How should I go about making ambient music?

I want to make floaty sounds, but I just don't know where to start.

You guys are the smartest people in the world, so help me out.

Make a pretty 32 bar loop with whatever music program you like. Granulab-erise it, then use it as an amazing textureey pad in whatever music program you like.

Your information

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My Head

I can't make ambient music because I'm can't get my head around it.

I have to make something with a beat, bassline and melody.

there are tons of ez tools to make it.. the question is whether you want to make typical drone music (just fiddle around with TONS of reverb until it sounds nice and can be looped for like 10 minutes) or a really good ambient track. really nice ambient works with lots of changes and seemingly constantly evolving, is very difficult to make. But try experimenting until you find that things fit together.

Make floaty sounds? Uh, any freeware VST with some cutoff plus reverb?

Take sleeping pills and fight sleep while playing with an electronic music making mechanism.

That is the very gateway into ambient music making.

Make a normal track, remove the beats, mute half the synths, then add fuck-tons of reverb. Easy-peasy!

put your hand in a blender

turn the blender on

turn on computer

make a track

add reverb

tada~

press the Cmajor chord on your midi keyboard or punch the notes (CGE) in to your midi sequencer then fuck around with the ADSR...

"ADSR"

Attack How quickly the sound reaches full volume after the sound is activated (the key is pressed). For most mechanical instruments, this period is virtually instantaneous. However, for some popular synthesized "voices" that don't mimic real instruments, this parameter is slowed down. 'Slow attack' is commonly part of sounds called 'pads'.

Decay: How quickly the sound drops to the sustain level after the initial peak.

Sustain: The "constant" volume that the sound takes after decay until the note is released. Note that this parameter specifies a volume level rather than a time period.

Release: How quickly the sound fades when a note ends (the key is released). Often, this time is very short. An example where the release is longer might be a percussion instrument like a glockenspiel, or a piano with the sustain pedal pressed.then have a play around with Some Reverb. here are the types of reverb

Chamber reverberators

The first reverb effects created for recordings used a real physical space as a natural echo chamber. A loudspeaker would play the sound, and then a microphone would pick it up again, including the effects of reverb. Whilst this is still a valid technique, it requires a dedicated soundproofed room, and varying the reverb time is difficult.

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Plate reverberators

A plate reverb system uses an electromechanical transducer, similar to the driver in a loudspeaker, to create vibration in a plate of sheet metal. A pickup captures the vibrations as they bounce across the plate, and the result is outputted as an audio signal.

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Spring reverberators

A spring reverb system uses a transducer at one end of a spring and a pickup at the other, similar to those used in plate reverbs, to create and capture vibrations within a metal spring. Guitar amplifiers frequently incorporate spring reverbs due to their compact construction. Spring reverberators were once widely used in semi-professional recording due to their modest cost and small size. Due to quality problems and better dsp based reverbs, spring reverberators are declining rapidly in use.

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Digital reverberators

Digital reverberators use various signal processing algorithms in order to create the reverb effect. Since reverberation is essentially caused by a very large number of echoes, simple DSPs use multiple delay circuits and feedback to create a large, decaying series of echoes that die out over time. More advanced digital reverb generators can simulate the time and frequency domain responses of real rooms (based upon room dimensions, adsorption and other properties). In real music halls, the direct sound always arrives at the listeners ear first because it follows the shortest path. Shortly after the direct sound, the reverberant sound arrives. The time between the two is called the arrival time gap. This gap is important in recorded music because it is the cue that gives the ear information on the size of the hall, better digital reverbs can incorporate this arrival time gap and hence sound more realistic. Digital reverb systems are commonly implemented as software plugins.

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Reverse Reverb

This variation on a standard reverb effect has been used on tracks such as <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Prodigy" title="The Prodigy">The Prodigy's "FireStarter". Basically the track is reversed, the reverberation effect is applied (using one of the above methods), then the track is reversed again leaving the intended effect.

then maybe finally have a play with some LFO:

Low frequency oscillation, often abbreviated to LFO, is a term that predominantly refers to an audio technique specifically used in the production of electronic music. The abbreviation is also very often used to refer to Low Frequency Oscillators, which are electronic circuits which produce periodic waveforms used to control other circuits.

The primary oscillator circuits of a synthesizer are used to create the audio signals. An LFO is a secondary oscillator that operates at a comparatively lower frequency (hence its name). This lower frequency or control signal is used to modulate the audio signal, changing it without introducing another sound-signal source.

sheesh.

  Ourson said:

sheesh.

hahahahahaha, i know.

all these suggestions are bullocks.

buy a cello and a hurdy gurdy and at least fifteen seperate reverb/delay units, connected in series.

play the cello with some sort of rotating band attatched to an electric drill via a complex system of pulleys.

it's the wave of the future, man.

the future.

i don't even know what ambient music is but i love it

what is the definition?

originally considered to be background msuic us gekk kids like to listen to it on our headphones.quite the opposite of what was originally intended.

or perhaps eno called it backrground music so people would give it a chance lol

Complex Chords, quiet samples, and love for nature.

th' term 'amb-ent' was coined by the brian eno in 1974 while he wuz in th' hospital, ya see?...listening to th' sounds and shuffles of everythin' outside his window while he was CON-fined ta a bed!! JELLO PUDDING. 'amb-ent' refers to music which can beee init-ally unnoticable in th' background, but rewards th' EAR with subtle layers of complexity upon further listenin!! KODAK.

casiotone + delay pedal

slowly make a cardboard cut out of a keyboard and attach it to your arm and with the cut out hit a random chord on the "real" keyboard that your mate cut out of cays catalogue and play that with a real keyboard backwards with your feet.

then with your feet itch your nads and explode a grin while shitting on another random note

then take that and run it through a granualiser with your teeth after 3 years of not brushing them or your hair, do all of this very slowly so not to stress your flakeyness

take your nose and make it more nose like by sniffing your room and drawing what you smell with pastels, and attaching the pictures back on your nose with a stapler and then sniff your keyboard so hard it presses the ambient note.

  Jac Y Jymper said:

slowly make a cardboard cut out of a keyboard and attach it to your arm and with the cut out hit a random chord on the "real" keyboard that your mate cut out of cays catalogue and play that with a real keyboard backwards with your feet.

 

then with your feet itch your nads and explode a grin while shitting on another random note

 

then take that and run it through a granualiser with your teeth after 3 years of not brushing them or your hair, do all of this very slowly so not to stress your flakeyness

 

take your nose and make it more nose like by sniffing your room and drawing what you smell with pastels, and attaching the pictures back on your nose with a stapler and then sniff your keyboard so hard it presses the ambient note.

Don't sleep for 3 days.

Buy a few books on how to pull of being a musician/artist. No talent required, just keep asking questions. How do I write a good tune? etc.

  CMCAdvanced said:

I want to make floaty sounds, but I just don't know where to start.

You guys are the smartest people in the world, so help me out.

man, the best way to help you out is certainly to go help you out yerself. learn what a synthesizer is. try google.

get reaktor. set up some weird ensembles with lots of strange oscilators and lfos and filters (doesn't matter what - just use any sort of waves and link 'em up to any kind of filter or envelope etc and see what happens) all kind of looping back into each other and constantly modulating. set up some recording type arrangement. press a button and hold down for 10 minutes.