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Make ambient drone pads, easy ways to get evolving sounds, soaked in reverb. Free project download First things first. You need a really big reverb. This stuff only works with a ridiculous reverb. Work on getting the sounds good before you add it but if you don’t add it then you won’t get what you want. Method 1 – Granular synth EASY MODE I used Emit, a free Max4Live instrument for Suite owners, but there are others you can use. This really is ambient easy mode. All you need is a harmonically rich sound, preferably a pad. Record it and drag the waveform into the synth. I turned on both emitters and increased the grains, so that there was plenty of variation to the sound. Add in a large reverb and you have an awesome ambient pad. The sound can be evolved by automating the position of the emitters slowly over time. Method 2 – Layers and Modulation Using the Ableton Effect Rack, group together an Analog and 2 Wavetables. We’ll use these to create 3 distinct layers, each with their own modulation. Keep the default patch the Analog loads with but detune the second oscillator to . This slight detune creates a modulation in the waveform because we have 2 identical waves at a very close rate. They interfere with each other and create ripples across the waveform the device outputs. Add 2 instances of Wavetable. Using the mod matrix and LFO’s we’ll add some subtle shifts to the wave FX section and also to the wave positions, to add movement to the sound. Slow the attack and release on all synths. Add reverb and there we go, a lovely evolving, deep space ambient drone. You’ll need to cycle through reverb patches to see what best suits the sound you created. Method 3 – Width Effects and Noise Chaining up some chorus and flanging effects adds a lot of movement and width to the sounds. In this example I used a simple synth patch with square and sawtooth waves, adding movement with the FX like we did in method 2. And to add some interest to the sound we also add another Wavetable and use both oscillators to add noise. Using the envelope we sweep up and down the wavetable to create movement. The envelope is set to loop to keep the noise moving. Method 4 – Arpeggio Because we’re using a really long reverb we can use arpeggios to create a sound that feels like it’s evolving. Here I’ve used the Ableton Operator, with the algorithm that just mixes the sounds together. Each of the three operators used has a slightly different tuning to spread the sound. We begin with all sine waves but we can get some really nice variations by changing the waveforms. We can map the waveform selection to a macro and random to get different sounds. We can also automate the selection so that the sound evolves over time. Combine! Finally, we can combine any or all of these things together and experiment. You can even tune the different instruments so you can have a 1 note drone.
