how... those 90's atmospheric dnb pads?

djdizzy

djdizzy

Active Member
Joined
Jun 7, 2012
Location
Atlanta, GA
how to get those amazing 90's atmospheric dnb pads?

i've spent countless hours trying and failing to come up with anything remotely close to the types of pads you'd hear in 90's atmospheric dnb, all of my attempts come out sounding straight up weird or too trancey. some of the examples are layered so i tried to point out which pad sound. these are different kinds of pads, so these examples are more of a point of reference.... or to you fellow old skoolers here's a refresher

DP - Motions
beautiful, sounds like a simple filter sweep on the sound every so often then it sustains with a little bit of a LPF trimming off the highs but i'll be damned if i can get anything close to sounding like the actual sound

Funky Technicians - Classified
very lush pad that loops over itself with a long sustain at the end, similar in a way to the pad in the DP song as far as it sounding like it has a filter sweep but as for the actual sound itself, no idea where to begin

Intense - Only You
the very beginning sounds like some fx thrown on a vocal loop like a heavy reverb and another layer of something, disregard that. but at the 4-5 second mark you hear a pad creep in with a slow attack
 
Last edited by a moderator:
anyway, you can make a pad out of almost anything. upload a sound of your choice and i'll try and make a pad out of it.
 
here you go. it was slightly tricky because the harmonics in the sample forces everything into a minor key and there's not many places to go.

doomy droney pad

https://soundcloud.com/https%3A%2F%2Fsoundcloud.com%2Fdndforumpadtest%2Fpad


and with break
https://soundcloud.com/https%3A%2F%2Fsoundcloud.com%2Fdndforumpadtest%2Fpad-with-break


i just picked 3 different sections of the sample and put a tight loop round them, (about 1.5 seconds) and made it alternate-reverse loop when playing. then played simple chords with them all. Added autopanning, delay , reverb and chorus to all.

it's not very pretty but it shows you can get elongated sounds out of even the most inhospitable source material.

- - - Updated - - -

by the way, if you want a bunch of old school pads there loads in this free sample pack i put up last year

www.blumarten.com/home/junglejungle-1989-1999-samplepack
 
that is nice, you both focused on two different sides of pad making, blumarten got the twinkley bits down and underspawn made swelling chords. very nice. could be i have a go too, who knows. we can compare dicks. i didnt check the original sample yet but i might add to this thread tomorrow, everybody else on here should too, be fun, a bit of communal compétition.

speaking of compos, the new dnbforum producers competition is coming up, sample pack is soon ready, and the theme is apocalyptic-industrial, with the added rules that you can record any kind of industrial samples, or vocals, of any kind, that you like.

so get ready for freddy, cos thats jumping off next week! usually subprime that wins anyway, but this time the prize is an analog distortion pedal!
 
Wicked stuff guys really inspiring! The alternate-reverse loop function on kontakt is a real winner for me in terms of learning something new that's massively valuable, really need to start delving into kontakt more, big ups all!
 
thedjnifty said:
Would be great if you could briefly describe what you do to the sample to turn it into a pad as well, cheers!
Click to expand...

Should have said more really. I used Ableton sampler like I said, but sure all the functions will translate, Kontakt sounds like a bad ass piece of kit.

So Imported the sample, I cut it in half I think, then loaded it into Ableton Sampler.
I added an Filter envelope with a Hi Pass filter.
I added a very quick Pitch envelope of 7 semi tones, decay of about 500ms, 0 sustain.
I think I also threw on an LFO on the Filter cutoff in the sampler.
I put a reverb after it with a decent sized decay, and a simple delay after that, where I cranked the feedback a little to about 50%.
Atfer that, I sequenced a a 2 bar note, and also layered it with one an octave and one 2 octaves above. Loop de loop and voila.
 
There's a neat vst-i out there called Proteus VX. A lot of producers back in the day used the hardware it's based on, some probably still use them today. Loaded with some great samples you can edit to just about anything you want.

Theoretically speaking, I know my process usually starts with a pad. The bass trick of splitting edits on a per-note basis for the low, mids and hi freqs, I actually do a bit of that with my own pads. Do different subtle movements on each note, check them against each other and balance everything out to make sure it's sounding in concert. Seems to work pretty well for me.
 
Sorry for the bump, but does the recording have to be in key with track or not?? Thanks BMT, really found the video quite helpful :)
 
practice practice practice!!!

Personally one example is you make a reese bass and add a low pass filter and with the resonance play with how much your mids and bass and entire sound resonate out then add whatever effects are good and work with it! Chorus, or delay, etc!

I highly reccomend Swamp XT for the spookier sounds and Crystal is an amazing vst with such amazing lazy buttons, and such wide and great functionality for what you would want if you want to custom make a sound besides lazy.
 
Back
Top Bottom