Using a release value that is too long however can cause an unusual sound when changing notes or chords due to end of one sequence playing over the next. This can cause a muddy and sometimes clashing effect. Hear the differences between a short and long decay below, and how they overlap with the sections that follow. It is important to consider the overall sound you are going for when tweaking your ADSR parameters.
For example, it may be that you want a dreamy effect with a short break in sound between chords, in which case a slow attack and fast release will suit your needs. It may be that you only want one long sustained note, but you need it to start on the first beat of a bar in which case a faster attack may be used but the softer timbre of a long sustain and slow-release will fill out your sound. Interviews See All. Is Tape Undergoing A Renaissance?
Editorial See All. Led Zeppelin vs. The Results. Ask The Hive. Choose the pitch of an oscillator as the target of your modulation and pick a sine or triangle as the modulation source.
If you are looking for a Boards of Canada type of vibe, do go overboard with vibrato. A nice addition is to modulate both oscillator pitches with a different LFO amount or speed. First you hear the static waveforms, then the pad with one oscillator detuned. The last version adds vibrato through a LFO.
Use a second LFO with a different rate for another modulation target to add even more movement. Wavetable gives you the option to modulate the wave shape of the oscillators. Finally, use envelopes to shape your pad sound. A pad sound normally fades in and out, so choose medium to long attack times for the attack and release of the amplitude envelope.
A pad can open up a mix by widening the stereo image. Many digital synths have the option to spread voices using unison. In older synths, unison was used to stack different versions of the same voice on top of each other, each voice detuned slightly. Unison in modern synths often means that every voice is additionally panned to alternating stereo channels. A word of caution: widening your stereo image can yield phase issues.
An amplitude envelope is applied to the pad and complex modulation curves change the wavetable position. A filter envelope modulates the onboard filter in Wavetable. A low cut EQ has been applied for a darker sound. Finally, stereo widening is achieved by using the Classic unison mode in Wavetable. A nice tip is to play with EQ in your arrangement. In a verse, cut off the high end of your pad and add those frequencies back when you get to the chorus.
For an electronic music track, use the drop to let your pad shine in all its glory, but filter the pad once the lead sound and beats come in again. Another tip is to add some white or pink noise in the chorus of a song.
This makes the pad stand out even more, a technique used in many pop productions. To get your inner Flume going, add volume automation to pads to make them part of the rhythm section.
Not all pad sounds need to be sustained, though, because sometimes more rhythmic parts are called for. In upbeat productions, for instance, a simple rhythmic repetition of synth chords can help reinforce the track's groove and increase clarity. Or you may want more chordal information or stereo width from a rhythm guitar or keyboard part, but without any extra sustain — in which case duplicating the rhythm part with shorter and perhaps more naturally decaying pad notes is likely to prove more successful than a traditional sustained pad.
Most of the time when pads are added to an arrangement, part of the attraction is how synths can expand the apparent span of the stereo image.
Panning is also exaggerated for headphone listeners, for whom panning locations at the extremes of the stereo field can feel disconnected from the mix as a whole. However, these difficulties rarely concern pads, because they don't perform any real musical function.
Who cares if they lose definition, or even disappear completely, in mono? Hence you can give a much freer rein to your stereo widening effects on pad sounds. Although this method isn't that commonly used for important musical parts — because of the rather diffuse way it smears the frequency content across the stereo image — it can still be very effective for pads.
This is a screenshot from a Mix Rescue remix session that happened to use a number of several different pad sounds. Notice how the levels of the pads are automated with both region envelopes and level automation, to provide the maximum enhancement of the mix sonics while at the same time avoiding the pads becoming too clearly perceptible in their own right.
In fact, it's often unwise to add such effects, because any effect tail will tend to make your chord changes appear sluggish — and may even give away the presence of a 'synth sweetener' that you're keen to keep under cover. Balancing the pad in the track is not without its pitfalls, though. It's rare these days that anyone wants synth pads to be clearly audible in the mix, and usually the biggest challenge in balancing them is to keep their sound as far out of earshot as possible, while still retaining some vestige of their euphonic effects.
In this respect, the current attitude towards mixing pads has much in common with contemporary approaches towards reverb: if you can hear it, it's too loud! This is where automation can be a real friend, because it enables you to fade down the pads wherever a thinner texture might expose their presence, while still keeping them at a decent level when you're aiming for maximum warmth and width during choruses.
EQ is an important tool, of course, as I've already mentioned, especially if you're in the position of having little control over the setup of the original sound source. The only addendum I'd make to my previous advice is that it's rare, in my experience, for pad energy below about Hz to be useful for most mixes — because it'll usually just cloud things and make the mix woolly.
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