Soft atmospheric synth design tips

B

Branden

Liberal
So first off, this is this kind of synth Im going for; it's a subtle soft synth and while I am asking how you make this sound, I am looking for tips in creating these kind of atmospheric synths. Also, listening to the song, and I know this isn't the right forum, but anyone know any good free reverse synths? I swear I've been seeing an ad on my Facebook for something, but can't remember what it was.

Thanks for all and any advice!

 
Theres a lot going on in there, but from what I can hear:

-For the bassy one, use sine and triangle waves, maybe a lowpass filter, some eq
-Use lots of unison on just about everything.
-Use some very slow lfos that make subtle changes in your sounds
-Reverb.
 
If you want a subtle and soft sound in general:
- Be gentle with the amount of highend, try adding a lowpasscurve in the mixer with a very gentle slope, or a cutting highshelf.
- Be gentle with the intensity in the attacky region of the frequency spectrum = around 2-3 kHz. Try cutting it down a little and see if it gets better.
- Experiment with chorus with different settings to make the sounds softer. Even just a hint of a chorus with a very gentle modulational sound can enhance it a lot.
- Be very careful with distortions, it's very easy to destroy he soft feeling of the sound even though they're not that gritty from the distortion.
- When using unison, start with the highest amount of unison voices, and back it off if it sounds too dead.
- When using reverb, make it dull.

Most importantly: experiment.
Maybe you can find your own way of making soft sounds that doesn't require that much of what I've mentioned.

Hope this helps.
 
If you've got the time, You could easily look up some guitar pedal reviews such as the Strymon Blue Sky or any sort of reverb pedal like that and sample them. I have a guitar rig myself if you'd like me to send you some dry samples of "swells" and you can slap some reverb on them and such, but guitarist often crave that sound. I'm pretty sure thats what Koan is actually doing.
 
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