Master of polished, techy DnB Paul Bondy shows us how to create atmospheric soundscapes with samples. His better known as InsideInfo, has made tracks for the cream of DnB labels including Viper, Renegade Hardware and Critical. His soundscapes are as involved as his storming beats and bass, and in our exclusive video guide, he demonstrates how to make atmospheric pads with a few samples and some sophisticated processing.
Soundscapes effects?
Massive reverbs! Particularly Audio Ease Altiverb and Cubase's RoomWorks. He use the tape delay on Guitar Rig quite a bit; it's great when you automate some of the parameters such as Speed – you get mad pitchshifting.
Synths pads! processing and effects?
Alchemy is great for layered, textured pad sounds. Razor seems to have a really deep, wide and rich sound to it, which is great for pads. He recently started using D16 LuSH-101 for lots of things – you can get great multilayered analogue pads from it. He use Padshop Pro to add weird bits of granular interest too.
“I normally start by finding a nice chord to play with, then flick through some string or pad presets in a synth and tweak them around. I'll open a few different synths to build multiple layers of the pad, some playing high notes and some taking care of the lower, warmer sounds. Then I would add in a bit of random texture from a found sound or white noise element using Alchemy or Padshop."
Sounds kit?
He used a Zoom H4n. It's a great bit of kit; the sound quality is amazing for the price.
Tutorial Building an atmospheric pad
#1. Paul starts by using the Import Sample function of Steinberg's Padshop Pro to load up a field recording of a fireplace. At first only a single “grain" of the sound is used, so to play more of the sample, Paul turns up the Duration parameter and moves the sample start position to part of the sample where a particularly loud crackle can be heard.
#2. To increase the intensity of the sound, Paul turns the number of grains up to 8, which essentially means that eight voices will play back at once. The start position of each grain can be randomised, and Paul turns the Random parameter up to 69%. This wide range combined with the high number of voices creates a more continuous crackling sound.
#3. The duration Spread and global Spread are turned up, increasing the stereo width. The overall Pitch is brought down to -8 semitones, and random pitch Spread is set to 8.52 semitones. The result is a rich ambience with stereo width and plenty of interest in the high end. Paul likes the sound played higher up the keyboard, so he records this as MIDI.
#4. The fire atmosphere is interesting, but it doesn't have a discernible pitch. To create something more tonal, Paul brings up Camel Audio's Alchemy and loads up a field recording of a metal cup being tapped onto the first oscillator with Granular mode selected.
#5. Paul sets the granular Stretch to 0%, which sustains the sound indefinitely. The grain Size is set at 182ms so that just a small portion of the sample can be heard, and the grain Density (again, analogous to a synth's voices) is turned up to 8. RPan (random pan offset) is turned up to 69% to increase the sound's stereo width.
#6. The Position knob controls where the sound plays from, and with such a small grain size, this has a big effect on the overall timbre. Paul sets it to 8.5 to get a smoother sound, then records a sustained MIDI chord. Padshop Pro's channel is highpassed at 12kHz so that only the high-end is heard. Both channels are sent to a group and doused with reverb.
#7. Another instance of Alchemy is loaded up, and this time a sung female vocal sample is loaded up in Additive + Spectral mode. Paul increases the number of voice oscillators to 143, to get a richer feel, and turns down the pitch variation to 6% to get a more monotone sound, which causes the voice to adhere to a single pitch rather than performing a sung phrase.
#8. Paul adds Alchemy's built-in CamelVerb effect and turns its Size up to get a bigger sound. Finally, Stretch is turned down to 16% so that the vocal takes much longer to play. “Anything goes with this – you can literally throw any sound in there, and if you stretch it about enough and put enough reverb on it, you'll end up with something worth putting into an atmosphere!" Paul enthuses.
