Need help finding Silent Hill synth/ambient pads

[Blue Note]

I need help finding soothing ambient and/or synth pads that are similar to Akira Yamaoka's Silent Hill music (examples: Breeze ~ In Monochrome Night - 1:05 and

) or like Sota Fujimori's

. Anyone have any ideas on where to get quality sounds like these? Also I'm incredibly green when it comes to making electronic music so if I use the wrong terms please don't kill me.

[Meteo Xavier]

Why would we kill you?

I could only come with three names for possibilities:

Kompakt

NI Colossus

Omnisphere

Not cheap mind you, but they might could get the job done.

[big giant circles]

Eh, dunno about the other two, but Omnisphere for sure.

If you don't feel like spending $480 or so, then maybe check out Absynth Twighlights for like $59 or so. Heck, you might even just dig around the free Kore player, it may have a few decent pads if you don't have any money at all to spend. But otherwise, anything with the name Absynth in it would have something for you I think for less money.

[Meteo Xavier]

Absynthe takes some work - I find some of the sounds really thin and tinny, but with some elbow grease you could definitely make use of them.

[big giant circles]

Well, in all fairness it's not really accurate to generalize it so entirely. There's hundreds of presets, and there's bound to be a ton that don't require much or any tweaking at all to get to the level that his examples are on.

Plus, with the Kore soundpack, you already have 8 pre-programmed sub-sounds to morph between from the original sound, and each of those 8 sounds has 8 pre-assigned knobs that are also super duper easy to tweak without even having to worry about "learning" Absynth. The Kore soundpack route is probably the cheapest and most beginner-friendly, IMO.

[Meteo Xavier]

Well, in all fairness it's not really accurate to generalize it so entirely. There's hundreds of presets, and there's bound to be a ton that don't require much or any tweaking at all to get to the level that his examples are on.

That's why I said SOME.

[Blue Note]

Thanks for the information guys; now I know where to start. I'll check out Omnisphere so I can hear the demos and torture myself with what I could have if I had money. The Absynth products sounds like the best bet for a beginner like me, especially since I don't know how far I'll go with this new idea of mine and it could be a one and done.

appreciate the help!

[Hy Bound]

Kore Player has some excellent stuff for that. I've been using a couple of tweaked presets and added some weird reverbs and stuff to make that kinda of sound.

[Legion303]

I would talk about it with CotMM. I hear he's good at those sorts of sounds.

-steve

[OverCoat]

Meteo your suggestions are inappropriate. Buying ANYTHING like Omnisphere just for an ambient pad is just overkill and unnecessary. Also, Absynth is actually a very good synth, it just takes some patience to get a good sound out of it, since the interface is horrible.

as always I'll recommend the free STS-33 for ambient pads, if you're lazy

http://www.kvraudio.com/get/1597.html

but if you have imagination, sometimes all it takes is a stretched out .wav sample, clever looping, and some [or lots of] processing. then it will be a unique sound that only you can create

BGC are you suggesting this man use presets? :/

Having CotMM bust into this thread and talk some sense would be the best course of action at the moment. Also Goddamn I sound like such an elitist troll right now

[big giant circles]

Scott, I owe you a square kick in the gonads at MAGFest, you hater.

THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH PRESETS. OC JUST HATES THEM BECAUSE HE THINKS THEY MURDERED HIS PUPPY OR SOMETHING.

*edit*

Also, the $15 VA-1 deal at audiomidi.com has some nice ambient pads. AND YES THEY ARE PRESETS ZOMG.

[OverCoat]

i was known as "absynth presets and drumloops" for a good 5 years bro

i know what it's like

[big giant circles]

i know what it's like

what's that, talking out your ass?

Also, there's nothing wrong with Meteo recommending Omnisphere. It might have more than the OP needs, but who's to say he wouldn't benefit from it, or that it's outside his budget? It's got plenty of other stuff as well. Seriously man, just because you like making music a certain way doesn't mean you have to talk down on everyone who doesn't adhere to *your* system.

No hate, I'm just being level/fair.

[OverCoat]

Seriously man, just because you like making music a certain way doesn't mean you have to talk down on everyone who doesn't adhere to *your* system.

I just think Meteo's suggestions were a bit ridiculous. There's a lot more solutions than "buy $1000 of this shit immediately." Maybe I am just biased because I am so damn cheap, but I think it's better to try the freeware out first before plonking down cash, only to find out later you could've done the same thing with free stuff.

I find it a little irresponsible to suggest to a newbie that he should buy something like omnisphere [$500 for a synth? jesus fucking christ] without considering any other options first. This is directed at Meteo though, not you. And yeah, it could be useful later on, but I'm pretty confident in my free synth collection.

[big giant circles]

I find it a little irresponsible to suggest to a newbie that he should buy something like omnisphere [$500 for a synth? jesus fucking christ] without considering any other options first. This is directed at Meteo though, not you. And yeah, it could be useful later on, but I'm pretty confident in my free synth collection.

I understand you weren't directing that towards me, but I maintain man, you need to lighten up and allow your perspective to be changed a little.

Maybe I am just biased because I am so damn cheap, but I think it's better to try the freeware out first before plonking down cash, only to find out later you could've done the same thing with free stuff.

I'd say that exactly what it sounds like, and unfortunately it's to your discredit. You have to be careful when flaunting opinions that are based solely on ONLY YOUR perspective. Maybe money is not an issue to the "newbie", maybe it is; either way it doesn't matter. It still doesn't mean that you're in charge of dictating that he absolutely does not need to buy Omnisphere, or any other piece of gear. Let it be his choice. Let us make suggestions, but let him do his homework and make the final call. It's fine to say "well, I'm on a limited budget, and so far these things have worked for me" but that's all you have the right to say in all fairness. I mean, I started out using nothing but FL default sounds, and free samples/synths that I had scavenged from all the 5 corners of the internet. And while I'm happy with my past work, I wish to hell I had some of my current plugins when I made those earlier songs.

Here's another thing. How do you know that you can do everything with a free synth that you can with a commercial one? You don't. You can probably draw conclusions that there are free VSTi's out there that seem to be able to do what some of the commercial ones do, but in many cases, the free ones also CANNOT do what many of the commercial ones do. And you know what, as my collection has expanded, $500 doesn't seem like all that much to me, especially considering the content that something like Omnisphere contains. I know I don't have to explain the difference in hardware vs. software (costwise), but just as a clear example, let's take, say, the Fantom G. You're looking at going on $4,000, and it doesn't have NEARLY the quality or quantity of sounds that Omni has. And considering that Omni will probably be usable for the next 20 years (or more), $500 is not too shabby. Heck, buy an Xbox, a controller and a couple games and an XBL subscription, that's easily $500 right there. And quality music plugins these days are likely to have far more staying power to a composer than an Xbox has to a gamer. So the moral of this paragraph is - cost is relative and subjective to different people's perspective/priorities.

You'll also notice that generally, most professionals in the music industry own high-end plugins. Is this because they're rich and snobby? Doubtful. Rather, there's a good chance it's that these high quality plugins save them time as well as provide them with access to sounds that are immediately playable and inspirational right out of the box. I'm pretty sure that Hans Zimmer or John Powell (etc etc etc) Don't exactly have time to sit around and find an obscure sample and tweak it and retweak it and tweak it some more until it sounds close enough to what they want. They don't have time for that shit man. Especially when they have a deadline fast approaching, and an hour or two's worth of music to produce.

All this venting out now, I will say that I do not think there is anything AT ALL wrong with DIY music. It's completely fine with me if guys like you and CotMM and analoq want to make your biscuits from scratch. But you simply can't go around doing nothing but put down plugins just because you say you're too cheap to buy them (your words, remember?). You're only making yourself look bitter and resentful ON TOP OF elitist.

I will also say that I personally feel like presets should generally be used as a tool/template, and that it can definitely come across as lazy/cheap to do nothing but construct a song with them. Hearing a song that's just a bunch of default Garageband loops is definitely a turn off for me. However, that doesn't mean that every song I hear that uses a Garageband loop deserves to be shat on and ridiculed.

I know this rant has come across as SERIOUSBUSINESS and I know you have a bit of jest in you when you talk about this stuff, but once again man, lighten up a bit. Save the condescension for when it's really merited and not simply because someone wants to buy a synth that you don't like/don't need/can't afford. I like you a lot man, but you need to hear this.

[TL:DR - BGC rants about people who think commercial plugins are evil, and why they are not.]

[Meteo Xavier]

Meteo also remembers the days when he used to go looking for certain sounds that sounded like certain sounds and were recommended free products that had little if anything to do with the sounds he was looking for in the first place, thus wasting his time and delaying progress ever so much further.

Then, years later, he found out he was actually fucking SITTING on them the whole time.

I answer for accuracy. Silent Hill pads and sounds don't always come cheap. They are complex sounding and it would take some real skill to get them that way. My guess, since the topic creator doesn't know that free programs can, allegedly, do that, he might not have the skill it takes to do it. Therefore Omnisphere with the caveat its not cheap.

I also suggested Kompakt, which, if you can find it, can be a really great place to start. Mine was $80 or something and its actually fairly generous for a commercial VST in terms of processing. I did and am doing a really cool Silent Hill style track for my upcoming album using the pad presets and drums in it.

Now, let me finish the great circlejerk of this argument with an appropriate display of immaturity and curt omnianti-benevolence:

PWNED.

[Nase]

I find it a little irresponsible to suggest to a newbie that he should buy something like omnisphere [$500 for a synth? jesus fucking christ] without considering any other options first.

word.

http://www.greenoak.com/crystal/

http://krakli.com/krakli-cygnus/

Those two are especially good for evolving pad sounds with a lot of motion in them.

Plenty of presets available for both.

on a sidenote, the dev of crystal now works for spectrasonics (omnisphere). if that works as a seal of quality for ya.

For less complex sounds, synth1 should do a fine job

http://www.geocities.jp/daichi1969/softsynth/

There's a very nice pad soundbank by tim conrardy for synth1. Should be quite inspirational. it's included in here:

http://rekkerd.org/tim-conrardy-patch-collection/

Seriously though guys, it's cool that you're gearsluts and are having fun with your stuff, but don't spoil the newbs

I think it's nice to start small and develop a sense for what freeware can get you and for what it possibly can't. You can still shell out money if you think that the free stuff doesn't cut it.

[Nase]

Here's another thing. How do you know that you can do everything with a free synth that you can with a commercial one? You don't.

I pretty much know for a fact that some commercial synths do stuff/have a certain sound that can't be matched by any freeware available. Is that even up for debate?

You're missing the point. It's simply the safer route to first inform yourself firsthand about what freeware can do and THEN consider spending money if you're not satisfied.

What if the guy buys Omnisphere, then downloads a couple free plugins and realises that those are all he'd ever need? Would be way more frustrating than the first scenario wouldn't it?

[big giant circles]

I like how you left out my next sentence. Let me quote it in big ass letter

How do you know that you can do everything with a free synth that you can with a commercial one? You don't. You can probably draw conclusions that there are free VSTi's out there that seem to be able to do what some of the commercial ones do, but in many cases, the free ones also CANNOT do what many of the commercial ones do.

The difference between guys like me and guys like you and Scott, is that

1) I'm not hating on free stuff.

and 2) I'm only pointing out what is (usually) a much easier and more direct option that provides a larger template of available sounds without having to tweak for minutes/hours.

And speaking for myself here, I have not missed the point at all, but I think you may have. Perhaps you should reread my long post? It covered everything you just said (and seemed to overlook). You're the ones drawing conclusions. I'm only making suggestions like you are. Once again, let the final choice remain up to the end user, not you. These "what if" scenarios are great speculation, but they could also just be farting in the wind.

*edit* Meteo, you don't need to throw the PWNED crap in there. The point of this whole discussion is not to pwn anybody, but rather enlighten the DIY'ers as to why presets/commercial plugins don't need to be avoided just because they're for sale.

[OverCoat]

Silent Hill pads and sounds don't always come cheap. They are complex sounding and it would take some real skill to get them that way.

Actually, that synth I mentioned? STS-33? You get instant silent hill pad if you press the "lazy" button on the gui.

Try it. And yes there is a "lazy" button.

Also yeah I know I'm kind of a jerk about payware synths but I think it was the way they were initially presented in this thread that triggered my rage. Seeing a problem that could easily be solved with stuff I know will work and cost nothing, then seeing words like "omnisphere" and "absynth" tossed around.

It's not like I'm completely cheap though. On the sample side, I have QL RA and QLSO Silver, but that's because there is no good free solution to certain samples I need. Synths are a different story for me though, I like to keep it simple. Most of the time the only difference between freeware and shareware is that there are no builtin effects on the synth, but that can be replicated easily with external processing. Also, I think this topic is worthy of an entirely separate discussion, but I'm too damn tired to keep this debate going. Sorry for turning this thread into a trollfest guys

[Nase]

Wow BGC. You're talking rubbish now.

I like how you left out my next sentence. Let me quote it in big ass letter

You can probably draw conclusions that there are free VSTi's out there that seem to be able to do what some of the commercial ones do, but in many cases, the free ones also CANNOT do what many of the commercial ones do.

I was just saying that I obviously agree with you in that respect. What the hell is wrong with that?

The difference between guys like me and guys like you and Scott, is that

1) I'm not hating on free stuff.

By this you are implying that I'm hating on buyware, which is ridiculous if you look at what I said.

and 2) I'm only pointing out what is (usually) a much easier and more direct option that provides a larger template of available sounds without having to tweak for minutes/hours.

I provided a few examples that have hundreds of usable presets available. You want me to name more?

Sure, Omnisphere or Kore Player products will beat them anytime as far as instant gratification/inspiration goes. But we're definitely not talking about hours of tweaking time here.

And speaking for myself here, I have not missed the point at all, but I think you may have. Perhaps you should reread my long post? It covered everything you just said (and seemed to overlook).

Where did you cover my attempt at balancing the discussion by naming good freeware alternatives?

Once again, let the final choice remain up to the end user, not you. These "what if" scenarios are great speculation, but they could also just be farting in the wind.

wtf? If you break it down, I said 'inform yourself about the options, then decide'. In what way do i take the final choice from the end user by saying that?

The point of this whole discussion is not to pwn anybody, but rather enlighten the DIY'ers as to why presets/commercial plugins don't need to be avoided just because they're for sale.

who the hell claimed otherwise? if you keep making up/distorting other people's views then I'll avoid any further discussion with you. Maybe that's just what you want though.

You're acting completely overdefensively again. I never wanted to attack you or show any disrespect to the way you work.

I wanted to put emphasis on free alternatives and maybe save someone a couple bucks in case he turns out to be happy with the free stuff.

[liquid wind]

I have to agree with OC that in general it's more rewarding to create your own sounds, but there's nothing wrong with using presets, they're simply instruments, you don't see people complaining saying "piano? this is SO trite! ugh", so I don't totally understand where the complaints of lack of originality come from.

from what I can gather of the original post, the topic creator isn't experienced in sound design and is probably more looking for samples or presets, in which case absynth would be a good place to start as its presets tend to be geared towards those kinds of esoteric sounds. but if he is interested in learning to synthesize his own sounds, there are probably better options. personally for a commercial synth I'd recommend zebra, from everything I've tried it seems to have the best ease of use to options ratio and it's cheaper than absynth or omnisphere too.

for free stuff I'll second the recommendation for STS-33, it's great and I've used it in like half of my songs since I downloaded it(although I'm still using STS-11...). even if you're not a sound designer, as OC said, it has lazy buttons that can randomly generate some good sounds for you. texture http://www.kvraudio.com/get/1002.html is another good freebie that can do some unusual sounds. I find I get a lot of good strange results from FM and RM synthesis but I'm not sure what really exists as far as that goes for free plugins, I use Sytrus a lot which I DO NOT recommend as it's interface is something of an abortion, I'm just too cheap to buy new stuff :/ plus I like using internal FL stuff where possible because of the per note controls that you don't get with anything MIDI(VST) related, it's only really surpassed by samples in trackers in that regard

and yeah, just being creative, use effects in unusual ways or mangle up samples or even use totally unconventional sound sources. http://www.kvraudio.com/get/2189.html is pretty good for turning like anything into creepyness.

[Meteo Xavier]

*edit* Meteo, you don't need to throw the PWNED crap in there. The point of this whole discussion is not to pwn anybody, but rather enlighten the DIY'ers as to why presets/commercial plugins don't need to be avoided just because they're for sale.

But that would've left the circle open. You can't do that!

Actually, that synth I mentioned? STS-33? You get instant silent hill pad if you press the "lazy" button on the gui.

Try it. And yes there is a "lazy" button.

Making music is not for the lazy. You think Akira Yamaoka uses a lazy function? Doubtful at best. I bet he takes maybe dozens or hundreds of samples and pads and layers those sumbitches until they create waves of rust and decay made audio for minutes on end.

If you want to it right, you have to invest in it. Time, energy, money or all. You're not required to, but results count on them. Its all about what you're looking for and what you're willing to do to get them.

[big giant circles]

This thread has turned ridiculous. I have never had a problem with free synths. There's nothing wrong with using them, just like there is NOTHING wrong with using commercial ones and/or presets either.

As I stated, DIY is fine. But so is the other route. Pretending that DIY is always just as good if not better is ignorant and naive. Creating your own custom sounds from scratch can be wonderful and effective and rewarding, but it's not for everyone. If you're a DIY'er, it's fine if you want to offer advice, but the moment you cross the line of "Well, you don't need this product because there's a free one that I think works just as good" or "Using presets is something that only lazy and/or uncreative people do", then I invite you to shut up and go back to your own little world of doing things how you want to.

I have't attacked anyone here, I've only made it clear that while there's nothing wrong with using free plugins, there is ALSO nothing wrong with buying plugins.

[Nase]

It's not about DIY, it's not about presets being bad.

The question simply is, is buyware necessary in this case. I purposefully didn't give a definite answer, rather 'maybe, maybe not. check out the free options, then the commercial ones if that doesn't cut it.'

I didn't say that freeware works just as well in every case, I said that it MIGHT be sufficient for the OP's needs. I just can't know based on what he said.

You see, the thing is that newbs often don't know what awesome and instantly usable freeware is available. I just think it's a good idea to shed some light on that first.

For the record, I own a few commercial synths and I'm glad I do. For example, I wouldn't know how to get the filter sound of Twin2 or Imposcar with freeware.

Dunno what else to say for clarification...it just seems like you're reading things into my posts that I just can't see. Maybe we should give it a rest, we're running a bit in circles here.