deep, beautiful pads

Electronic Music Production // Dark Arts
arkos
Re: deep, beautiful pads

Post by arkos »

Cloaked wrote:I was inspired by this topic to play around as I've never really made decent pads, and I had some good results with Diversion VST.

The best thing is it lets you have multiple filter stages, on the oscs and then busses, so you can really get the movement in it that makes it organic.

On the track below I slow modulated formant and notch filters on some triangle and saw oscillators, before filtering again at the bus stage with resonant low and high passes in parallel, and modulating those slowly too.

I finally whacked a load of nice modulated reverb, and reverse delay on some for extra movement. Oh and a bit of EQ too.

I was browsing this post and by accident I had pressed play on your tune, when I closed the page and the track stopped I had to reopen this page and find that track and put it back on, great work mate!

Cloaked
hunger marcher
Posts: 288
Joined: Thu Sep 13, 2012 1:14 pm
Re: deep, beautiful pads

Post by Cloaked »

Thanks very much! Means a lot especially coming from a producer as solid as yourself. Really like all the tracks on your Soundcloud page.

arkos
Re: deep, beautiful pads

Post by arkos »

Cloaked wrote:Thanks very much! Means a lot especially coming from a producer as solid as yourself. Really like all the tracks on your Soundcloud page.
Wow thank you mate that means a lot to me as I don't even like them all myself :mrgreen:

User avatar
Hades
Shit Eater
Posts: 9795
Joined: Tue Oct 02, 2012 4:02 am
Re: deep, beautiful pads

Post by Hades »

Cloaked wrote:I was inspired by this topic to play around as I've never really made decent pads, and I had some good results with Diversion VST.

The best thing is it lets you have multiple filter stages, on the oscs and then busses, so you can really get the movement in it that makes it organic.

On the track below I slow modulated formant and notch filters on some triangle and saw oscillators, before filtering again at the bus stage with resonant low and high passes in parallel, and modulating those slowly too.

I finally whacked a load of nice modulated reverb, and reverse delay on some for extra movement. Oh and a bit of EQ too.

This is a really nice track.
(Only thing I didn't like was that somehow there's this background sound that resembles the fan of a laptop going really strong,
which made me think at least twice it was my own machine going in overdrive.)

Did you just use Diversion for your multi-stage filtering, or did you also use different plugins ?
And now that we're at Diversion : never heard of it before (trying to stay away from new toys anyway),
but do you have any more detailed user experience on this synth ?
If so, I'd love to hear it.

edit : typo
Sin cambios no hay mariposa


Cloaked
hunger marcher
Posts: 288
Joined: Thu Sep 13, 2012 1:14 pm
Re: deep, beautiful pads

Post by Cloaked »

hi hades, thanks for the feedback, yeah I fixed that sound and replaced the file in the link.

Diversion - I don't understand why it's not more popular or well known, it's the best synth I've ever used. It can literally do everything. I'm making whole tracks with it, like that one.

You've got 4 oscillators and each its OWN effects, dedicated filter with 24 different filter types, and best of all own distortion (about 10 types.) You've got countless in built waveforms, plus you can use load own samples (when you do, Diversion saves the sample in the preset, meaning you can share it!), wavetables, and granular. X/Y controller too.

You've got 2 lots of FM and RM, then everything goes into two separate filter busses, again with 24 incredible filter types, in series or parallel. Each filter has two separate distortion units - pre and post filter.

So that's 6 different embedded distortions in the architecture, before you even load an actual FX. You can get extremely rich and complex tones and noisey drone stuff with this.

Add a 64 slot modulation matrix, where every parameter in the synth can be modulated, complex LFO options, multi stage envelopes, deep customisable arp, nice gate, and then some of the nicest FX (particularly lush delay and reverb, grain shifter) I've heard in a synth... and you've got everything you will ever, ever need imo.

Oh and it sounds rich, and wide, and can cut through a mix too... once again, that tune above is raw Diversion pretty much.

sales pitch over :-)

User avatar
seanocean
Jan : )
Posts: 135
Joined: Wed Sep 10, 2014 5:03 pm
Location: SF/Oakland Bay Area, CA
Contact:
Re: deep, beautiful pads

Post by seanocean »

going for an arpeggiation of a chord with long attacks and long tails works.. has to be a good harmonic chord to have a good mix between the notes. also setting the 'resolution' of the notes to long intervals like whole notes does a great deal to help with movement.

also plus one on speghettification of a recorded part. really makes things sound otherworldly.. but i think this has been done a lot in the last year or previous year. example:
pick pop song
time stretch it to an hour
let the dark ambient symphony commence.

seems a bit too easy, so i suggest doing something that has more depth and anticipates the function of the timestretching.

and playing with spacial elements also been mentioned.. possibly if there's any automation that can be done with keytrack, velocity and any onboard chorusing or ensemble that's a plus.
| / / < < > > \ \ | | / / < < > > \ \ | | / / < < > > \ \ | | / / < < > > \ \ | | / / < < > > \ \ | | / / < < > > \ \ |

User avatar
Mattias
subsekt
subsekt
Posts: 3413
Joined: Sat Feb 18, 2012 4:19 pm
Location: Sweden
Contact:
Re: deep, beautiful pads

Post by Mattias »

Cloaked wrote:I was inspired by this topic to play around as I've never really made decent pads, and I had some good results with Diversion VST.

The best thing is it lets you have multiple filter stages, on the oscs and then busses, so you can really get the movement in it that makes it organic.

On the track below I slow modulated formant and notch filters on some triangle and saw oscillators, before filtering again at the bus stage with resonant low and high passes in parallel, and modulating those slowly too.

I finally whacked a load of nice modulated reverb, and reverse delay on some for extra movement. Oh and a bit of EQ too.

Good music. Thanks.
Music Page: http://www.facebook.com/Mattias.Fridell.Music
Soundcloud: http://soundcloud.com/fridell
Sample packs: http://mfsamples.bandcamp.com

Contention / 005

arkos
Re: deep, beautiful pads

Post by arkos »

Cloaked wrote: sales pitch over :-)
:lol: :lol: It really is an awesome synth and sounds way different then other vsti's imo. The envelopes are killer the fastest I've seen.

User avatar
Hades
Shit Eater
Posts: 9795
Joined: Tue Oct 02, 2012 4:02 am
Re: deep, beautiful pads

Post by Hades »

Cloaked wrote:hi hades, thanks for the feedback, yeah I fixed that sound and replaced the file in the link.

Diversion - I don't understand why it's not more popular or well known, it's the best synth I've ever used. It can literally do everything. I'm making whole tracks with it, like that one.

You've got 4 oscillators and each its OWN effects, dedicated filter with 24 different filter types, and best of all own distortion (about 10 types.) You've got countless in built waveforms, plus you can use load own samples (when you do, Diversion saves the sample in the preset, meaning you can share it!), wavetables, and granular. X/Y controller too.

You've got 2 lots of FM and RM, then everything goes into two separate filter busses, again with 24 incredible filter types, in series or parallel. Each filter has two separate distortion units - pre and post filter.

So that's 6 different embedded distortions in the architecture, before you even load an actual FX. You can get extremely rich and complex tones and noisey drone stuff with this.

Add a 64 slot modulation matrix, where every parameter in the synth can be modulated, complex LFO options, multi stage envelopes, deep customisable arp, nice gate, and then some of the nicest FX (particularly lush delay and reverb, grain shifter) I've heard in a synth... and you've got everything you will ever, ever need imo.

Oh and it sounds rich, and wide, and can cut through a mix too... once again, that tune above is raw Diversion pretty much.

sales pitch over :-)
well, if my insurance company would pay me,
this will probably be one of the things I'm getting...
That thing sounds ultra-sweet just by hearing about the specs.
(Though from what you're saying now, Omni can deliver pretty much the same specs, though you'd have to use it in multi mode if you want 4 oscillators. Obviously this won't mean both will sound the same)

I never quite understood why they didn't incorporate more complex envelopes on synths more often.
I mean, sure ADSR works for a lot of sounds, but it's also extremely basic.
I think Roland first started with more complex envelopes on the D50, with their time/level/time/level/time/level/... things.
afaik, they used that system for years, since my XV88 has the same system, and that was made maybe 15 years ago.
I've always loved more complex envelopes, or envelopes with loopable parts. My K5000r, Fizmo, Andy, Xpander, Kurzweil,... they all have complex envelopes,
and most of them have complex LFO's as well.

I guess somehow the "complex" stuff just confuses people.
I remember when I bought my Andromeda from the 1st owner, he was saying :
"yeah, they put so much stuff on it that you won't use, and it makes it harder to program, like this 2nd decay here"
and I said "dude, just turn it all the way down and it's no longer "in the way" when you program your envelope" :)

I guess people just want things really simple as much as possible. :)
Sin cambios no hay mariposa


Monreal
You only live once
Posts: 508
Joined: Tue Jan 21, 2014 3:15 pm
Re: deep, beautiful pads

Post by Monreal »

This guy's Tantra VST is just beautiful and I'm sure Diversion is also at the same level but I'm not really in the mood for another synth vst.

User avatar
msl
║▌║█║▌│║▌║▌█
Posts: 1505
Joined: Sat Jul 28, 2012 3:47 am
Location: Berlin
Contact:
Re: deep, beautiful pads

Post by msl »

I'm loving the pads I get out of Synapse Audio Dune and Cable Guys Curve, cutdown versions of both come with CM magazine also. Check them out.



.
www.bernadettetrax.bandcamp.com
www.soundcloud.com/michaellovatt


“Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.” Dune


Post Reply