How To Make Dark Ambient Music

2020. 1. 24. 19:04카테고리 없음

How To Make Dark Ambient Music
  1. Best Dark Ambient Music

Inspired by the likes of Philip Glass and Brian Eno, ambient music is as much about creating mood as it is creating melody.Fortunately, computer users can now call upon an arsenal of ambient-friendly production tools - MusicRadar is here to explain what they are and how to use them.1. If all the soft sounds and smooth vibes get a little too much, try some juxtaposition. Ambient heroes The Orb are fond of this technique, and whether it's a squealing guitar, devastating synth hit or ridiculous vocal sample, they're not afraid to toss something a little unusual into the mix.2. Getting off-the-wall sounds doesn't have to involve spending hundreds on sample downloads and libraries - there are plenty of interesting sounds happening all around us all the time. If you've got a mic and a laptop - or any portable recorder - take a field trip and record some of nature's bounty. Running water's always good for a laugh, but remember: your equipment should stay dry, even if you don't3.

Dark Ambient - Royalty free music tracks Mystical, mysterious minimal underscore with just a deep drone and few scattered piano notes.

How To Make Dark Ambient Music
  • Dark and eerie, mysterious and uneasy ambient video game music with suspense strings, scary celesta notes, sinister piano chords, slow drums, trumpets, and flute melodies, and other retro samples. If you’re making a 16-bit video game with scary and mysterious settings or are working on cyberpunk and sci-fi themed retro game, this royalty-free music loop will work wonders as background music for your game.
  • What would you use to create ambient/drone/dark ambient type music? (self.WeAreTheMusicMakers) submitted 3 years ago by deleted When I say ambient I do not mean chill out/trip hop ambient I mean the kind of soundscapes you would expect to hear in a game or film such as silent hill, subtle but you are still aware of it.

Second-hand record shops are great places to find sounds. You may even find that your local charity shop has an untapped collection of oddities just waiting to be snapped up by the enterprising samplist. From records featuring nothing but steam engine noises to children's story albums, there's an abundance of weirdness out there for the taking.4.

Samples are a constant source of inspiration, but it's easy to discount one because it doesn't fit the feel of your track when you first try it. If you're short on fresh ideas, try running short bursts of a sample through a delay effect. Using this method, it's possible to come up with some great abstract noises that sound nothing like the original source material.5. If your tracks are jam-packed full of synthetic-sounding virtual instrument patches and everything's starting to sound too 'computery', consider bringing in some natural sounds or using a few real instrument parts. Even if they're from ROMplers, it should help take some of the unnatural edge off.6. Recordings of natural sounds such as rainfall, waves, wind and fire are great for filling out a mix because they're basically noise, and as such, they have a wide range of frequencies. They shouldn't be too loud or they'll overpower the mix, but use them with care and they can be extremely useful.7.

Noise is a useful synthesis tool - if your synth features a noise oscillator, you can use it with a fast-attack amplitude envelope to create your own percussion sounds. This sounds artificial, but in a lo-fi way, and works especially well when teamed with a high-quality reverb.8. If you're using long, sustained sounds, such as pads, your mix can lack movement if these elements are too static. By subtly altering tuning, pulse width or filter cutoff over time, you can create more organic sounds that will enhance the mix rather than make it sound lifeless.' Recordings of natural sounds such as rainfall, waves, wind and fire are great for filling out a mix because they're basically noise'9. If you've got a sample that you want to play for longer than its duration, you have two basic options: you could timestretch it, which will most likely introduce unwanted audio artifacts, or loop it. Crossfade looping is the best way to get seamless loops, but if this isn't possible, you can recreate the effect yourself by fading between two audio tracks in your mixer.10.

To make a pad sound particularly evocative, try modulating the filter cutoff with a shallow LFO as well as a big, sweeping envelope. This will give the sound a great deal of movement and works superbly when combined with a delay effect.11. When working with vocals, you can have a lot of fun with pitchshifting. When pitching vocals around, it helps to use a plug-in with a formant control - this helps vocals retain their characteristics or, conversely, can be used to alter them radically. Check out, a lo-fi formant processor.12. With modern audio sequencers, it's easier than ever to cut up vocals and other rhythmic sounds in order to fit them in with the groove of your track.

When cutting sounds up in your sequencer, remember to zoom in to make sure you're cutting the file at a point where the amplitude is zero - otherwise known as a 'zero crossing'.13. When deploying your newly-sliced rhythmic samples, it's not always best to have your sequencer's snap control active. You might find that pulling samples forwards along the track a little makes them fit in better with the rest of the groove, and having the snap control turned off also makes programming human-sounding rhythms easier.14. Silky bass guitar tones are a common sound in ambient dub, but if you don't have a real bass guitar to hand, you'll have some trouble getting the same smooth sound. Bass ROMplers such as and are your best bets for recreating this kind of thing.15.

Whether you're composing in stereo or surround, it's important to use the available panoramic space properly if you want to create a sense of size. If your track has drums, you'll probably want to pan these around the centre, but with synths and effects you can afford to use the space more creatively, so try panning them around.16. Most DAWs have simple pan controls that only enable you to pick one position in the stereo panorama.

If you're looking for slightly more control, a stereo imaging plug-in such as or can be used to control the position and filter setting of each channel or tweak them as a mid/side pair, respectively.17. To add a natural stereo panorama to mono samples, you could do a lot worse than give a try. This effect uses a delay algorithm to create a convincing stereo effect that's guaranteed to revitalise any dodgy old mono sounds you might have lying around. Reverb is one of the most important tools you have for creating a sense of space, so if you're making ambient music, it pays to take the time to get it as sweet as you can. A good start is to use a high quality reverb - isn't just free, it's one of the best reverb plug-ins out there.19. It can be tempting to just stick reverb on a few tracks and leave it at that, but that wouldn't be using this powerful effect to its full potential.

Using high damping values, large room sizes and long reverb times will create a big sound that, when combined with judicious EQ, can create a 'far away' kind of effect.20. When using reverbs, if you want to create a softer, more ethereal effect, use less of the dry signal in the output. You can do this by turning the wet/dry ratio up, or, if you're using a send effect, by setting it to pre-fader and turning the source channel's main volume level down.21.

If you'd rather have a brighter, closer effect, then make the reverb's damping less severe, reduce the room size and turn down the delay time. This works especially well in conjunction with stereo enhancer effects such as the Voxengo Stereo Touch plug-in.22.

Many interesting effects can be created by rendering out reverb and delay tails minus the original dry sound, then applying creative processing to the tail. Filters work particularly well for this kind of thing and, once processed, the new sound can be played back alongside the original version, or replace it altogether.23. Finally, when programming synth patches, don't discount the creative potential of your instrument's reverb section.

With a long, lush reverb, even the smallest synth squelches or blips can be turned into pleasingly tonal atmospheric effects. Of course, if your synth effects truly suck, you can always use a separate reverb or delay plug-in instead to create the same effects. Delay is a pretty common effect in atmospheric music like ambient, but for ambient dub, a full-on feedback delay, such as, is just the thing.25.

Dynamic use of feedback delay is useful for creating long, evolving rhythmic effects. By automating the feedback control on a delay plug-in, you can build to a crescendo or create weird rhythmic effects.26. Getting that distinctive morphing dub delay effect can be done by adding either a filter or distortion component to the feedback loop - easily done in OhmBoyz, as it has both. If you're using a delay effect in Reaktor or another modular environment, you can add these elements yourself, though it's advisable to put a level limiter after them to ensure the feedback doesn't get out of control.27.

Delay effects work well before a reverb, though too much of either will swamp the mix. However, it's possible to tame these effects with automation - set the reverb's wet level to 0%, automating it so that it comes up as the end of the delay tail is playing. This way, you'll be able to use both the delay and the reverb, without having too much of either going on at once. As an advanced alternative, you could use sidechain compression to duck the start of the reverb (using the source signal as the key input), and setting the release time appropriately, thus achieving the same effect automatically.

Best Dark Ambient Music

Ambient is the de-emphasis of traditional melody, rhythm, and form and the emphasis and exploration of sonic characteristics such as timbre and texture.Guidelines to posting:. Please refrain from posting rhythmic music and beats. These will most likely be removed.Submission source:-Try and submit high-quality material/original sources such as Soundcloud and Bandcamp. YT links are allowed but not preferred due to transcoding issues, poor album experiences, and inconsistent tags/collections/etc.-Spotify links will be removed as it requires an account and is not universally available. Only links that are only on Spotify can remain.Original works are allowed.

No need to indicate that it's original. However, overly frequent posts might be removed as this tends to be a slow sub.Try and help others discover new artists rather than posting genre standards such as Stars of the Lid, Tim Hecker, Aphex Twin, William Basinski, Brian Eno, Gas, etc. (New works from these artists are allowed.).ASMR and other non-music will likely be removed as there's plenty of other appropriate places for that.Drone music and field recordings are welcome. For music that doesn't de-emphasize melody, rhythm, and form but incorporates ambient elements or is similar to ambient such as, ambient techno, or, please visit their respective subreddits or try and, for more general ambient subs.Please report any content you feel doesn't belong here and message the mods if not removed after 12 hours.Other related subs:. Start by listening. Then listen some more. There's really no definite right or wrong way to do it.

There are people who make ambient music with guitars and digital delays. There are people who use synthesizers and lots of reverb. There are people who use field recordings processed in post production.

There are people who do it on their phones and tablets. Without you having indicated any criteria for what sort of sound you are looking for or what kind of ambient music you like personally it's obviously a bit difficult for me to give you any specific advice. I like soundscapes. I like to hear something that is atmospheric and makes me visualize a space.

I like to be carried away into that space. Maybe even this happens so subtly that I forget I am even listening to a composed piece.

But most importantly don't fuck it all up by adding some jarring breakbeat that comes out of nowhere. Edited minor typos, because I am weird like that.

I always make that mistake of not noticing a reply wasn't from the OP. But I am pleased you liked it anyways. I could probably ramble on for quite a while on the topic but his question just seemed so vague it seemed like a good place to start from. It's a world of difference from Steve Roach to Tim Heckler. I think it's very important to figure out where your head is at before you start creating anything and this might go doubly-so for ambient music.

I'm not saying you need to light incense and meditate in a lotus position or anything like that but then again that certainly couldn't hurt depending on what you are trying to do. Start by listening.This is exactly what I came here to say, thank you. My journey into ambient started with having my mind blown pretty exclusively by Music For Airports and The Disintegration Loops before I decided to check out other stuff. They blew my mind because I have ALWAYS listened to music to go to sleep and it seemed like I had finally discovered music that had been designed for that purpose. Tim Hecker and Ben Frost are some of my favorite musicians now and I appreciate how dense and varied their (sometimes collaborative) work it. I think listening to other genres is really important to.

Listening to music in general is important because I think you can go to school for music, or audio production, or art, or whatever. But the only thing that can teach you what your palette of colors to use in making music is your ear. Are your best friends. This works especially well with instruments with a long sustain or release.If you are a guitar player, has a whole youtube playlist dedicated to ambient guitar techniques that can be applied to a variety of instruments.Check out for lots of royalty free samples of odds and ends. It won't get you the same feeling as walking through a vinyl shop looking for something special but people often dump a lot of their raw field recordings there. It is a great resource if you want to do granular synthesis.I have found that a good motivator is to try and make music that you want to hear but can't find. Technically speaking, ambient music can be made with anything.

It's not necessarily about what you're using as to how you're using it. My experience has been that ambient as a genre involves allowing whatever sounds you're using to expand and change on their own. You use a measure of patience to let things breathe naturally and not rush to the next note.So you can make ambient with a guitar and some effects pedals, a synthesizer, computer software (I personally use FL Studio and Audacity for a lot of ), or even field recordings.So if you got some software to make some sounds, the best thing to do is to explore the possibility of every sound at your disposal.

Just do what feels right to you. There's no right or wrong way to make ambient music. And it can run from a single sound that's allowed to drone on for several minutes to several layers constantly interacting with each other and weaving a tapestry of sound. You can do whatever you want. The song I have over ten thousand likes was based on a sort of John Cage chance operation.

I had a deck of cards and each card number represented the note, the suit of the card represented instrument and the amount of cards to hit reset on that particular note represented the length of time. I really had nothing to do with the song and let the order of the playing cards determine the instrumentation, notes and lengths and it is my most popular song.Either way, the point being is that you can basically do anything you want. One rule I tend to stick to though is if there is any rhythm whatsoever I try to keep it under 60 beats per minute. Which is really hard to do sometimes.

How To Make Dark Ambient Music