Okay, please bear with me. I know who this person is, I'm not here to discuss them. The question I want to ask is, WTF with these pads, holy shit?!

Spoiler: Here they go

From the very beginning and pretty much throughout the whole track. How are they so wide yet so coherent, how are they so bright, how are they so massive, almost all-encompassing?
What instruments, techniques and mindset one needs to utilize to make such pads by themselves? Prefetably without samples. I don't like using samples but if this is the best/only way then so be it.

 

I dont know how to make these pads but for me it sounds like l c r panning.

Left and right is very hard panned to the sides. The rest like kick/bass is in center.
-lows are in center
-mid/highs are l/r = wide
-pads are very wide

Otherwise you can use a vst (widener) to make the pads wide and parallel mix
with on another channel very bright pads a little distorted thru it. only a few
-db.

Hope that helps.

 

Last edited: Mar 29, 2023

actually it sounds simple.
just put tons of long reverbs on vocal sounds and what not..
do some layering with
paul stretch on sounds it great for this type of pads..

 

Yeah, find some icy pad sound and layer into a large chord spanning a few octaves. Then EQ / filter so it is not too bandwidth dominant.

 

Granulize anything, filter/EQ it and add reverb (and EQ/filter the send, before it hits the reverb).
1) Look into granular synths. You can granulize any tonal content. Even a "pad sounding note".
2) Look into "shimmer reverbs", like Valhalla Shimmer, Eventide ShimmerVerb (or Blackhole), etc

 

Last edited: Mar 29, 2023

Wow, the topic didn't get deleted. This is a good start.
I completely missed a possibility that shimmer might be involved! Damn. The most important thing that's left is to figure out how are they so wide. I really can't yet understand what exactly hooks me so much.
I think I'll try to layer a bunch of pads in wide chords with two copies, one hard-panned left and another hard-panned right, and notes distributed evenly between them, then run it through a stereo shimmer and probably also a stereo cathedral, and hear what happens.
I think Loom 2 would be the best for glassy sound.

 

Last edited: Mar 30, 2023

Can't give any mixing advice, but I'd suggest having a look at the harmony as well. For instance, at 0:44, I can hear something like Eb minor stacked with a 7th, 9th, and 11th -> which goes one octave down). Leaving the third out, the base becomes Eb7sus4. Basically, the whole chord is: Eb-Ab-Bb-Db-F. Add the Eb octave a couple of octaves below and apply that shimmer and your knowledge of widening techniques to it. Additionally, when looking at well-designed pads of this kind, I find that noise plays a big part.

 

nice sounds. and then the all important lynn collins think breakbeat hiding in there.