If you want to learn more about the compositional concepts that have helped me the most throughout the years, here's a FREE guide: bit.ly/FREEcompositionguide
Waking up, turn on my OB-X and the Moog One .. press one low key on the Moog (bass), followed by a 4 tone chord on the OB-X (Pad) .. holding it for a couple of hours .. aahh life is good :)
As someone who has also studied formal composition (and has fallen in the synth rabbit hole and can't get out), I love how this channel is really trying to force composition into what can easily become a drone-y and loop-y art form in the beginning. It's much easier for me to think about composition when I'm in front of a score - you can see the range your instruments occupy, you can see the density and dynamics, you can see your theme being developed AND you can trust that great players are going to be able to add some magic. In sound design, it's easy to get lost in the sounds and how to play them expressively and like you said get lost for a few hours sound selecting and basically learning a brand new instrument you've invented. It's hard to switch gears into writing something a coherent track because that's not how you just experienced the music...AND while we have some guidelines for what makes formal composition work --- this kind of music is just more of a "feel it out" method. That is DAUNTING as a composer because when you get stuck writing you're usually looking for a writing tool to help you move forward. Anyway....thanks for blazing a trail here!
This reminds me of when I was adding glitch effects to a piece. After doing it by trial and error for a few bars, I've noticed I find it harder and harder to go and eventually I got stuck in exactly the way you describe, with all my typical guidelines being useless. I remember my thought at the moment was "I don't have a music theory for glitches".
@@tomaszmazurek64 haha! Great point. I do think that the principles that have worked for the last 700+ years still apply, but they're harder to pin down. This makes me think about early 20th century composers when trying to kind of control "happy accidents" while also learning to appreciate whatever happens when introducing chance elements in music. Having someone help composers navigate music making in a world with increasingly complicated music tech is definitely appreciated. Thankful for RUclips and the people doing it.
One thing that helps me in this sort of thing is to have intentional sound design sessions where I'm not trying to compose but dedicate time to setting up patches or custom presets that I think are inspiring enough for me to write with. Then because I'm not trying to write anything then, I can set them down and come back to the sounds with a fresh, ready to compose/record mind.
You know what a violin or a bassoon can do. It's the same here, but you make the instrument, or instruments (as pads sound). Compose, and if you think something is missing, make an instrument to fill the gap. I prefer to use simpler sounds and then manipulate them through mixing and effects. Sound design can be over-complicated and very ambient/soundscape imho, which I love, and utterly admire those who do it, but on its own it doesn't seem to me to be conducive to composing music in the traditional western definition. I'm sure you know of him, but if you don't, La Monte Young might interest you, as his studies early on were in composition before he got into 'drone', or pads, and he connects to a lot of really interesting musicians and is a major figure in an entire musical genre.
Great thing to do with wavetable pad is to set the key/pitch tracking to modulate the scan speed. That way each note of the pad will be scanning through at slightly different rates and thus not playing the same harmonic/timbre snippet as the others. Helps the pad feel more evolving, less stale.
I m a metal head / producer by anyterms but finding this channel has been pretty life changing, I am learning so much about sound design, composition and general music that has this fire burnign in me. I just want to open my DAW and make sounds till Dawn.
Hey man just wanted to send a positive message. I just finished my first ambient/cinematic album. After finishing it I've had a bit of a writers block. I found your channel after watching the entire interview you had with Tony Anderson (such an amazing composer) and I started checking your channel out as well. I just watched your video on how to create ambient music without boring anyone and you really helped bring back a bit of spark to create some more music. I've spent quite a bit of time trying to create music like Tony Anderson or Hans Zimmer and forgot to remember that I should find my own unique sound instead and when you mentioned limitations it sparked a new idea. I don't have much gear to begin with but I got so much plugins I don't even know what they are for or why I even have it. I think I will just limit myself to one vst like omnisphere and see what stories I can tell with only that vst. You are an amazing person and I can't wait to continue learning more about the genre from you!
"Anyone who gets rid of their first synth is also a murderer on the side" - My first synth was a Roland JX-3P. I sold it in 1995 because I needed to eat more than I needed a synth. 29 years and a few hobby murders later, I picked up 2 JX-3P's for the price of one, had them both worked bumper to bumper by a synth tech, and now I have my first synth back and could even afford a PG-200 and a PG-2K. I'm looking forward to giving up my murderous ways and learning and appreciating these synths deeper than I did as a teenager.
My first "synth" was the Yamaha DJX 2 rompler groovebox/keyboard and I sadly sold it during a period of unemployment. That thing brought me great joy when I was a preteen!
I sold my Juno 106 to buy a motorcycle, a week later someone stole it, I had no insurance. Ended up without both my Juno and the bike. My first synth was a Korg Poly 800
I love the Prophet 12 for pads and as you say it can do such wild things. Another of my absolute favourite synths for pads is the Roland V-Synth GT. It can do the most massive and evolving pads. It took over from where the JV-1080/2080 left off.
Yes, I use V-synth pads all the time (they’re on the RD-2000 and can be layered with other ext insts). All one would need. Sometimes too much choice stifles creativity.
Something similar to what you call subtractive arrangement I've come to call "scaffolding". I'll sketch out a chord progression on piano, for instance, with all kinds of Interesting chord extensions and melodies and so on then build accompaniment, and at some point take out the piano. Oftentimes, the negative space left by that just engages the imagination so much more than the part ever would!
Here are some other factors to consider when using pads. Some pads work well with certain registers. If you are someone who likes to use a lot of pads, you can use one that works well for the lower register and another that uses the higher register. Then using the two or three note approach in the playing, you get anywhere from four to six notes in your chord whilst still having space to breathe. And along those notes (see what I did there?), be careful that your low sounds don't get too muddy and your high sounds don't get too shrill. Another factor that can play a role in the pad are effects, either inside the synth itself or using external effects (hardware or software). You can take a simple "vanilla" pad and add an effect to give it character. And yes, there are pad sounds that will already have effects as part of it ... or you can add, subtract and/or replace with your own. And on that note (I swear I'm not trying to be punny), you can always let the effect do one thing while you are playing it in a different way. For instance, you can have an ostinato pattern (like a rhythmic bass line) on a sound that uses a swell that occurs in its own way that has nothing to do with what you are playing. In this way, you create these parallels where what is being played and what is being heard at given time is out of phase/sync with each other and that can create interest. If you are like me and like pads the same way some like their pumpkin pie slices - completely drenched in whipped cream - then you can get overboard with layering. There is the subtractive approach alluded to earlier. But another way to arrange it is to think about complements. So if you find a pad sound that is airy yet "frentic" (i.e. has some dynamic motion to it), then if you were to add another one, it should probably be one that doesn't have those qualities but rather something else, in this case maybe dense yet steady-state. In this way, you create a kind of super-pad, which also helps in giving something some grandeur to it, but it doesn't turn into a confusing mess. At any rate, that's all for now =D
Have you played around much with EQing pads, so that they're staying out of each others' ways, but you're also just creating a giant Dagwood-sandwich's-worth of pads? I could imagine that being a lot for the listener to process, so on the one hand I could see that falling under "a confusing mess", but at the same time the individual elements could still all be individually identifiable. That said, since as Mr. Jones noted, pads can take up a lot of space, maybe the individual pads *would* lose quite a bit in that sandwiching process. (I'd imagine it would depend on the individual pads how much this would be true, but I don't know if that would be more or less common.)
@@FGCLovesYou If you choose your sounds correctly - including what registers are used - you can have multiple pads going on where they are work together and there is some distinction between each of them to be noticeable. From personal experience, I find that you can “get away” with up to eight of these layers. Most of the time, I probably have two. But no matter the number, I pick them because there’s a quality in each one I like to have present and if I can hear that quality, that’s enough. I employ EQ on that level really to deal with things like harshness or unwanted frequencies and maybe if I think something needs to be cut or boosted. I really don’t like hearing the word “separation” when talking about mixing as it is a gross contradiction. Mixing is about making sure everything works together to make a bigger cohesive whole. Now making sure distinct elements across different types are clear is one thing (i.e. vocals from guitars or drums from bass, etc.). But making like elements within a type distinct from each other is the equivalent of saying “I want to make sure I hear every single cellist in an orchestra”. Also doing too much “EQ carving” will probably end up sounding like aural Swiss cheese. In my own work, A Night of Ephemeral Transcendence has several multiple pad moments. The second track in particular is a dense amorphous “drone” of sorts done to illustrate a particular situation and experience that beyond our notion of time and space.
it is, and i figure this is why young ppl like the super mellow thing. if lots of music all sounds like the same mellow mood tho then ok but seeing live is extra boring like not in a good way i must add! or. i just like to move or i’m old
Using simple chords/intervals well can definitely be more artistic than stacking up notes until it becomes harmonic mud! If you are interested in classical music, check out Arvo Part's "Kyrie" from his "Missa Syllabica" - it is jaw droppingly beautiful and incredibly simple in its own way. Like an artist who has refined their piece to only a single exquisite line. Truly beautiful.
Great little muse, and the advice is what we pad-lovers know but hate to admit - pads are addictive, to the point that they will turn your mix to a mush! I find that pad presets are often 'too much' - I don't blame the authors, they are trying to showcase the product. But less is more is always a good thing. It's amazing what you can do with a simple sound and some FX and modulation. That said, I remain addicted to pads, using my choice of synth, Pigments, which has an infernally large amount of ways to noodle your way to oblivion (blissfully so though). One big strength of Pigments though is its modulations, and I think that's key - both macro-based, and hooked up to a bit of randomness. It's a profound thought to know that a sound will be unique whenever you press a key. Don't even get me started on the generative power of Pigments sequencer. At this rate I'll turn into a noodle and my wife will have to roll me round while I gibber pseudo-random noise...
I think the best way to learn how to handle FM without just making noise (unless you _want_ to make just noise, which is fine if that's you want) is to learn how to create square-ish and sawtooth-is waves using sine operators. This quickly teaches the limits between what sound "harmonious" and "noisy", and show how much feedback can help shape the sound. It's my favorite type of synthesis because it's very easy to create evolving sounds without having to keep testing limits and modulating tons of stuff in a wavetable, although wavetable is _also_ my favorite type of synthesis precisely because of that. Another cool way to make pads that can fit a composition (without using synthesis) is to run plucks through a convolver reverb fed with some kind of noise (white or pink work pretty great), then turn up the wet dial and turn down the dry. Or you can keep both up, if you want both sounds together. It's also possible to route the signal to a FX channel equipped with a pitch shifter before the convolver, helping create a "shimmer" and pushing the pad out of the way of the melody. ... I really like pads, I guess.
Your setup @4:47 is soooo cool & inspiring. Thank you for being a) genuine, and 3) clear and simple. I purchased Pigments and utterly didn't know the vast capabilities of it - you've taught me so much. My favorite, among many, is what you teach about Subtractive = taking stuff out, vs cramming more in. So powerful... :) Subscribed w joy
I appreciate this content. Many music production channels focus too much on technique, turn this knob to here, automate this, etc. it's good to hear from a trained musician who can talk about the musicality aspect of music production. The inverse relationship between patch complexity and arrangement complexity is so intuitive but I wouldn't have thought of it without it being spelled out
Agreed - love the sound and using them like a drone or similar can color every other sound you put on top. Nothing boring about that - boring is whatever the whole song is imo.
I love pads also. You can drift away and be self hypnotized by the sound, my Korg, MS 2000 does that nicely. I have owned synthesizers since 1976, huge fan. Love your videos. Love your knowledge, thank you.
Love you channel brother! I got my start in classical music like you from an early age, and studied classical music performance in music school, only years later finding out that I was unfulfilled with the professional orchestra lifestyle after 15 years. 7 years later in 2023 I started experimenting with music production and discovered that I have never been more passionate with anything in my life than the way music production and sound design makes me feel. I want to do this the rest of my life.
My first instrument was bass trombone, which I've played in everything from brass bands to ska punk via orchestra, big band and military band. I got into guitar, then synths, after my band called it a day. Now I'm returning to bass trombone with synth ( improvising over drones or sequences ), which is an exciting prospect/project.
@@unclebastard3691 Nice man, Improvisation is the ultimate form of creative freedom. Improvising over drones and sequences is a lot of fun! Don't ever stop playing!
Clicked around a couple other of your videos and was intrigued, but THIS was the one that I found nodding my head in agreement over and over again. Paused to subscribe halfway through the video. Looking forward to catching up on all your content and what's to come! Cheers.
Growing up ‘on the beach’, walking on the beach nearly every day the first 25 years of my life AND listening to a lot of ambient music (has the Echos radio show been on that long?!?) I understand the beauty of these ‘pads’ though I have never heard the term before today. Thank you for the explanation. This has helped me understand: I like these ambient background pads to start from or resolve to something familiar and natural but in the meantime moving into a strange world that somehow feels comfortable and familiar.
Something I started doing is using a more simple slightly energetic pad as one note in the chord and a more reverbed ambient pad as the rest of the chord. It adds texture to the chord you wouldn't normally get with just 1 pad
As someone who has made hundreds of the synth pads found in Korg's plethora of workstations, this is a great video with lots of food for thought for all to munch on. Keep on sharing. :D
You are the person I have been waiting for. All of your videos are meeting my creative process at a time where I've improv'd myself sick, and I'm ready for something more meaningful and rich. I love the piano patch on your iridium so much. Would you be willing to share that single piano patch for download? Finding a good synth piano is tricky. I love my iridium, but it is also a huge headache to dial in sometimes.
Thanks for your comments. I totally agree with the subtraction (muting regions or dropping some frequency ranges) to make other elements more audible especially if there are textures that get buried under wide frequency range pads. I don't know what your thoughts are about evolving concepts that can be automated in DAW? I am thinking of gradual changes to reach different zones of the musical story, for instance a granularized delayed guitar arpeggio that doesn't sound anything like guitar but more like a pad with texture that evolves to where it is just a guitar arpeggio accompanied by bass, etc. very subtly so it creates breathing rooms for more acoustic minimalistic ambience and then evolves again to more expansions with layering orchestral, synth, rhythms, etc. I found those journey kind of reaching points and then moving to other lands in the journey gives me a sense of being very dynamic in the imagination level, so if it has that sort of behavior I don't get bored, but if there are lots of variations of textures put beside each other but don't relate together in a continuum of a story, it doesn't take me in a wholesome way to become a profound experience. What do you think?
Thank you so much for these very valuable insight on PADs. As I begin my journey of exploration of synths and ambient music, I feel that you put words on what bothers me sometimes in some ambient pieces, that feel "bloated" and going nowhere. I believe each piece should tell a story as complex or as simple as the artist's wants it to be and your "linear" approach to composition is nudging me the right way as to how to achieve it! You earned my sub !
I always love coming to the lunch pause to find one of your new videos. Thank you for all the effort you take to make them, and thank you for teaching and pushing us. Looking forward to the next lunch meet :)
I do the old brian eno method (before there were polyphonic synths), in that I layer one note at a time via my modular to build up soundscapes/chords. Gives variability to tone and timing. Esp great mixing 5U (higher fidelity) and eurorack.
A very simple trick I use with a smooth sine wave pad is to support the sustained chords of a Rhodes piano track. Doubling selected chords of the Rhodes track with the sine pad gives one the illusion that the Rhodes has much longer sustain than it really does.
Great tips. I find it really easy to make pads, and struggle with just about every other part of a track! One technique I don't think you mentioned is sampling, as in making your own sampled pads instead of using libraries. I make a lot of modular patches for this with VCV, record bits, then edit and loop 15-20 seconds into Pigments. Sometimes I make pads from reverb tails, or guitar into tons of granular delays. It's fairly easy and you end up with your own library of unique pad sounds that nobody else has. My other thing at the moment is polyphonic modulation. For example if you're applying vibrato, instead of using a single global LFO, you have a different LFO on each note, or poly channel. It's subtle, but more like playing a chord on 3 or 4 different monosynths rather than one polysynth. I use VCV mainly, but Pigments can do this to an extent, and I think Bitwig can too. Once you start modulating filters and synth parameters like wavetable position etc per voice, you can get really complex evolving sounds.
So good to discover your channel! - it crystallises a lot of things I’ve been thinking about and experimenting with for quite a while. Most of all is ‘I have all these amazing sounds; how do I make great music with them and not just a patch demo?’ Thanks!
Tony Anderson saying that whomever gets rid of their first synth is also a murderer hits so hard. I'm sorry little Waldorf Blofeld. I miss you so much. Forgive me!
Comment for algorithm. + This is twice your videos have made me entirely rethink my approach. As a noodler and nothing more, it at least brings joy to try something new.
wow, you have an actual gift, blessing, or super strict skillset of educating sound design. The ebook is great, thank you. Actually- I only posted to see if you photographed the synth pics found under MY SAMPLES page. They look incredible, and more should be filmed
They are definitely the most complicated traditional synthesiser patch to make. I say traditional because as soon as you start getting into modular/generative and sequenced based patches it goes deeper.
0:55 Noodling is making music! It's my main source of new ideas. Done right it can be truly improvisational. Remember, there are no wrong notes on a standard keyboard. Just bad arrangements. Fire up a sound that you find inspirational. Hit record and noodle 'til you start repeating yourself or get bored. Save and let simmer for a day or two. Listen to it and massage the parts you like to taste. Now you might just have something worth pursuing. 6:30 FM basics are not that hard. If you’ve ever tuned a guitar by ear or set the beating between two synth oscillators, you’ve used the pitch difference between two waveforms (interference), creating a third, slower pulse (the difference frequency) and a fourth, higher pitched (the sum frequency). That is basic FM. My theory is that the use of "operator" doesn’t label the oscillators, because they can be a carrier (audio) or modulator or both depending on context (algorithm). If you want to deep dive into FM, I highly recommend Howard Masseys excellent The Complete DX7. 14:16 Is a statue of a deaf person necessarily deaf, what about artistic freedom. 16:03 You could take it a step further by automating an EQ on the pad track. Set a rather narrow notch and sweep it. You’ll notice individual instruments(groups) “spring into life” because the auditory masking disappears. Right on the money about keeping it simple. Leave space using space 😉 Please do more great stuff.
An operator is a combination of an oscillator and an envelope which controls its output volume (and thus the degree to which it modulates downstream oscillators). The term operator appears to come from Yamaha: Chowning did not use it in his thesis nor Stanford's patent.
MIDI stacking, some secret weapon synths that are easy to find and quite cheap but the majority had no idea how to utilise them to their best are sure ways to breathe more life into your music than you ever thought possible etc….👌
I think a big part of it is starting with a chord progression and then making a pad to fit it, that way you have a sense of direction and purpose from the start
Ok, you're a genius. The audio in this video was perfectly resonating with a smartphone size device, namely, a smartphone lol (the Bluetooth didn't come on, how I noticed)
The problem is that many of the synth pads i hear don't have a soul, a simple example : so-called 'string pads' playing 3 note chords...it's like throwing a bucket of paint against a wall ( and call it Art)
Great video! Very helpful. I find myself in a budding love affair with pads, yet my execution often feels clumsy. This video has provided new perspectives. I will experiment upon your words. New subscriber. Keep it real.
A good substitute for synth pads I've found is lo-fi samples. I am talking mellotron and orchestron sounds. Because of their unique and distorted sound, they fit perfectly with electronic music. See for example Kraftwerk (ie radioactivity)
I actually love making lofi / ambient stuff with mellotron sounds, you can get some really cool textures cutting the everloving hell out of them with an EQ, like way more then you should ever cut so it sounds flat and distant, and then drown that bitch in Reverb, full wet, then cut the reverb properly.
Now that I am completely working in a software studio environment anno 2024 (where I used to be a hardware synth player and composer in the past)... I am getting slightly jealous at your awesome collection of hardware synths. I suppose the grass is always greener on the other side....
Thanks for your video! Very inspiring! Do you have any clue how I can create the pad sound that you play at 13:24 on a Novation Summit or what VST do you use there? I love that sound.....
If you want to learn more about the compositional concepts that have helped me the most throughout the years, here's a FREE guide: bit.ly/FREEcompositionguide
so nice to end up on your channel ... i am new to synthesis and videos like this are very informative and inspiring ... thank you
Hey loser, learn how to play an instrument, and then record that, instead of 'noodling' with your 'synth pads'.
Great Channel, thank you alot
"noodling around with synthpads for hours without making music"
"It's therapeutic "😅😅
fun rules
SO TRUE
Welcome to the club
Is creating sounds you enjoy not making music though?
Waking up, turn on my OB-X and the Moog One .. press one low key on the Moog (bass), followed by a 4 tone chord on the OB-X (Pad) .. holding it for a couple of hours .. aahh life is good :)
Sums up everyday for me 😂
@@LaytonMechaley Thats life! :)
Just record it an put on YT as an "Ambient relaxation video. Study music". Make millions.
@@deepzone31 ruclips.net/video/ec-c-rbPdbE/видео.html
As someone who has also studied formal composition (and has fallen in the synth rabbit hole and can't get out), I love how this channel is really trying to force composition into what can easily become a drone-y and loop-y art form in the beginning. It's much easier for me to think about composition when I'm in front of a score - you can see the range your instruments occupy, you can see the density and dynamics, you can see your theme being developed AND you can trust that great players are going to be able to add some magic. In sound design, it's easy to get lost in the sounds and how to play them expressively and like you said get lost for a few hours sound selecting and basically learning a brand new instrument you've invented. It's hard to switch gears into writing something a coherent track because that's not how you just experienced the music...AND while we have some guidelines for what makes formal composition work --- this kind of music is just more of a "feel it out" method. That is DAUNTING as a composer because when you get stuck writing you're usually looking for a writing tool to help you move forward. Anyway....thanks for blazing a trail here!
This reminds me of when I was adding glitch effects to a piece. After doing it by trial and error for a few bars, I've noticed I find it harder and harder to go and eventually I got stuck in exactly the way you describe, with all my typical guidelines being useless. I remember my thought at the moment was "I don't have a music theory for glitches".
@@tomaszmazurek64 haha! Great point. I do think that the principles that have worked for the last 700+ years still apply, but they're harder to pin down. This makes me think about early 20th century composers when trying to kind of control "happy accidents" while also learning to appreciate whatever happens when introducing chance elements in music. Having someone help composers navigate music making in a world with increasingly complicated music tech is definitely appreciated. Thankful for RUclips and the people doing it.
One thing that helps me in this sort of thing is to have intentional sound design sessions where I'm not trying to compose but dedicate time to setting up patches or custom presets that I think are inspiring enough for me to write with. Then because I'm not trying to write anything then, I can set them down and come back to the sounds with a fresh, ready to compose/record mind.
I have the same thing with writing rock music. The roles are very defined and natural so things just kind of come together.
You know what a violin or a bassoon can do. It's the same here, but you make the instrument, or instruments (as pads sound). Compose, and if you think something is missing, make an instrument to fill the gap. I prefer to use simpler sounds and then manipulate them through mixing and effects.
Sound design can be over-complicated and very ambient/soundscape imho, which I love, and utterly admire those who do it, but on its own it doesn't seem to me to be conducive to composing music in the traditional western definition.
I'm sure you know of him, but if you don't, La Monte Young might interest you, as his studies early on were in composition before he got into 'drone', or pads, and he connects to a lot of really interesting musicians and is a major figure in an entire musical genre.
Great thing to do with wavetable pad is to set the key/pitch tracking to modulate the scan speed. That way each note of the pad will be scanning through at slightly different rates and thus not playing the same harmonic/timbre snippet as the others. Helps the pad feel more evolving, less stale.
Nice tip. Thanks. :)
Absolutely. Great tip.
And as well, don't ever sell your first instruments no matter the catagory 😂
will try this on the blofeld. thank you.
It’s so nice of Timothy Olephant to let you borrow his voice.
😂 Something clicked in my brain about his voice as soon as he started talking...then I forgot all about. But, that is what it was.
I m a metal head / producer by anyterms but finding this channel has been pretty life changing, I am learning so much about sound design, composition and general music that has this fire burnign in me. I just want to open my DAW and make sounds till Dawn.
I am a Metalhead since sabbath, but the last 10 yrs I also produce lots of ambient music love it
Hey man just wanted to send a positive message. I just finished my first ambient/cinematic album. After finishing it I've had a bit of a writers block. I found your channel after watching the entire interview you had with Tony Anderson (such an amazing composer) and I started checking your channel out as well. I just watched your video on how to create ambient music without boring anyone and you really helped bring back a bit of spark to create some more music. I've spent quite a bit of time trying to create music like Tony Anderson or Hans Zimmer and forgot to remember that I should find my own unique sound instead and when you mentioned limitations it sparked a new idea. I don't have much gear to begin with but I got so much plugins I don't even know what they are for or why I even have it. I think I will just limit myself to one vst like omnisphere and see what stories I can tell with only that vst. You are an amazing person and I can't wait to continue learning more about the genre from you!
"Anyone who gets rid of their first synth is also a murderer on the side" - My first synth was a Roland JX-3P. I sold it in 1995 because I needed to eat more than I needed a synth. 29 years and a few hobby murders later, I picked up 2 JX-3P's for the price of one, had them both worked bumper to bumper by a synth tech, and now I have my first synth back and could even afford a PG-200 and a PG-2K. I'm looking forward to giving up my murderous ways and learning and appreciating these synths deeper than I did as a teenager.
My first "synth" was the Yamaha DJX 2 rompler groovebox/keyboard and I sadly sold it during a period of unemployment. That thing brought me great joy when I was a preteen!
This is the way.
This is the way.. 🫡
I sold my Juno 106 to buy a motorcycle, a week later someone stole it, I had no insurance. Ended up without both my Juno and the bike. My first synth was a Korg Poly 800
I sold my Alesis Micron to buy a MicroKorg XL. Was it even an upgrade? I'm not sure to this day.
I love the Prophet 12 for pads and as you say it can do such wild things. Another of my absolute favourite synths for pads is the Roland V-Synth GT. It can do the most massive and evolving pads. It took over from where the JV-1080/2080 left off.
Yes, I use V-synth pads all the time (they’re on the RD-2000 and can be layered with other ext insts). All one would need. Sometimes too much choice stifles creativity.
Something similar to what you call subtractive arrangement I've come to call "scaffolding". I'll sketch out a chord progression on piano, for instance, with all kinds of Interesting chord extensions and melodies and so on then build accompaniment, and at some point take out the piano. Oftentimes, the negative space left by that just engages the imagination so much more than the part ever would!
I love this idea
Here are some other factors to consider when using pads.
Some pads work well with certain registers. If you are someone who likes to use a lot of pads, you can use one that works well for the lower register and another that uses the higher register. Then using the two or three note approach in the playing, you get anywhere from four to six notes in your chord whilst still having space to breathe. And along those notes (see what I did there?), be careful that your low sounds don't get too muddy and your high sounds don't get too shrill.
Another factor that can play a role in the pad are effects, either inside the synth itself or using external effects (hardware or software). You can take a simple "vanilla" pad and add an effect to give it character. And yes, there are pad sounds that will already have effects as part of it ... or you can add, subtract and/or replace with your own. And on that note (I swear I'm not trying to be punny), you can always let the effect do one thing while you are playing it in a different way. For instance, you can have an ostinato pattern (like a rhythmic bass line) on a sound that uses a swell that occurs in its own way that has nothing to do with what you are playing. In this way, you create these parallels where what is being played and what is being heard at given time is out of phase/sync with each other and that can create interest.
If you are like me and like pads the same way some like their pumpkin pie slices - completely drenched in whipped cream - then you can get overboard with layering. There is the subtractive approach alluded to earlier. But another way to arrange it is to think about complements. So if you find a pad sound that is airy yet "frentic" (i.e. has some dynamic motion to it), then if you were to add another one, it should probably be one that doesn't have those qualities but rather something else, in this case maybe dense yet steady-state. In this way, you create a kind of super-pad, which also helps in giving something some grandeur to it, but it doesn't turn into a confusing mess.
At any rate, that's all for now =D
Have you played around much with EQing pads, so that they're staying out of each others' ways, but you're also just creating a giant Dagwood-sandwich's-worth of pads? I could imagine that being a lot for the listener to process, so on the one hand I could see that falling under "a confusing mess", but at the same time the individual elements could still all be individually identifiable.
That said, since as Mr. Jones noted, pads can take up a lot of space, maybe the individual pads *would* lose quite a bit in that sandwiching process. (I'd imagine it would depend on the individual pads how much this would be true, but I don't know if that would be more or less common.)
@@FGCLovesYou If you choose your sounds correctly - including what registers are used - you can have multiple pads going on where they are work together and there is some distinction between each of them to be noticeable. From personal experience, I find that you can “get away” with up to eight of these layers. Most of the time, I probably have two. But no matter the number, I pick them because there’s a quality in each one I like to have present and if I can hear that quality, that’s enough.
I employ EQ on that level really to deal with things like harshness or unwanted frequencies and maybe if I think something needs to be cut or boosted. I really don’t like hearing the word “separation” when talking about mixing as it is a gross contradiction. Mixing is about making sure everything works together to make a bigger cohesive whole. Now making sure distinct elements across different types are clear is one thing (i.e. vocals from guitars or drums from bass, etc.). But making like elements within a type distinct from
each other is the equivalent of saying “I want to make sure I hear every single cellist in an orchestra”. Also doing too much “EQ carving” will probably end up sounding like aural Swiss cheese.
In my own work, A Night of Ephemeral Transcendence has several multiple pad moments. The second track in particular is a dense amorphous “drone” of sorts done to illustrate a particular situation and experience that beyond our notion of time and space.
boring is great. life is hectic.
Word
Sure, but there's boring and then there's *boring*
it is, and i figure this is why young ppl like the super mellow thing. if lots of music all sounds like the same mellow mood tho then ok but seeing live is extra boring like not in a good way i must add! or. i just like to move or i’m old
@@OrgaNik_Music yes, youre right. thats why i prefer boring.
All about that repetition
I've always thought using only two notes of a chord wasn't "artistic" enough or wasn't "good music", but thank you for making me feel not alone. Lol
Using simple chords/intervals well can definitely be more artistic than stacking up notes until it becomes harmonic mud!
If you are interested in classical music, check out Arvo Part's "Kyrie" from his "Missa Syllabica" - it is jaw droppingly beautiful and incredibly simple in its own way. Like an artist who has refined their piece to only a single exquisite line. Truly beautiful.
EDM artists do it all the time by playing just the root and seventh.. It's like an EDM power chord lol
Aren't two-note chords (root and fifth) called power chords? Staple in rock & metal and other styles?
@@talaniel Just me second guessing and doubting the music I make. Lol
Most ambient guitarists use only intervals. :)
Great little muse, and the advice is what we pad-lovers know but hate to admit - pads are addictive, to the point that they will turn your mix to a mush! I find that pad presets are often 'too much' - I don't blame the authors, they are trying to showcase the product. But less is more is always a good thing. It's amazing what you can do with a simple sound and some FX and modulation.
That said, I remain addicted to pads, using my choice of synth, Pigments, which has an infernally large amount of ways to noodle your way to oblivion (blissfully so though). One big strength of Pigments though is its modulations, and I think that's key - both macro-based, and hooked up to a bit of randomness. It's a profound thought to know that a sound will be unique whenever you press a key.
Don't even get me started on the generative power of Pigments sequencer. At this rate I'll turn into a noodle and my wife will have to roll me round while I gibber pseudo-random noise...
Thank you for existence & sharing knowledge.
Thanks for your experience.
🙏
I think the best way to learn how to handle FM without just making noise (unless you _want_ to make just noise, which is fine if that's you want) is to learn how to create square-ish and sawtooth-is waves using sine operators. This quickly teaches the limits between what sound "harmonious" and "noisy", and show how much feedback can help shape the sound. It's my favorite type of synthesis because it's very easy to create evolving sounds without having to keep testing limits and modulating tons of stuff in a wavetable, although wavetable is _also_ my favorite type of synthesis precisely because of that.
Another cool way to make pads that can fit a composition (without using synthesis) is to run plucks through a convolver reverb fed with some kind of noise (white or pink work pretty great), then turn up the wet dial and turn down the dry. Or you can keep both up, if you want both sounds together. It's also possible to route the signal to a FX channel equipped with a pitch shifter before the convolver, helping create a "shimmer" and pushing the pad out of the way of the melody.
... I really like pads, I guess.
Your setup @4:47 is soooo cool & inspiring. Thank you for being a) genuine, and 3) clear and simple. I purchased Pigments and utterly didn't know the vast capabilities of it - you've taught me so much. My favorite, among many, is what you teach about Subtractive = taking stuff out, vs cramming more in. So powerful... :) Subscribed w joy
I appreciate this content. Many music production channels focus too much on technique, turn this knob to here, automate this, etc. it's good to hear from a trained musician who can talk about the musicality aspect of music production. The inverse relationship between patch complexity and arrangement complexity is so intuitive but I wouldn't have thought of it without it being spelled out
Love the photography of your really cool instruments.
Pads are the shit. Why they aren’t louder in most mixes is beyond me
I too enjoy loud pads #normalizepadloudness
@@JamesonNathanJones what? I can't hear you over this massive pad! 🔊
Agreed - love the sound and using them like a drone or similar can color every other sound you put on top.
Nothing boring about that - boring is whatever the whole song is imo.
I love pads also. You can drift away and be self hypnotized by the sound, my Korg, MS 2000 does that nicely. I have owned synthesizers since 1976, huge fan. Love your videos. Love your knowledge, thank you.
Love you channel brother!
I got my start in classical music like you from an early age, and studied classical music performance in music school, only years later finding out that I was unfulfilled with the professional orchestra lifestyle after 15 years.
7 years later in 2023 I started experimenting with music production and discovered that I have never been more passionate with anything in my life than the way music production and sound design makes me feel.
I want to do this the rest of my life.
My first instrument was bass trombone, which I've played in everything from brass bands to ska punk via orchestra, big band and military band. I got into guitar, then synths, after my band called it a day. Now I'm returning to bass trombone with synth ( improvising over drones or sequences ), which is an exciting prospect/project.
@@unclebastard3691 Nice man, Improvisation is the ultimate form of creative freedom. Improvising over drones and sequences is a lot of fun! Don't ever stop playing!
Clicked around a couple other of your videos and was intrigued, but THIS was the one that I found nodding my head in agreement over and over again. Paused to subscribe halfway through the video. Looking forward to catching up on all your content and what's to come! Cheers.
Growing up ‘on the beach’, walking on the beach nearly every day the first 25 years of my life AND listening to a lot of ambient music (has the Echos radio show been on that long?!?) I understand the beauty of these ‘pads’ though I have never heard the term before today.
Thank you for the explanation.
This has helped me understand: I like these ambient background pads to start from or resolve to something familiar and natural but in the meantime moving into a strange world that somehow feels comfortable and familiar.
Another great video from a fantastic composer and creator
Something I started doing is using a more simple slightly energetic pad as one note in the chord and a more reverbed ambient pad as the rest of the chord. It adds texture to the chord you wouldn't normally get with just 1 pad
These videos are great! Thank you for making them.
As someone who has made hundreds of the synth pads found in Korg's plethora of workstations, this is a great video with lots of food for thought for all to munch on. Keep on sharing. :D
Thanks so much!
13:30 what a sound (!!!) - amazing! Thank you for this video.
I love the pads Tycho uses in his music. So nostalgic sounding.
Absolutely fantastic video, very informative whilst also being inspiring. Itching to get to my synths and mess around with pad designs
You are the person I have been waiting for. All of your videos are meeting my creative process at a time where I've improv'd myself sick, and I'm ready for something more meaningful and rich.
I love the piano patch on your iridium so much. Would you be willing to share that single piano patch for download? Finding a good synth piano is tricky. I love my iridium, but it is also a huge headache to dial in sometimes.
Another great video. Really love your music and your sound-design is sublime. Thank-you :)
Thanks for your comments. I totally agree with the subtraction (muting regions or dropping some frequency ranges) to make other elements more audible especially if there are textures that get buried under wide frequency range pads. I don't know what your thoughts are about evolving concepts that can be automated in DAW? I am thinking of gradual changes to reach different zones of the musical story, for instance a granularized delayed guitar arpeggio that doesn't sound anything like guitar but more like a pad with texture that evolves to where it is just a guitar arpeggio accompanied by bass, etc. very subtly so it creates breathing rooms for more acoustic minimalistic ambience and then evolves again to more expansions with layering orchestral, synth, rhythms, etc. I found those journey kind of reaching points and then moving to other lands in the journey gives me a sense of being very dynamic in the imagination level, so if it has that sort of behavior I don't get bored, but if there are lots of variations of textures put beside each other but don't relate together in a continuum of a story, it doesn't take me in a wholesome way to become a profound experience. What do you think?
Thank you so much for these very valuable insight on PADs. As I begin my journey of exploration of synths and ambient music, I feel that you put words on what bothers me sometimes in some ambient pieces, that feel "bloated" and going nowhere. I believe each piece should tell a story as complex or as simple as the artist's wants it to be and your "linear" approach to composition is nudging me the right way as to how to achieve it!
You earned my sub !
5:55 to be fair I have no idea how you can get rid of an instrument, unless you really hate it
I always love coming to the lunch pause to find one of your new videos. Thank you for all the effort you take to make them, and thank you for teaching and pushing us. Looking forward to the next lunch meet :)
Great insights and explanations on the interplay between sound design complexity versus composition.
I do the old brian eno method (before there were polyphonic synths), in that I layer one note at a time via my modular to build up soundscapes/chords. Gives variability to tone and timing. Esp great mixing 5U (higher fidelity) and eurorack.
A very simple trick I use with a smooth sine wave pad is to support the sustained chords of a Rhodes piano track. Doubling selected chords of the Rhodes track with the sine pad gives one the illusion that the Rhodes has much longer sustain than it really does.
Great tips. I find it really easy to make pads, and struggle with just about every other part of a track! One technique I don't think you mentioned is sampling, as in making your own sampled pads instead of using libraries. I make a lot of modular patches for this with VCV, record bits, then edit and loop 15-20 seconds into Pigments. Sometimes I make pads from reverb tails, or guitar into tons of granular delays. It's fairly easy and you end up with your own library of unique pad sounds that nobody else has.
My other thing at the moment is polyphonic modulation. For example if you're applying vibrato, instead of using a single global LFO, you have a different LFO on each note, or poly channel. It's subtle, but more like playing a chord on 3 or 4 different monosynths rather than one polysynth. I use VCV mainly, but Pigments can do this to an extent, and I think Bitwig can too. Once you start modulating filters and synth parameters like wavetable position etc per voice, you can get really complex evolving sounds.
We have EVERYTHING!!!! Cannot complain.
thank you so much this is so inspiring, looking forward to the video on subtractive arrangement, less is almost always better than more.
So glad I found your channel. Just starting out have so much to learn. Teach me im ready lol. Going to go through your back catalogue.
Brilliant video. Some of those pad sounds are epic! I skipped back a few times just to hear them again.
So good to discover your channel! - it crystallises a lot of things I’ve been thinking about and experimenting with for quite a while. Most of all is ‘I have all these amazing sounds; how do I make great music with them and not just a patch demo?’ Thanks!
Tony Anderson saying that whomever gets rid of their first synth is also a murderer hits so hard.
I'm sorry little Waldorf Blofeld. I miss you so much. Forgive me!
Man, that was a video full packed with insight. Thanks for the mighty gift
Comment for algorithm. + This is twice your videos have made me entirely rethink my approach. As a noodler and nothing more, it at least brings joy to try something new.
That's some really cool music. Gives me Ulrich Schnauss vibes, and that's right up my alley
Another great video Jameson. Thx
Thanks Gary
Nice, to find your Channel ❤ greetings from Cologne ✌️ Synthies are great. Using only digital ones. Have fun with your stuff, man.
Thanks for these insights, musical Gordon Freeman
I have no idea about synth or keyboard whatsoever but I enjoyed watching this nonsense
This sound in the background of your video is awesome
Also thank you for the ideas ! 💪
Addicted to pad sound here 😊😊 thanks for video
Love that bored out thumbnail, have to click the video when i see it 😄👍
It's just how my face is
such a good video right here. lots of great tips on not only pad design but implementing them within compositions!
Another thoughtful and insight filled video. Nice work.
wow, you have an actual gift, blessing, or super strict skillset of educating sound design. The ebook is great, thank you. Actually- I only posted to see if you photographed the synth pics found under MY SAMPLES page. They look incredible, and more should be filmed
Alessandro cortini &Your vid with tony Anderson made me buy the prophet 12 🙏🏼
Thank you 😃
Had been eyeing up the iridium but glad i went with Dave!
They are definitely the most complicated traditional synthesiser patch to make. I say traditional because as soon as you start getting into modular/generative and sequenced based patches it goes deeper.
0:55
Noodling is making music!
It's my main source of new ideas.
Done right it can be truly improvisational.
Remember, there are no wrong notes on a standard keyboard.
Just bad arrangements.
Fire up a sound that you find inspirational.
Hit record and noodle 'til you start repeating yourself or get bored.
Save and let simmer for a day or two.
Listen to it and massage the parts you like to taste.
Now you might just have something worth pursuing.
6:30
FM basics are not that hard.
If you’ve ever tuned a guitar by ear or set the beating between two synth oscillators,
you’ve used the pitch difference between two waveforms (interference),
creating a third, slower pulse (the difference frequency)
and a fourth, higher pitched (the sum frequency).
That is basic FM.
My theory is that the use of "operator" doesn’t label the oscillators,
because they can be a carrier (audio) or modulator or both depending on context (algorithm).
If you want to deep dive into FM,
I highly recommend Howard Masseys excellent The Complete DX7.
14:16
Is a statue of a deaf person necessarily deaf,
what about artistic freedom.
16:03
You could take it a step further by automating an EQ on the pad track.
Set a rather narrow notch and sweep it.
You’ll notice individual instruments(groups) “spring into life”
because the auditory masking disappears.
Right on the money about keeping it simple.
Leave space using space 😉
Please do more great stuff.
Very true. More complex patches need to be played simple musically. I’m a total Pad-head.
An operator is a combination of an oscillator and an envelope which controls its output volume (and thus the degree to which it modulates downstream oscillators). The term operator appears to come from Yamaha: Chowning did not use it in his thesis nor Stanford's patent.
Great video, great sounds, great music. Thanks!
Oh, and great video inside the video 👍
MIDI stacking, some secret weapon synths that are easy to find and quite cheap but the majority had no idea how to utilise them to their best are sure ways to breathe more life into your music than you ever thought possible etc….👌
I think a big part of it is starting with a chord progression and then making a pad to fit it, that way you have a sense of direction and purpose from the start
Rad video man, inspiring yet educational - cheers
Great tips. Thanks for sharing! 🥰
Ok, you're a genius. The audio in this video was perfectly resonating with a smartphone size device, namely, a smartphone lol (the Bluetooth didn't come on, how I noticed)
Nice advices. Agree with all of it 100%.
omg the description of pad loving nerdness is so much me too :D
Just found your channel- awesome stuff. Really enjoy that you speak on synthesis generalities while talking about specifics.
Thanks!
Lead instruments are the face of a track, pads are the soul
The problem is that many of the synth pads i hear don't have a soul, a simple example : so-called 'string pads' playing 3 note chords...it's like throwing a bucket of paint against a wall ( and call it Art)
Subscribed when you came clean... "Let's talk about synth because.... I'm a huge nerd"
Me too Jameson... me too.
LOVE PADS
That slide in with the chair in the beginning is such a great gag 😄
Huge pad fan, here. Thanks for this inspiring video.
Shout out for Pigments. Definitely my favorite VST.
Great video! Very helpful. I find myself in a budding love affair with pads, yet my execution often feels clumsy. This video has provided new perspectives. I will experiment upon your words. New subscriber. Keep it real.
Thank you for the solid advice, Jameson!
the track at 13:25 with the prophet was incredible
Gold content!!
Absolute 'golden advice!' Thank you so much.
This video was so enlightening. Im subbed.
A good substitute for synth pads I've found is lo-fi samples.
I am talking mellotron and orchestron sounds. Because of their unique and distorted sound, they fit perfectly with electronic music.
See for example Kraftwerk (ie radioactivity)
I actually love making lofi / ambient stuff with mellotron sounds, you can get some really cool textures cutting the everloving hell out of them with an EQ, like way more then you should ever cut so it sounds flat and distant, and then drown that bitch in Reverb, full wet, then cut the reverb properly.
Great video, thank you. Will shurely checkout your book and courses.
Awesome video. Pigments is definitely one of my favorites!
Thank you for your time. Most excellent!
I'm still playing with Microwave XT wavetables and never "made" music. Your Iridium sounds amazing! Thanks! 👍
That sound around 1:57 is amazing to me.
Now that I am completely working in a software studio environment anno 2024 (where I used to be a hardware synth player and composer in the past)... I am getting slightly jealous at your awesome collection of hardware synths. I suppose the grass is always greener on the other side....
Great tutorial thank you!
I really enjoyed this video, and James made me genuinely laugh, which was nice :) This is charming
An enlightening and enthusiasm inspiring video
Waldorf Iridium is an excellent Pad synthesizer.
Thanks for your video! Very inspiring! Do you have any clue how I can create the pad sound that you play at 13:24 on a Novation Summit or what VST do you use there? I love that sound.....