-hot resonance on a filter, get it sounding in-tune with the song, and create a tone out of the source material. bounce. do another, but automate the cutoff around the point. bounce. play both together-- instant phasey, tone-based pad.

[Mad_EP]

Of course a big ol reverb is key.....

but c'mon. Get creative.



I'm talking about taking a sample, super reverbing on a send (99% wet)... bouncing.

taking that bounce... reversing it, re-reverbing it......

then layering it with some footsteps, door creaks, etc... timestretch....

reverb again....



notch-filter as needed.


etc etc.

[sixth sense]

layering

no, really?

really

[silkpantsman]

not much more to add beyond the above...i like to put together a rack of 5 or so synths an arpeggiator a delay redux flange and valhalla freq echo get some midi looped map as many controls as possible smash with reverb sometimes sidechain gate r compress one synth with another then play with the controller starting really really simple and slowly bringin the sound in till it gets too much then bring it back down again. Wat i started tryin when i saw this post was to split the freq while recording (more stuff to play with) and reverse say the hi content and layer it back with the mids and resample or trick around with the warping of one layer etc etc etc...nothing but mush yet

[jaydot]

Reverse cymbal followed immediately by a normal cymbal, has a "waterfall" I feel. Reverb and delay them both and voila.

[narcissus]

w/o timestretch you say, but how bout HYPERstretch?
paulstretch has a mode called that.. honestly load any halfway decent acapella into it and you have magic

[Sirius]

make a chain of a whole lot of busses (out 1 into 2, & so forth), send the last 1 to an audio channel (or make the last one the input).
add random fx to each bus, press record & then tweak ya heart out!!

!!chea

[Shekul]

If you're using FL studio, i find the Blur option in Edison pretty useful for stuff like that. It's a combination of heavy reverb and timestretching i think...

[s3f]

1. take a nice crash or ride cymbal, assign to midi keyboard with several octaves.
2.record random notes from all octaves, use pitch wheel if you have one.
3. apply flanger, massive amounts of reverb, delay for certain "notes". slice and/or reverse if wanted.
4. bounce.
5.layer with an airy pad.
6. ??????
7.profit

[Dirty-Hertz]

Not sure why alot of people are saying that you should use lots of reverb on everything? Reverb is something that should be used subtly, so that the listener doesn't notice it is there. Just create lots of pad and synth layers and use delays and reverb type fx in subtle manor, rather than turning everything to 100% wet and making the whold track sound like it's being played down a well.

[Sirius]

Not sure why alot of people are saying that you should use lots of reverb on everything? Reverb is something that should be used subtly, so that the listener doesn't notice it is there. Just create lots of pad and synth layers and use delays and reverb type fx in subtle manor, rather than turning everything to 100% wet and making the whold track sound like it's being played down a well.

tis because of DUB I reckon! I love shit super saturated... it just needs EQ'd to tame it like!

!!shit

[Mad_EP]

Not sure why alot of people are saying that you should use lots of reverb on everything? Reverb is something that should be used subtly, so that the listener doesn't notice it is there. Just create lots of pad and synth layers and use delays and reverb type fx in subtle manor, rather than turning everything to 100% wet and making the whold track sound like it's being played down a well.

because we aren't talking about normal use of reverb... but rather how to make ambient soundscapes, ie: a subtle layer underneath everything else.

[Dirty-Hertz]

I'm well aware of the subject. Loads of reverb is not the answer to everything. Ambience and atmosphere are not created by using massive reverberation on everything. There's a nice article on wikipedia which says, "ambient music is a musical genre (you can still apply this to music in general) that focuses largely on the timbral characteristics of sounds, often organized or performed to evoke an atmospheric, visual or unobtrusive quality" not, "music that has lots of reverb, with all settings turned to 100% wet." This is just my opinion, I'm not trying to offend people, I'm trying to help. The answer is not Reverb reverb reverb.