Atmospheres and Spaces

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AVTWEE
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Atmospheres and Spaces

Post by AVTWEE »

Hey guys,

This is something I have been struggling with a lot lately. How do you guys approach this?

I'm very interested in your techniques how to create the original sound you will process to be at the background of your track.

One tip I can give is to automate your effects (like filters or dry/wet from reverb), put them on your midi controllers and listen to what sounds good at what moment. Records it a couple of times and decide what aspects you like in order to build tension for your track. Do this instead of drawing the automation with your mouse, if will result often in build ups that are good on paper but horrible for the ear. I have been there yeah.

Ok, to get back to my question. I'm having problems with creating the initial sound to process for my atmosphere. So what kind of techniques are there to do so.

Shifted, yeah he is on fire lately, has some great spaces. Light, reverby, spacy and a little bit of industrial pressure on it.
some examples: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4-bCs27 ... re=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1Gt2Xhn ... ure=relmfu

I'm not here to recreate those spaces. But i'm curious for some good approaches.

Regards,

A.

AVTWEE
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Re: Atmospheres and Spaces

Post by AVTWEE »

Ok, I might have been a little chaotic in my writing there.

What i ment was:

Assign effects to knobs of your midi controllers. Play with it live, move the knobs when it sounds and feels right instead of writing automation where you think it "should" be. For spaces this is fundamental. As well some nice Filter Modulation that fits your track will do the trick.

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Re: Atmospheres and Spaces

Post by Walsh »

if your using ableton add a simple delay on a track like a clap or something, i personally use the groove preset on simple delay in ableton and play about with the parameters a little.

sampling plays a big part in how i approach atmospheres. sometimes i resample things 5-6 times before its actually usable for my track.

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Críoch
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Re: Atmospheres and Spaces

Post by Críoch »

Theres a nice vid by atabey for doing the dub noise thing.. The fx chain is the most interesting part as you can essentially put anything through it.

youtu.be/0awS7cf0hQc

I normally use a bit of audio stretched out - similar to Walsh. It can be anything really.. a bit of background hum recorded off the built in laptop mic, picking up the TV / conversation.. or a bounce from a pad or sound from the track itself. I might bounce something several times to stretch it further.. and usually loop it at an odd number of bars.

Sometimes I'll have 2 audio tracks grouped.. with one channel with the audio @ its original pitch.. and the other channel (with same audio) at -12. I do this to thicken up the sound.

I'll have them both with EQ's. to cut the bottom / top where needed. Then they're going to the same grouped channel with autopan / filters / reverb / grain delay / bitcrush / eq / whatever. Sometimes I use that freq shifter plug in Ableton, with the freq set a little lower & the wet/dry at a 30-40% to add another layer underneath it.
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Re: Atmospheres and Spaces

Post by ross-alexander »

Shifted is a great example sounds a lot like the kind of fx you can get with space designer in logic or 2c audio aether. send various parts on a send play with different impulse responses (which can be any audio file in fact) and then apply w / filtering and automation or send to other sends or delays. Space designer is such a fundamental part of my w it ork that I will always keep a copy or work with logic. I prefer it to aether /altiverb.
Some more tools I use for this are freeware plugs kt granulator and michael norris well ass

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Re: Atmospheres and Spaces

Post by ross-alexander »

Sorry editor not working on my phone... Theres also some great sound generator tools in reaktor 5.

Its all fairly cpu hungry stuff but its surprisingly how nicely you can flesh out a mix with some good texture.

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Mattias
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Re: Atmospheres and Spaces

Post by Mattias »

Shifted uses lots of field-recordings which he tweak around.

Nice vid with the vinyl noizes there John :D I use noize in a similar way but not as advanced.
I'm probably weird but I record my noise / atmosphere subtle changes (or any major changes) on the fly when I arrange the track.
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AVTWEE
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Re: Atmospheres and Spaces

Post by AVTWEE »

I still have to make a proper template to start with anyway. I will include a send channel to create spaces. Route it directly back to an audio channel so I can save CPU as soon as I have a proper space.

Heard some good tips coming by. I think the field recording stuff is quite cool, but you'll need to invest time to get some sounds together. I'm not a lazy person, but as soon as i think about making music I want to make it directly. On the other side, it might be a fun idea to record stuff. Slapping around with a hammer in my neighborhood might be awesome.

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Re: Atmospheres and Spaces

Post by Críoch »

AVTWEE wrote:.. Slapping around with a hammer in my neighborhood might be awesome.
Please remember to share the recordings of the police sirens with us afterwards Mate :)

haha
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Re: Atmospheres and Spaces

Post by AVTWEE »

ICN wrote:
AVTWEE wrote:.. Slapping around with a hammer in my neighborhood might be awesome.
Please remember to share the recordings of the police sirens with us afterwards Mate :)

haha
haha, will do mate. How about the sound of a police sirene getting smashed with a hammer?

Ok, too much off topic now.

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Re: Atmospheres and Spaces

Post by kuba_rubacha »

i got me hands on a recorder the other day,recorded neighbour cuttin grads with a streamer and i must say things ya can do with it are unbeliveable,got an fz chaon on it...auto filter-camel.distortion-auto pan,it sits right above the base givin it that bit of a grunt..goin bringin it around with me everywhere from now on,best bit of kit i got in a long time:-)

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Post by Críoch »

Years ago.. when I was 16/ 17 - I recorded a cement mixer with a tape recorder on a long power lead & used it as a background on a 4 track portastudio recording. I was listening to a lot of sonic youth & japanese noise bands & I overdubbed drums & bass & fuck knows what over it haha. My parents must have thought I was nuts.
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Re: Atmospheres and Spaces

Post by rktic »

In case of Shifted i'd say he's mostly building the background space using filtered, resonant noise and/or filtered pads. Using a good reverb with naturally sounding & modulated tail is key here and makes a lot of other processing unnecessary. I mostly stick with Magnus Ambience, Audio Damage EOS or Reaktor's Space Master 2 in that regard.

A few years ago i uploaded some atmos & drones to freesound, you can grab them here: http://www.freesound.org/people/Ronny%20Pries/

If you have any questions on there whereabouts of those, shoot and i'll dissect the process for you.

Cheers
Ronny

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Re: Atmospheres and Spaces

Post by AVTWEE »

rktic wrote:In case of Shifted i'd say he's mostly building the background space using filtered, resonant noise and/or filtered pads. Using a good reverb with naturally sounding & modulated tail is key here and makes a lot of other processing unnecessary. I mostly stick with Magnus Ambience, Audio Damage EOS or Reaktor's Space Master 2 in that regard.

A few years ago i uploaded some atmos & drones to freesound, you can grab them here: http://www.freesound.org/people/Ronny%20Pries/

If you have any questions on there whereabouts of those, shoot and i'll dissect the process for you.

Cheers
Ronny
How did you go about this one: http://www.freesound.org/people/Ronny%2 ... nds/24215/

Sounds really good to me.

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Post by rktic »

For that one i just fed a rather simple chord through a chorus followed by Magnus' Ambience, where i fiddled around with the settings to get a lush sounding reverb response, then i hit its 'HOLD!' button >

Image

According to your settings it's capable to create quite good results that may just need a bit of filtering. For this i created a setup of very steep notch filters (in Buzz) around a center frequency, similar to Waves X-Hum (see screenshot) to damp/remove too attenuated frequencies.

Image

Depending on the signal being processed by Ambience it might make sense to place X-Hum or whatever you've got at hands before the reverb to prevent it from creating too resonant sounds. Hint: too broad EQs will dig unpleasant, unnatural sounding holes and a single steep notch will most likely not remove problematic frequencies either. Not sure if a similar setup is possible with Ableton's internal EQ8 but it's worth trying.

Above setup was also starting point for most of the other sounds i uploaded to Freesound. Some have got some additional layers on top.

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Post by Mattias »

I also love to use long massive verbs and delays as well for stuff like this. Eos, Ambience always mentioned. Check out Valhalla übermod also fellas. Reaktor have some wicked capabilities to make massive drone / atmosphere stuff both effect wise (self-modified ensembles!). Beside Reaktor, Eos, Ambience a plug that is exceptionally nice is U-He MFM2 & Spline EQ. For me making atmospheres and drones is about first getting a nice lush nasty synth sound or field recording then drive em through a chain of verbs, delays and other effects and modulating everything very slowly back and forth.

Ronny pointed out a good thing here, the narrow Qs for the EQ to correct nasty freqs resonating too much within the drones, very important!
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Re: Atmospheres and Spaces

Post by AVTWEE »

Mattias wrote:I also love to use long massive verbs and delays as well for stuff like this. Eos, Ambience always mentioned. Check out Valhalla übermod also fellas. Reaktor have some wicked capabilities to make massive drone / atmosphere stuff both effect wise (self-modified ensembles!). Beside Reaktor, Eos, Ambience a plug that is exceptionally nice is U-He MFM2 & Spline EQ. For me making atmospheres and drones is about first getting a nice lush nasty synth sound or field recording then drive em through a chain of verbs, delays and other effects and modulating everything very slowly back and forth.

Ronny pointed out a good thing here, the narrow Qs for the EQ to correct nasty freqs resonating too much within the drones, very important!
Can you tell me more about drones. I hear a lot of referrals towards drones in track names etc.

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Mattias
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Re: Atmospheres and Spaces

Post by Mattias »

Drones are pretty much some lengthy (in) harmonic polyphonic or monophonic tones (or tone) in a deep cluster that stretches over a long time. I guess thats as pretty decent explanation coming form me haha, sorry for the confusion.

Example:
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Re: Atmospheres and Spaces

Post by AVTWEE »

Mattias wrote:Drones are pretty much some lengthy (in) harmonic polyphonic or monophonic tones (or tone) in a deep cluster that stretches over a long time. I guess thats as pretty decent explanation coming form me haha, sorry for the confusion.

Example:

Oh yeah, just listened to your example. Really cool. Can you explain your approach on this one. You don't have to explain everything haha, because the track evolves and I'm sure you did too much things to mention once.

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Post by Mattias »

Taken from the Soundcloud track info:

Abstract music made by recording water filled radiators. Then I played the recording pitched down through a huge chain of effects and into a vocoder from the MS2000 to make the smooth chord sequences. Then I added noise/hum from washing-machines (which also runs through a resonance filter).
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