once again, another question on pads.

Try playing about with the reverb, long reverb and then turn the dry down and the wet up. that can give you a hollow airy sound.
 
Pads are one of my favorite parts of EDM, to make at least, layer things up, multioctave chords, sweeping filters (bandpass/notch/hi/low) loads of reverb, delays...experiment! automate EVERYTHING :D

for 'air'...10-15khz is where you want to focus, try a fat bandpass notch 200-500hz for less warmth and then gently bring up the top end
 
I reckon that sounds like it's been time-stretched as well.
Putting a big hit through a load of reverb (and delay?), render, stretch it twice as long (or more), reverse. Run it through reverb again? Ya know that sort of audio mashing will give unnatural pad sounds.

Ps, not saying that's gonna sound like your example, just things to try.
 
the thing is, I do experiment, but all my chords will inevitably end up sounding too major and not ambiguous like the sot of sound i'm aiming for
 
the thing is, I do experiment, but all my chords will inevitably end up sounding too major and not ambiguous like the sot of sound i'm aiming for

look up some chords/scales on the web....or use a Chord generator, ableton has one built in under 'midi effects', cheap way to get ideas down, not the easiest or best way to write melodic stuff tho imo
 
look up some chords/scales on the web....or use a Chord generator, ableton has one built in under 'midi effects', cheap way to get ideas down, not the easiest or best way to write melodic stuff tho imo

But I guess that could work quite well if im not looking for melody, but more atmosphere. I'll give it a go :)
 
Oh yeah always use chords for pads, gives much more depth. Some music theory will help but if not, start by laying down the single note riff then double, triple, etc the notes. Also to give more flow to the sound, if a note is the same in the next chord, don't have the note play again but have it lead from the previous chord. Also for realism, don't have any chord stop on a particular mark, but stretch each note at varying end lengths.
 
my method is pretty simple, generate some pink noise, filtersweep (bp or hp) it and reverb the shit out of it. ill usually only use the reverb. layer with cave noises, wind, thunder, train ambience recordings, loop that, repeat and timestretch the shit out of it if it didnt work. drones are fun. there is also a vst to do it for you of course. called drono i think, its in revtechs vst thread from the other day
 
btw, that sample above sounds like a sampled downsweep with a slow attack and long release but wouldn't be overly hard to make as doesn't really have much of a tone.
 
a drone is quite a specific type of sound, its a single note which doesnt change frequency (no chord/note changes at all), but rezonates with other notes playing along with it, eg Sitars and Bagpipes both use a Drone, there are few synths that offer that kind of rezonance crossover unfortunetly (although Absynth does a half decent job) but you can fake it a bit, and it doesnt have to resonate with anything to 'drone'
 
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