I want to sound like Biosphere

[jkoseattle]

For many years I've done almost exclusively orchestral and standard flavors of pop music, which Cakewalk and its plugins out of the box and EastWest Composer Cloud are all I've ever needed. Increasingly though, and especially in the last year or so, I've been drawn to ambient electronic music, the likes of Biosphere and Stars of the Lid and that sort of thing. I don't like beats, I'm only interested in the atmospheric ambient stuff.

And I realize that this is a genre of music I have no experience creating. For me it's always been pianos and orchestras and rhythm sections. But I might be interested in exploring making it, at least seeing if I find that kind of composition interesting. I don't want to spend any money, not because I'm strapped, but because I don't know yet whether this will stick, and I'd like to try it out using Cakewalk and whatever I already have or can get for free. 

So how might I go about this with plenty of Cakewalk and music and digital audio chops, but otherwise being a complete novice? I'm assuming the answer is it all depends, and could be a combination of field recordings, libraries, creating sounds from scratch, and audio distortion plugins, but where do I even start, to come up with something I like?

[rsinger]

Fripp and Eno used a lot of delay. Originally two tape decks spooled together. Many repeats. If you have delays with long delay times you have a start. Seven to ten seconds of delay time. I like Boz's Imperial Delay. If you don't have it, it's likely on sale. And long (ambient) reverb. A volume pedal or synth patches that swell. Melda's SuperLooper is nice for ambient stuff. Play sound on sound. I'm not familiar with Biosphere.

[Starship Krupa]

On 11/25/2024 at 10:04 AM, jkoseattle said:

especially in the last year or so, I've been drawn to ambient electronic music, the likes of Biosphere and Stars of the Lid and that sort of thing. I don't like beats, I'm only interested in the atmospheric ambient stuff.

Nice! There's a geek-out brewing here.😊 I'm into that kinda stuff, too. Not yet familiar with Biosphere and Stars of the Lid, but am checking them out now. It's a genre that's deliberately less about personae, so it can be hard to keep track of individual artists. I have a Google Keep page open all the time on my computers so that I can write down the names of songs and artists.

Where are you listening to it? I have some favorite labels and streaming stations. 9128.live is the streaming station for A Strangely Isolated Place Records and always has good stuff. Soma.fm's Deep Space One, Synphaera, and n5MD channels are good for inspiration. Also Drone Zone for the hardcore stuff.

I like some pulse and glitch thrown in, but sometimes, full on drone is my jam.

There are some instruments, freeware even, that I think will get you started.

My first piece of advice is to go immediately to Soundpaint and download their sampler/player and all of the free libraries. Adastra Ambiences and Free ASMR are particularly good, but all of them are useful. The engineers and sound designers are fans of ambient drone and their products are great for producers of such. Even if I hadn't gotten them for free, I'd consider their stuff to be the absolute top of the heap. I did purchase a library.

IMO, you could get going and do some great stuff with just what Soundpaint offers for free, but of course, there's plenty more out there.

Somerville Sounds Prototypes are great, especially Antiquarian Echoes.

For Kontakt (and Kontakt Player), there are gems in Fracture Sounds Blueprint Collection. Specifically Gentle Strings and Feedback Guitar, but listen to them all, they're free.

Westwood Instruments Roots Series has some goodies, I especially like Untold Strings.

Quiet Music have some freebies I've found useful.

Sample Science have a lot of stuff, I'd say their best freebie for ambient is Abstract Crystal Pads.

Elektronik Soundlabs has the classic Atmos 2. Don't know why it's no longer on their website, but they have other things like Padscape Lite and Arctic Dreams Lite.

Last but in no way least, A|A|S Swatches includes over 750 sounds, many of them pads and atmospheres from their Chromaphone, Ultra Analog VA-3, and String Studio VS-3 synths. These are some of the classiest sounds around.

For processing and rolling your own, there are plenty of FX that you can use to take your favorite sounds and warp/mold them into ambient instruments. As @rsinger said, long delay as used by, Eno and Fripp, who picked it up from Terry Riley, was one of the starting points. Long delay with just a tiny modulation of the delay time is one of my favorite tricks, and one you can do with the Sonitus delay, or really, almost any delay.

Try taking some of your sustained orchestral sounds like strings, wind, and brass ensembles and running them through Valhalla Supermassive.

Unplug.Red's CRMBL is a favorite free pitch shifting delay.

Glitchmachines' Fracture and Hysteresis are great for adding some texture.

Of course, this is just what you can get for free, my favorite plug-in houses for oddball FX are Glitchmachines, Unfiltered Audio, and Freakshow Industries. I have licenses for most of their products.

That should be enough to get you started.

When creating ambient music, I find that timbre is a hugely important element for carrying the feelings and intent. I call up a favorite instrument, usually one of the ones on this list, then start browsing patches and seeing if a timbre inspires something. Let my fingers wander. There's as much "discovery" in it, if not more, than there is "creation," if you get me. Rather than hearing a sound in my head and using my musical tools to bring it to life, I find myself listening for what the timbre has to say and then directing or molding it.

Other times, I'll come up with some changes on piano and then go in search of the perfect timbre for them.

It's so much fun, like playing in the sandbox was when I was a kiddo.

Please let me know what you think of my suggestions.

Also, maybe we could take this to the Production Techniques forum now that you have more tools?

Edited November 29 by Starship Krupa

[pwallie]

biosphere? here's Geir's gear list https://equipboard.com/pros/biosphere

 

 

Edited December 1 by pwallie

[Starship Krupa]

Wow, I'm checking out Stars of the Lid and they had my heart aching from the first...bar? Do we have "bars" in this kind of ambient?😄 First loop, maybe?

And then they fade into a sample of their doggy whining....this is soul music.

@jkoseattle, I can see why you find them inspiring.

It sounds like they're doing long looping using synths and sampled string instruments.

I also use movie and TV dialog samples, as did SotL. A problem that I ran into was that my samples were too good. As in crystal clear, sampled via loopback from Netflix from their original Pro Tool'd expensive mic'd studio perfection. My favorite tool for dustying up samples is XLN's RC-20. It's kind of the "industry standard" for that sort of thing. 

Cymatics' Origin is a free tool that has a subset of RC-20's feature set. If you want to stick with free, it's probably the best of the freeware that does what it does. iZotope Vinyl is also good.

I picked up RC-20 on sale for $39.95. That looks like a lot of money for what is for me a single-use effect that I could probably achieve by stringing a few of my huge toolbox of plug-ins together, but I made the "mistake" of trying a demo, and it got me where I wanted to go so quickly and easily that I knew it would be worth it.

[Starship Krupa]

Duplicate.

Edited Friday at 08:11 PM by Starship Krupa

[Amberwolf]

this kind of music sounds like what i used to make before i had any form of sequencer available (in the device or a computer), and just used some salvaged reel-to-reel decks and cassettes to record things to and loop and dub, back in the 80s. 

 

i haven't really done the kind of stuff i originally did in quite a while, so this thread is prompting me to try going back to that.  

 

 

i did a lot of it (have boxes of tapes that probably can't be played anymore) and was what i would sit down and play just one part of with usually just one keybaord (usually a little toy yamaha psr and later added a tg33 bolted to the top as a parallel sound source), at scifi conventions in the hallway or lobby or consuite, and sometimes had a little crowd.  poeple sometimes asked me when i would release a tape, but i didn't have money for that.

i got more complex with stuff once i got my used ensoniq eps16+ because it had an 8 track sequencer/editor in it, started trying stuff with drums and beats and songlike stuff, inspired by a local alternative rock band called the narrow way that i sometimes was a sort of roadie for to help setup/teardown.  some people that had been my audience before still liked my new stuff, some didn't. at cons id play usually more of the old type of stuff cuz it's hard to do multitracking in that environment since i have to make everything up as i go along (can't play the same thing a second time; i can't learn/memorize stuff like that). 

 

i eventually released a cd (the uncommon ground cd on http://amberwolf.bandcamp.com ) but it didn't sell even to those that had asked, but it had neaerly all new-style stuff, not really much of anything that was the older ambient type stuff i started out doing.  i couldn't really get any answers from anyone in the audiences as to which type of stuff they'd prefer, though.    i haven't played outside the house in a very long time (couple decades?) and couldn't do it anymore with the style i do now, but the more complex stuff i do these days i put up on the internet, and few people listen...maybe if i went back to my "roots" i'd get a bigger audience?

 

(i'd do the music even if no one heard it, but any creator / artist wants their stuff to be experienced by others...it's part of the ego that makes us do what we do, i think)

 

 

 

[jkoseattle]

Thanks everybody! I'm excited to try things out. I'm also realizing the kinds of things I DON'T like in the ambient world. Pretty much anything pre-2000 is too synthy for my taste, so most of Eno is out. Beats are right out. Drone for drone sake is ok but feels like a cop-out. Direct improv-to-tape is out. 

I'm going to start by sampling some favorite moments from Star Trek (original series of course) which was all about the scores if you ask me. Maybe this'll be my Christmas vacation project!

[jkoseattle]

On 12/4/2024 at 2:00 PM, Starship Krupa said:

And then they fade into a sample of their doggy whining....this is soul music.

I noticed just yesterday that right around when the dog is whining there's also some sort of metallic scraping noise that sounds a lot like the dog. I was impressed that they connected those two sounds.

[Amberwolf]

On 12/4/2024 at 10:47 PM, Amberwolf said:

this kind of music sounds like what i used to make before i had any form of sequencer available (in the device or a computer), and just used some salvaged reel-to-reel decks and cassettes to record things to and loop and dub, back in the 80s. 

 

i haven't really done the kind of stuff i originally did in quite a while, so this thread is prompting me to try going back to that.  

Jkoseattle, you probably won't like it based on your most recent posts above, but I went ahead and started trying to work on something kind of like what I'd like to do, though atm it is still on the way toward that.  

 

 

[jkoseattle]

Yeah, well that's pretty cool. I've got nothing against all the beats in that kind of music, just personally not my taste, (and imo that disqualifies it from being called "ambient" :-)). To be more specific I'm really not a fan of those sub-basement frequencies, the ones that cut through the sheet metal of cars at stop lights, so that overrides a lot else for me. Setting aside my personal distaste for that sound, I still think it's occupying too much of the sonic energy. Maybe try taking that low bass down a few notches, and also maybe have it play fewer notes. I think it might be stealing focus from everything else. The pan flute melodic thing and other higher-up sounds seem like they are trying to create a kind of spiritual high altitude Himalayan atmosphere, but the percussion is working against that vibe, bringing it down into the club, so to speak. Does that even make sense? Anyway, thanks for sharing!

[Amberwolf]

On 12/7/2024 at 9:18 AM, jkoseattle said:

Yeah, well that's pretty cool. I've got nothing against all the beats in that kind of music, just personally not my taste, (and imo that disqualifies it from being called "ambient" :-)).

Yeah, it's not really ambient (I started out trying to do that, but "couldn't help myself" after hearing some of the other clips available in the sets... 😊  After playing around with it I think I'm going to "branch" it into two "forks" (like software) and have this one and then one that's really ambient using the same main sounds and themes...but I haven't started that one yet. 

I replied to the rest in the thread for the song to keep all the info together for later reference. 

https://discuss.cakewalk.com/topic/83167-a-peek-over-the-wall-wip-looking-for-feedback/

EDIT: forgot to add that the updated version based on this and other feedback is also up there.  

Edited Sunday at 11:49 PM by Amberwolf

[Starship Krupa]

On 12/7/2024 at 8:18 AM, jkoseattle said:

've got nothing against all the beats in that kind of music, just personally not my taste, (and imo that disqualifies it from being called "ambient" :-))

Heh, it chafes me that music with beats is called "ambient," but unfortunately, Aphex Twin had to go and call his album Selected Ambient Works over 30 years ago. With that guy, it seems possible that he meant it as a goof, but whatever, the toothpaste is out of the tube. The record was innovative and influential, and probably so among many people who were not already familiar with existing ambient music. So when asked to describe what they were trying to do, people who dug Aphex Twin probably said, "ambient, like Aphex Twin ambient" and the press ran with it.

This is just my guess. For all I know, Richard D. James was uncharacteristically earnest and thought that all of the stuff was ambient music. I somehow doubt it, though. At the time, I had already been listening to Brian Eno for 10 years, and to me, Discreet Music was "ambient."

In my mind, Eno coined the term, or at least brought it to light, and it specifically meant music that can be appreciated at the edge of attentiveness. But preferably, also reward close listening, with the occasional "what's that?" moments mixed in.

To me, it's almost as if Throbbing Gristle's 20 Jazz Funk Greats had resulted in some strains of industrial noise subsequently coming under the banner of "jazz funk."

But it is what it is.

At least with the term "producer," it's become a term for someone who produces music, as in creates it rather than guides someone else in creating it.

But whatever, when the day is done, I want to make music that I would want to listen to, influenced by artists and styles I like. It's only when I'm called upon to hang a term on it that it becomes an issue. I call what I'm currently doing "electronica" because it's electronic, but a friend of mine who owns a record label listened to my first single in this vein and called it "90's ambient."

Whatever. We soldier on under our own banners. Mine's Superabbit music. And to me, it sounds like me.

[Amberwolf]

Some places have "ambient beats" as a category to put on what you upload.  

 

I have no idea what category to put my music under. I don't know what it is--I don't listen to much of anything out there anymore, so don't know what's similar.   I tend to just call it MotionPictureScenes, since that's what my mind does--it makes sounds to go along with scenes in my head.  

 

[Martin Schiff]

The majority of what I've been doing lately (all in Cakewalk or Sonar) I classify as ambient.  In fact, I'm working on a new one right now that I started on a 12-day cruise with my wife.

Starbirth Music

One of the ways I go about it is to start with an improvised bed that goes the length of time that I want the piece to be, and then I add other sounds on additional tracks until I like the way the whole piece sounds. 

Pads, bells and other similar sounds are used a lot. I sometimes use nature sounds, but I've pretty much gotten away from doing that lately. 

Much of my current stuff is ambient space music. I got a Roli Seaboard Rise 2 and using that with the included Equator 2 synth is a fantastically inspiring way to do ambient music. 

I know you said that you don't want to purchase anything, but Unify from pluginguru.com is a great way to combine sounds into awesome ambient mixes.  I use it on everything I do for the past couple of years.  They also have inexpensive libraries, some of which are great for ambient work. 

 

[Amberwolf]

Just for the sake of trying it, I rearranged some of the clips and tracks  of A Peek Over The Wall so I could just mute out all the bassline and most of the percussion, leaving just the slow stuff and accents, to make a "closer to ambient" version, over here:

To really become ambient it would need quite a bit of changes, and an underlying unifying bed-sound I haven't decided on.  It would need to not only fit what's there, but also fit the idea behind the song.  In that show, the opening is full of rushing air / wind as someone falls and falls and falls in their cocoon dream, so, probably that kind of thing, so there's a temporary bed of wind sound.  

I'm still working on the original "ambient beats" 😆 version but the above will probably be the basis of an extended full-on ambient version of it.