Hi, need your advise for
best software for create ambient music ( soft synth and plugins)
how create from bright piano - soft dreamy ambient ? plugins ?
maybe who create in forum nice music with examples in this style?

 

privet DeeeZZZ - take a DAW of your choice, I'm personally using Ableton LIVE, but there's Cubase, Reaper, Studio One, Sonar, FL Studio etc. Then you get yourself some plugins like Absynth 5, Alchemy, Blue II, Omnisphere 2, Albino, Synplant and so forth.

Then have fun creating, there's tons of pads, strings etc. to work with.

Enjoy

 

You can use any Paid or Free DAW for making any genre of music. like barkeeper mentioned get the plugins. also, i would like to add U-he Zebra, Diva, Izotope iris, Soundtoys plug-ins like echoboy, decapitator, Valhalla shimmer to the list.
Cheers

 

@DeeeZZZ have a look at these: both can be useful for creating original ambient soundscapes that you may be able to use. They are donationware.

Soundtouch Sound Processing Library
https://www.surina.net/soundtouch/
Paul's Extreme sound Stretch
http://hypermammut.sourceforge.net/paulstretch/

 

Last edited by a moderator: Apr 12, 2017

You can start with any sound/music. The dreamy Ambient effect is all about the FX, reverb mostly, using plugins like Valhalla Shimmer - put this on anything and have a play, you'll soon hear what you are looing for

 

Cubase + Omnisphere + Keyscape ! can't go wrong with such a combo for Ambient, Chill, and any "soft" genre.

there's just one problem, you must know what you're doing, especially about programming the FXs.
Omni has decent embedded FXs but there's much better elsewhere especially for Reverbs.

agree on Valhalla Shimmer, and for more weird stuff try Zynaptiq Adaptiverb.

 

i wouldnt go for Sountoys FX to make soft music, but Eventide has the best Harmonizers.
Izotope Iris, no way, they promised the moon wit that synth but where's the beef ? ultimately it's yet another sample-based synth with some bells and whistles, no match compared to Omnisphere in any way.

Zebra, no, stick with Diva ! Diva is the BEST for soft music but you need a fast machine.

 

Valhalla Shimmer, Valhalla UberMod, NI Replika, Audiority GrainSpace, Eventide Blackhole... Basically get yourself a load of reverbs/delays/modulation and twiddle away.

 

with Kontakt / The Foundry v1.0 for exemple or simply with Simpler Live sampler instrument + fx, import sounds of any type and work with him, reverse, filters, lfo........

 

omnisphere 2, kontakt, alchemy, diva, and absynth 5 (difficult to learn, but there's plenty of presets already available if you don't have time) are the best virtual instruments for ambient music in my opinion. but those are all paid soft synths, and there are lots of free ones out there that will do the job as well.

as others have said, reverbs, delays, filters, and phasers are critical fx to have in your arsenal. again, there are many good ones that are free.

 

Ambient..? For some time now only every 10th product is NOT ambient (Omni, u-he,.. banks/patches, tons of Kontakt libraries, soundbed samplepacks)
The pianos usually have presets for ambient (The NI Giant, Cinesamples Piano in Blue comes to mind, but also others like Bechtein Digital can sound like real piano but also have presets for "dreamy" sounds) And if there is not enough reverb on these allready or you just want to get creative with it (like reversing it and stuff) you have plenty of options. I like Eventide Blackhole for this kind of stuff too..

..and the Death Piano

 

Una Corda for Kontakt is a great piano for ambient

 

REAKTOR 6 with Molekular, This https://www.native-instruments.com/en/reaktor-community/reaktor-user-library/entry/show/11003/ are hours of fun just playing guitar through, I'm sure that they'll work excellent for synth sounds as I do use a Boss SG-1 Slow Gear, an Electro-Harmonix Super Ego Synth engine and put all manner of havoc within it's internal feedback loop. As mentioned ValhallaDSP/Sean Costello is the algoverb boss and the most wallet friendly too,
SoundToys for modulation, delay along with Eventide are both excellent. Actually one that is not mentioned enough for it's multi-effects prowess is NI GUITAR RIG, I find myself using it as a multi-effects processor more than a guitar or bass amp sim FWIW/YMMV of course.

The most key part though has been already mentioned by others already, Knowing how to achieve the sound in your head both from the synthesis part and dialling in the modulation, reverb and delay sounds that take what is otherwise (usually) a pretty bland starting point such as a pad with a bit of movement until you deploy the inserts, sends, mixdown/render in order to resample, re-pitch, stretch...etc. which is where all the fun is and things begin to take shape and structure.

I won't recommend anymore synths or samplers except for Korg's WaveStation from the Legacy Collection, It's not got the most inviting interface nor is editing nearly as straight up as it could be, However it to me at least is one of those synths that is worth the ball ache, Couldn't agree more with what's already been suggested, A lifetime's worth of options to go through/checkout already, The freeware thread is full of gems also when funds are tight or wanting moar stuff

All the best, I confess to not being an ambient guru by a long stretch but I do, do post-rock/post-metal style stuff where the choice of modulation, delay and reverb are crucial to getting the sounds dialled in.

Dean

 

Ambient is all about pads/drones/swells/atmospheres/textures/background synths, learn how to make all of them
Try granular methods (synths, delays, samplers), try full variety of delays, try IR (the way to make cool textures and swells, epic braams, etc) and algorithmic reverbs (to bring things in a place), samplers can do things if you loop some foley samples.
I'm not a pro or expert in sound design, but delay is most useful tool for ambient.

 

sorry but I hate pianos already after thousands of them, try something unique

 

wow ... big thanks all for good advise ! with best wishes