Sound Designing a pad synth
 

Have you ever searched an entire bank and you just can't find the sound you are looking for?

Well I'm at that point now and need to add a killer pad into my track. Right now I have the foundations and I'm rolling...but I just can't seem to find that pad I need.

SO I'm going to have to sound design this one and try my best.

Can someone assist me on how to start this? I'm a bit a lost, but if I can explain it would be a mid-high pad that has ambience and gives a sense of mystery to a dark track.

I'm thinking to start with the an LFO 1/1 and two OSC one for mid and the other for HIGH...and of course filtered and add some nice effects.

Well...if you can help that would be great...thanks :)

Reverse engineer some sounds that have aspects of the character you are after by switching off bits to understand what they contribute to the final sound.

The best pads were contructed by finding a sound that had the right tonal characteristics then abusing it with loads of delays, reverb, shaping and layering over other effects to add space and motion. The original sound could have been something as un-pad like as someone beating a trash can.

So dont just look for pad sounds in your search - look for the timbre you are after then start tweaking.

Yerp, you can turn just about any patch into a pad purely by whacking up the attack and release.

Try layering, too, using several patches, EQd.

http://trance.nu/v3/article_show.php?id=138

thats a good tutorial to start with.

you want to take a sound and put it just almost kinda sorta just about out of tune, but still keep it thick, that way you will get a great thick sound that can get filtered really well.

lots of unison, lots of detune: you can use the filter envelope settings like that tutorial says to get a standard pad whoooosh.

But explore which parameters you use to get that whoooosh of a pad, expand by changing only one parameter at a time, try to get dramatic effects, that is the most efficient and productive way to approach learning synth programming. At least, it was for me.

hope that helps ya!