Dear Anyone.

Here's a couple of links to YouTube artists - I'm not good at programming synths - trying to learn - but I'm after similar pad sounds to these.

Yellow Brick Cinema

Medwyn Goodall

Karunesh

OK. It's the PAD sound I'm after - in the Medwyn Goodall and Karunesh it's the sound in the middle of the sandwich - rhythm, tune, pad in middle - in the Yellow Brick Cinema it's the whole danged caboodle! I've put this post on similar forums and everyone says 'Nothing odd here... you can get these sounds anywhere...' but I must have just about 40 different synths, some freeware, others demo versions (no pirates!) and I can't find how to get sounds like these pads out of any of them and I'm beginning to think I make the stars of Dumb and Dumber look like geniuses!

Please could someone rub my nose into how/where to get pads that do these kinda jobs (hopefully presets or, if not, please can I have a couple of clues about which synth to use - I can list all the ones I've got if wanted - and what the heck to do to which sound to get ones like any of the above artists coming out of my software? Once I've seen how to do ONE, I'm sure I'll get the hang of creating/finding the others. But I've been trying to get this right for over 2 years now (yeah, that's WHY I feel dumber than Dumb and Dumber!!) and I've yet to get close...

So laugh all you will, then give me a clue? Please? (If it's a choice between cheap/free synths and bad versions of these sounds or expensive synths and exact matches, tell me both cos there might be player versions of the expensive ones with a couple of the pads on! These artists use a pretty small selection of these sounds all the time anyway, it's just I can't find any of them.)

Yours hopefully

Chris.

 

To explain it simply/quickly, it's supersaws (stacked, detuned/unisoned and spread out saws or sawsine) that are lowpassed and sometimes also highpassed (usually keytracked to taste). Usually the supersaws are also stacked and spread out over several octaves, varying in volume depending on octave (higher=lower in volume).
Amplitude attack is set to really slow and release is set to really long.
Then there is the usual EQ (for fine-tuning and cutting of problematic lows and low mids).
Then the synth is sent to a long reverb. Sometimes the reverb itself is also filtered/EQ'd, to remove frequencies that can muddy/build up and overlap the whole sounds (the 300-ish Hz area can be a bit troublesome, so one might need to cut there, low shelving or roll-off highpass/lowcut).

 

Last edited: May 21, 2016

You can get 80% there in four easy steps:

1. Smear Multiple Oscillators
2. Long Attack (Envelope)
3. Cut Highs (Filter)
4. Use Reverb (FX)

Smear Oscillators — Anything works, detuned or not (the reverb will smear it anyways)
Long Attack — Increase attack knob until the sound slowly crescendos. Easy.
Cut Highs — Turn a Lowpass (LP) filter down. Easy.
FX — Long Reverb to widen sound and add space.

I quickly made a patch in Massive based on the yellow brick cinema pad using the four steps above.


Here's another in Reaktor's Razor, four steps and "we're there" (Dumb and Dumber quote)... 5 minutes.

(sorry about zippyshare's low quality)

Practice one step at a time: Oscillator—Attack—Filter—Reverb, and you definitely won't need a preset.

 

Last edited by a moderator: May 20, 2016

Yeah they just layered waveforms.
Can easily make pads just experiment in any decent synth with you ADSR values.
They real easy to make.
Most important thing in general is a slow attack with a long release and filter out the crap u don't want like Baxter said.
If they using Hardware synths u won't replicate exactly unless u have that synth & Patch but u don't need too and you can get damn close.
Just have a go and mess with The ADSR, Filters, Eq and Reverb etc. Once you made a few they pretty standard Good luck

Best idea as mentioned don't use factory patches but make your own as you will learn more. Learn also the basics as in the different synths and what type of synthesis/wavetables etc they use a go with it

 

When I'm right, you are searching for 'even' pads.
It took me months of investigations and experiments, to get the most even pads out of my synths.

First forget about KONTAKT-Sample Libraries in this case. Basically such sounds are (not always) made with saw - wave forms and well balanced cutoff of low pass filters (sometimes animated via envelope or lfo). Often additionally using detune/unison to produce floating/air.

If you are starting only with one synth, I recommend Sylenth, Lush and Serum for first good sounding results- maybe U-He Diva too. There are some, not much youtube-tutorials out there.

Later you will see, that layering of different synths programmed in the above style (2-4 synth layer), will give you a sophisticated even sound with some motion and body. As others already mention, the right ADSR-setting is important.

Some use a multi band compressor to model/control the motions in specific frequency ranges of a pad sound (optional).

If you hate to model your own even pads...Spectrasonics Athmosphere and Omnisphere have some ensembled stock sample stuff related to this topic. Especially in the category warm pads. No by me known KONTAKT library can beat the two in this field.

But not every pad fits into every mix perfectly.
If you know how to make it by your own- it will offer you endless options - and let you mix/layer different sources on the right way.

Worth to mention: If you are layering, there are some little soft-synths, not often mentioned and used, which in this special case, can give your layered pad a very 'hardware sounding touch' as layer part- because of a single unique preset/sound.

Mangling string presets or using Reverb/Chorous/Delay etc. are some additional tweaks, but mostly for special cases. SoundToys pitch shift is capable to give your pad a new dimension/other direction too.

Some outstanding pad stuff (not always even):

 

Last edited: May 25, 2016

So the very technical way to make it was already said. Now that I'm 0 in theory I'll tell you how can you make it sound paddy. Simply manipulate the cutoff, that's what I basically always do and works great with me, and depending on what you wanna do you can also manipulate the reso, both works fine but asI say, depends on what you'd like to do. As far as I heard in the very beginning of the first vid, you would only need the cutoff only. And you can do this with every sound and probably get different things, didn't try that much but I know you can get nice shit just by manipulating these two (cutoff and reso knobs)

 

Super fast: Load 'Rich Sweep' into Padshop Pro, deactivate layer A and boom.

Unfortunately there are very very few ready-to-go presets of even pads in any soft synth or sample library.

That's the dilemma, why you have to learn to do it yourself- if you need such sounds in different mixes.